Pavel Iosad

Vowel reduction in Russian: No phonetics in phonology

Much recent work in phonology concentrates on the role of sonority in the phenomenon of vowel reduction, capitalizing on two facts: that reduction involves raising and/or shortening and that higher vowels and schwa are normally interpreted as having low sonority. This paper presents a different approach to vowel reduction in Standard Russian. It is proposed that the apparent sonority-driven effects in Russian are epiphenomenal. In particular, reduction to schwa is outside the domain of phonological computation in Russian, being an artifact of reduced duration. Other types of neutralization arising in vowel reduction are potentially amenable to a sonority-based analysis, but I argue that current approaches to sonority-driven reduction suffer from representational shortcomings. When these shortcomings are rectified, however, sonority is unnecessary as an explicit factor in vowel reduction: standard markedness mechanisms suffice to explain the data.

Head-dependent asymmetries in Munster Irish prosody

In this paper I propose an analysis of stress in Munster Irish which builds on two important premises. First, I argue for a distinction between the notion ‘head of a constituent’ and the notion of ‘stress’: these are separate entities, and the typologically frequent isomorphic distribution of the two is just one possible outcome of the phonological computation. Second, I propose to employ a particular family of constraints requiring head-dependent asymmetries (Dresher and van der Hulst 1998) to account for the mismatch between the placement of foot heads and stress in Munster Irish. Overall, the paper is an argument for elaborate abstract structure as an explanatory factor in phonology, as opposed to relatively shallow, substance-based representations.

Welsh svarabhakti as stem allomorphy

In this paper I propose an analysis of the repairs of sonority sequencing violations in South Welsh in terms of a non-phonological process of stem allomorphy. As documented by Hannahs (2009), modern Welsh uses a variety of strategies to avoid word-final rising-sonority consonant clusters, depending in part on the number of syllables in the word. In particular, while some lexical items epenthesise a copy of the rightmost underlying vowel in the word, others delete one of the consonants in a cluster. In this paper, I argue that at least the deletion is not a live phonological process, and suggest viewing it as an instance of stem allomorphy in a stratal Optimality Theory (OT) framework (Bermudez-Otero 2013). This accounts for the lexical specificity of the pattern, which has been understated in the literature, and for the fact that cyclic misapplication of deletion and diachronic change are constrained by part-of-speech boundaries.

The phonologisation of redundancy: Length and quality in Welsh vowels

‘Phonologization’ is a process whereby a phonetic phenomenon enters the phonological grammar and becomes conceptualized as the result of categorical manipulation of phonological symbols. I analyse the phonologization of a predictable phonological pattern in Welsh, with particular attention to identifying criteria for whether phonologization has occurred. I argue for a model where phonologization experiences bottom-up and top-down biases. From the bottom up, there is pressure to phonologize phenomena with a categorical distribution; from the top down, there exist formal constraints on featural specification. I focus on the requirement for featural specifications to obey the Contrastivist Hypothesis, which denies that redundant features can be involved in phonological computation, in the context of a framework with emergent features. I suggest that the Contrastivist Hypothesis acts as a useful check for emergent-feature theories, whilst independent phonologization criteria provide contrastivist approaches with a more solid conceptual underpinning. *Portions of this paper were presented at the 1st Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology, the Edinburgh P-workshop, GLOW workshop Phonological Specification and Interface Interpretation (Brussels), the 8th North American Phonology Conference (Montreal), the 21st and 22nd Welsh Linguistics Seminars (Gregynog), the 1st Conference on Linguistic Diversity in Wales (Aberystwyth), and the 24th Manchester Phonology Meeting. Thanks to the audiences at these forums for questions and comments, particularly Gwen Awbery, Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero, Josef Fruehwald, Daniel Currie Hall, and Michaela Hejná. For help with fieldwork, thanks to Christine Jones and Mererid Hopwood (University of Wales Trinity Saint David) and Diarmuid Johnson (Menter Rhos-y-Gilwen). At Phonology, a huge thanks to three anonymous reviewers, an anonymous associate editor, Ellen Kaisse, and Colin Ewen for numerous questions and suggestions that have immeasurably improved the paper. All errors of fact or interpretation remain entirely mine.

Rule scattering and vowel length in Northern Romance

In this paper I reconsider the synchronic status of distinctive vowel length and vowel lengthening and shortening rules in Northern Romance varieties, in light of Loporcaro’s (2015) wide-ranging study of vowel quantity in numerous Romance dialects. Loporcaro (2015) argues that these varieties possess distinctive, phonemic vowel length, and mostly do not have synchronic rules that produce surface long vowels, contrary to many previous analyses of the relevant patterns. In this paper, I argue instead that that lexical vowel length distinctions coexist, in some Northern Romance varieties, with productive phonological rules manipulating vowel quantity. This co- existence is best understood with recourse to the life cycle of phonological processes, and in particular the notion of rule scattering (Bermudez-Otero 2015). This approach not only allows us to reach an adequate interpretation of the basic facts but also makes further predictions regarding the status of quantity-manipulating rules, which also turn out to be correct, providing further support for the theory of the life cycle.

The phonology and morphosyntax of Breton mutation

This paper presents an analysis of initial consonant mutation in a Breton dialect, with a focus on establishing the division of labour between phonology and morphology in the triggering of mutation and its phonological expression. It is argued that different types of mutation have different status in the grammar: some are purely phonological, others involve subsegmental morphemes with a clear morphosyntactic rationale, and for some the phonological aspects are clear but the morphosyntactic motivation remains obscure. In addition, the differences among the types of mutation support a stratal model of morphology-phonology interactions.

Right at the left edge: initial consonant mutations in the languages of the world

This paper presents a typological overview of initial consonant mutations (abbreviated: ICM) — pretheoretically, changes in the first consonant of a word which are not obviously caused by the phonetic / phonological context. They are relatively well-known from the modern Celtic languages such as Welsh (Ball and Müller 1992) and Irish (Ní Chiosáin 1991; Green 2006). The main goals of this paper are as follows: