Martin Krämer

Freedom of analysis

This volume draws together papers that argue for a renewed focus on the role of hard constraints on phonological representations as well as the processes that operate on them. These are issues that have been sidelined since the shift in emphasis in phonological research to functionally grounded output-oriented constraints. Taking Optimality Theory as their starting point, the articles attack the question to what degree the Generator function Gen should be given freedom of analysis on three fronts. (1) What is the nature of the representations that Gen manipulates? Is a return to more articulated theories of segmental and prosodic representation desirable? (2) What restrictions might there be on the operations that Gen carries out on representations? Should Gen be endowed with structure-changing potential, as assumed in work couched within Correspondence Theory, or is a return to the principle of Containment preferable? Should Gen be restricted in the number of edits it can carry out at any one time? Should Gen be restricted to generating phonetically interpretable candidates? (3) What is the relationship between Gen and functionally arbitrary or opaque phonological patterns? Should Gens freedom be restricted in order to account for language-specific phonology? The solutions offered to these questions bear significantly on current issues that are of fundamental concern in linguistic theory, including representations, parallelism vs. serialism, and the division of labour between linguistic modules. The authors scrutinize these issues using data from a variety of unrelated languages, including Czech, English, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Lardil, Spanish, Turkish, and Yowlumne.

Alignment and locality in the typology of affixing language games

Abstract This paper contributes to the discussion around the (extra-)grammatical status of language games (or ludlings). We collected over 60 games which are based on the affixation of a dummy morpheme, which is infixed and iterated in most cases. While some are obviously reduplicative, closer investigation reveals that all the games involving iterativity function like reduplication. Our optimality-theoretic analysis concentrates on the explanation of shape, segmental content, placement and iterativity of the dummy affix and employs only constraints standardly assumed in the literature on reduplication. We show that no ludling-specific constraints or stipulations are necessary to account for this typology and make predictions on limitations that presumably apply to typological variation with regard to language games. Ludlings are thus variations of grammatical constraint rankings.

On exceptional stress assignment in Latvian: the case of prefixes

ABSTRACT In this article, we examine some previously understudied exceptions to the generalization that Latvian assigns stress to the left-most syllable in a prosodic word, specifically those that involve prefixation. We will show that these apparent exceptions in stress assignment follow from the internal structural properties of the word and are a result of attaching the prefix outside the domain where stress is assigned, which is up to the first functional head inside the hierarchy. Our treatment combines the syntactic structure of a neoconstructionist approach to word formation with an optimality theory formalization at the phonological level.

On the representation and selection of exponents

This is the accepted manuscript version. Published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1418/76997 .

On the (in)fissibility of intervocalic consonants in Norwegian and German: Evidence from a word game

The syllabification of wordor morpheme-internal consonants, especially those preceded by short vowels, in Germanic languages has been subject to various analyses and there is generally not much consensus on the analysis of single string-internal consonants in these languages. This paper presents the results of a study based on a word game, carried out with German and Norwegian subjects, that provides evidence for a differential analysis of string-internal syllable junctures and consonants in these two languages. We conclude that in German a consonant preceded by a short/lax stressed vowel is best analysed as short and ambisyllabic while in Norwegian a consonant in the same environment is a geminate that contributes weight to the preceding syllable via its mora even though it is parsed in the following syllable. The analysis highlights the need for orthogonal syllable and moraic representations.