René Kager

The prosody-morphology interface

Contributors Preface 1. Introduction Rene Kager and Wim Zonneveld 2. On the moraic representation of underlying geminates: evidence from prosodic morphology Stuart Davis 3. Verbal reduplication in three Bantu languages Laura J. Downing 4. Prosodic morphology and tone: the case of Chichewa Larry M. Hyman and Al Mtenje 5. Exceptional stress-attracting suffixes in Turkish: representations versus the grammar Sharon Inkelas 6. Realignment Junko Ito and Armin Mester 7. Faithfulness and identity in prosodic morphology John J. McCarthy and Alan S. Prince 8. Austronesian nasal substitution and other NC effects Joe Pater 9. The prosodic base of the Hausa plural Sam Rosenthall 10. Prosodic optimality and prefixation in Polish Grazyna Rowicka 11. Double reduplications in parallel Suzanne Urbanczyk Index of subject Index of constraints Index of language Index of names.

ALTERNATIVES TO THE IAMBIC-TROCHAIC LAW*

This article seeks to develop alternatives to recent theories (Hayes 1985, 1987, 1991; McCarthy and Prince 1986, 1990; Prince 1991) that explain quantitative asymmetries between iambic and trochaic systems on the basis of a rhythmiciambic-trochaic law. The theory proposed here derives such asymmetries from two different rhythmic factors: moraic prominence-relations internal to heavy syllables, and avoidance of clash and lapse in sequences of moras. Firstly, it argues for a distinction between parsing feet and surface feet. Parsing feet draw from a symmetric foot inventory, based on two parameters:stressable element (mora vs. syllable), andheadedness (iambic vs. trochaic). That is, the basic foot inventory is no longer governed by the iambic-trochaic law. Secondly, parsing feet are mapped into surface feet by rules that impose quantitative changes, or by stray adjunction, induced by strict prosodic layering. Thirdly, a rhythmic sub-theory defines filters that rule out clashes and lapses in sequences of moras or syllables, depending on the type of stressable element. It explains iambic-trochaic asymmetries with respect to lengthening and shortening, and an asymmetry with respect to directionality of iambic parsing. Evidence will be presented from Tübatulabal, Yidiny, Araucanian, Chugach Alutiiq Yupik, Cayuga, Latin, and English.

Ternary rhythm and the lapse constraint

Ternary rhythmic systems differ from binary systems in stressing every third syllable in a word, rather than every second. Consider the following examples from Cayuvava (Key 1961), where stress is on every third syllable counting from the end of the word: (1) a. a.ri.hi.hi.be.e ‘I have already put the top on’ b. ma.ra.ha.ha.e.i.ki ‘their blankets’ c. i.ki.ta.pa.re.re.pe.ha ‘the water is clean’ Ternary rhythm is well-established for only a small group of languages, including Chugach Alutiiq, Cayuvava and Estonian, and possibly Winnebago. Nevertheless the stress patterns of these languages are sufficiently complex to warrant an ongoing debate about the implications for metrical theory (see Prince 1980, Levin 1985, 1988, Halle & Vergnaud 1987, Halle 1990, Hammond 1990, Dresher & Lahiri 1991, Rice 1992, Hewitt 1992, Kager 1993, 1994, Halle & Idsardi 1995, Hayes 1995, Ishii 1996, Elenbaas 1999, among others). The reason for a fresh look at ternarity is the rise of Optimality Theory (henceforth OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1993a), a theory abandoning most devices on which rule-based accounts of ternarity were based. It abandons serial derivations and together with it directional foot assignment, a core device in parametric theories of word stress, as well as special parsing modes for ternary rhythm (Weak Local Parsing; Hayes 1995). Derivational mechanisms and parameters are replaced by universal and violable constraints, stating well-formedness on output forms, and ranked in language-particular hierarchies. The issue then arises whether OT is able to predict the ternary patterns in a descriptively adequate fashion. The first goal of this paper is to argue that adequate and insightful analyses are indeed possible in OT for two ternary stress languages: Cayuvava and Chugach Alutiiq. We argue that these analyses require no ternarity-inducing mechanisms, such as ternary feet or special parsing modes. Instead ternarity emerges by LICENSING , involving interactions of the anti-lapse constraint *L APSE (banning long sequences of unstressed syllables; Selkirk 1984) with standard foot- alignment constraints (A LL -F T -X, A LIGN -Y; McCarthy & Prince 1993b). Our analysis incorporates Ishiis (1996) insight that ternarity is a kind of underparsing, which is licensed by an anti-lapse constraint, and induced by standard foot alignment.

Bilingual exposure influences infant VOT perception.

Linking the discrimination of voice onset time (VOT) in infancy with infant language background, we examine the perceptual changes of two VOT contrasts (/b/-/p/ and /p(h)/-/p/) by Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants from 8 to 15 months of age. Results showed that language exposure and language dominance had a strong impact on monolingual and bilingual infant VOT perceptual patterns. In addition, perceptual turbulence was found at 8-9 months for bilingual infants, and stabilized perception was presented for all infants from 11 months onwards. We thus report a general input-driven developmental VOT perception in both monolingual and bilingual infants, with perceptual turbulence for bilinguals in the second half of the first year of life.

The Acquisition of Subset and Superset Phonotactic Knowledge in a Second Language.

