Jill Beckman

Positional faithfulness, positional neutralisation and Shona vowel harmony

The distribution of the feature [high] in Shona verbs is a prototypical example of positional neutralisation accompanied by vowel harmony. In languages which exhibit positional neutralisation of vowel contrasts, one or more vowels (generally, the most marked members of the vowel inventory) may occur distinctively in only a small subset of the structural positions available in the language. Outside of these positions, the marked vowels may surface only if they harmonise with a similar vowel in the privileged position. For example, the mid vowels e and o in Shona verbs are contrastive only in root-initial syllables. These vowels may appear in subsequent syllables only when preceded by a mid vowel in root-initial position. A string of height-harmonic Shona vowels is therefore firmly anchored in the root-initial syllable, as shown in (1):

Reduplication with Fixed Segmentism

Fixed segmentism is the phenomenon whereby a reduplicative morpheme contains segments that are invariant rather than copied. We investigate it within Optimality Theory, arguing that it falls into two distinct types, phonological and morphological. Phonological fixed segmentism is analyzed under the OT rubric of emergence of the unmarked. It therefore has significant connections to markedness theory, sharing properties with other domains where markedness is relevant and showing context-dependence. In contrast, morphological fixed segmentism is a kind of affixation, and so it resembles affixing morphology generally. The two types are contrasted, and claims about impossible patterns of fixed segmentism are developed.

Rate effects on Swedish VOT : Evidence for phonological overspecification

Abstract Previous research has found asymmetric effects of speaking rate on VOT cross-linguistically: as rate slows, long-lag VOTs and negative VOTs increase, but short-lag VOTs remain essentially unchanged. If we assume, as have many phonologists, that the two-way contrast in voicing languages (e.g. French) is [voice] vs. [O] and in aspirating languages (e.g. English) is [spread glottis] vs. [O], then it appears that at slower rates, a phonological contrast is heightened by selective increase in the phonetic cue for the specified feature. Thus, slowing down causes longer aspiration in aspirating languages and longer prevoicing in voicing languages but no change in short-lag stops. We report the results of an experiment on Central Standard Swedish stops designed to investigate the effect of speaking rate on VOT. CS Swedish uses both prevoiced and aspirated stops in utterance-initial position, hence the phonological feature(s) involved in this contrast is not clear. We found that both prevoicing and aspiration increase in slow speech in Swedish. This suggests that both [voice] and [spread glottis] are the specified features of phonological contrast in CS Swedish, and in turn raises questions about whether phonological specification more generally is economical. Moreover, the fact that speaking rate affects VOT even in situations like CS Swedish in which the phonological contrast is over-specified suggests that such modification is largely due to production dynamics, not speakers’ sensitivity to listeners’ needs.

Empirical evidence for laryngeal features: Aspirating vs. true voice languages

It is well known that German utterance-initial lenis stops are voiceless but that German intervocalic (or intersonorant) lenis stops are sometimes produced with voicing. This variable voicing can be understood as passive voicing , voicing that results because of the voiced context, rather than from active voicing gestures by speakers. Thus, speakers are not actively aiming to voice intervocalic stops, just as they are not actively aiming to voice utterance-initial stops (Jessen & Ringen 2002 , Jessen 2004 ). If this is correct, the variable voicing that occurs in aspirating languages should be different from the voicing that occurs in true voice languages (such as Russian), in which speakers are actively aiming to voice both initial and intervocalic lenis stops. Since there is little data on the relative amount of intervocalic voicing in true voice languages, however, it has been difficult to evaluate this prediction. The purpose of this paper is to compare data on the voicing of intervocalic stops in German and English with data on the voicing of intervocalic stops in true voice languages. We find that the differences are substantial, supporting the claim that aspirating languages are not like true voice languages, in which the feature of contrast is [voice].

German fricatives: coda devoicing or positional faithfulness?

In this paper we show how Jessen & Ringen’s (2002) analysis of voicing in German stops can be extended to account for the voicing of German fricatives. It is argued that while stops in German contrast for the feature [spread glottis], fricatives contrast for [voice] (and [spread glottis]). Our analysis, which involves presonorant faithfulness, is compared to an analysis with coda devoicing. We show that the two analyses make crucially di!erent predictions, and present experimental evidence in support of the presonorant faithfulness analysis. The experimental results show considerable variation, which can be accommodated in our OT analysis.