Can second language (L2) learners acquire a grammar that allows a subset of the structures allowed by their native grammar? This question is addressed here with respect to acquisition of phonotactics. On the assumption that the L2 initial state equals the native grammars final state, learnability theory would predict that a lack of negative evidence for phonotactic structures that are illegal in the target language precludes acquisition of the target grammar. This prediction is tested for L1-Russian (superset) and L1-Spanish (subset) L2 learners of Dutch by means of word-likeness judgments and lexical decision experiments. Participants responded to nonwords containing consonant clusters in onsets and codas that are legal (1) only in Russian, (2) only in Russian and Dutch, or (3) in all three languages. The results converge to show that advanced L1-Russian and L1-Spanish L2 learners possess native-like phonotactic knowledge. Analysis shows that this knowledge cannot be attributed to transfer of lexical statistics from the native language. The results suggest that L2 phonotactic acquisition is not affected by subset/superset relations between the native language and target language. Some possible explanations for our findings are discussed.

The derivation of prosody for text-to-speech from prosodic sentence structure☆

Suprasegmental phenomena in synthetic speech should reflect the linguistic structure of the input text. An algorithm is described, which establishes the prosodic sentence structure (PSS). This can be achieved without exhaustive syntactic parsing, using a dictionary of 550 function words. Subsequently, phrase and accent locations are derived from the PPS; accentuation is also affected by some semantic and contextual information. Comparison of the resulting sentence prosody with that of a human (professional) speaker shows that more detailed syntactic analysis may be necessary. Most of the accentuation errors are caused by semantic, pragmatic and contextual factors. These factors can only partly be imitated (using heuristics), since the relations between linguistic representations and real-world knowledge are not yet fully understood.

Perception of tones by bilingual infants learning non-tone languages

This paper examines the ability of bilingual infants who were learning Dutch and another non-tone language to discriminate tonal contrasts. All infants from 5 to 18 months of age succeeded in discriminating a tonal contrast of Mandarin Chinese (Tone 1 versus Tone 4) and showed a U-shaped pattern when facing a less acoustically salient manipulated version (contracted) of the aforementioned contrast. Specifically, infants showed initial sensitivity to the contracted contrast during their early months, followed by a loss of sensitivity at the stage where tonal perceptual reorganization typically occurs, and a sensitivity rebound by the end of the first year after birth. Compared to a previous studying of ours testing monolingual Dutch infants (Liu & Kager, 2014), the discrimination patterns of bilingual infants revealed both similarities and differences. On one hand, as with monolinguals, non-tone-learning bilingual infants’ tonal perception presented plasticity influenced by contrast acoustic salience along the trajectory of perceptual reorganization; as well as a general U-shaped perceptual pattern when discriminating non-native tones. On the other hand, bilingual infants appeared to regain sensitivity to the contracted tonal contrast at an earlier age (11–12 months) in comparison with monolinguals infants (17–18 months). We provide several explanations, stemming from the simultaneous exposure to two languages, to account for the 6-month bilingual perceptual plasticity from linguistic and cognitive perspectives. The overall outcomes of the study offer insights into the infant perceptual reorganization and language development trajectory, expand on the differences between monolingual and bilingual language development, and broaden our understanding of the influence of bilingual exposure to the perception of non-native contrasts in infancy from linguistic and cognitive perspectives.

Perception of a native vowel contrast by Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants: A bilingual perceptual lead

Purpose: Facing previous mixed findings between monolingual and bilingual infants’ phonetic development during perceptual reorganization, the current study aims at examining the perceptual development of a native vowel contrast (/I/-/i/) by Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants. Design: We tested 390 Dutch monolingual and bilingual infants from 5 to 15 months of age through a visual habituation paradigm. Data and analysis: Mixed-effect model analyses were conducted within 320 infants, with infants’ log10 transformed looking time as the dependent variable, age (4-level) and language background (2-level) as the fixed factors, and participant and order (2-level) as the random factors. Conclusions: All infants show weak initial sensitivity to the contrast regardless of language background(s), and sensitivity improves with age. By the second half of the first year, infants discriminate the contrast, indicating the emergence of the relevant vowel categories. In addition, a perceptual lead is observed in bilingual infants, probably due to: 1) a perceptual transfer from the close-category counterpart of the other native language; 2) heightened acoustic sensitivity in bilingual infants given their rich linguistic experience; and 3) a general bilingual cognitive advantage. The influences of contrast salience and bilingualism on language development are discussed. Originality: Overall, these findings constitute an extension of existing work on vowel perception and display a novel acceleration effect for the bilingual infants in phonetic perception. In addition, we propose a novel heightened acoustic sensitivity hypothesis, arguing that bilingual infants may pay more attention to acoustic details in the input than their monolingual peers. Significance: The observed progressive phonetic discrimination pattern of the native contrast contributes to our knowledge in infant language development, and specifically perceptual reorganization patterns, in the first year after birth. The observed acceleration effect, along with its explanations, provides new insights into the influence of bilingualism and potential bilingual advantages in infancy.

Cross-domain correlation in pitch perception, the influence of native language

ABSTRACT The current study explores how language experience may shape the correlation between lexical tone and musical pitch perception. A two domains (music and lexical tone) by two languages (tone, Mandarin Chinese and non-tone, Dutch) design is adopted. Participants were tested on their discrimination of Mandarin Chinese lexical tones, Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), and Musical Ear Test (MET). The Chinese listeners outperformed the Dutch listeners on both MBEA and MET, but had comparable accuracies for the lexical tone discrimination. Importantly, a significant cross-domain correlation was only observed for the Dutch listeners but not for the Chinese listeners. For tone language listeners, once lexical tones have been acquired, native listeners perceive them as phonological categories, and split them from other pitch variations that do not play a phonemic role. Non-tone language listeners, on the other hand, perceive both lexical tones and musical pitch on a psycho-acoustical basis, hence exhibit a unified perception of pitch across the two domains.

The binary-to-ternary rhythmic continuum in stress typology : layered feet and non-intervention constraints

This article presents a novel OT analysis of ternary rhythm, using the restrictive format of McCarthy (2003)s categorical alignment constraints, which we will refer to as ‘non-intervention constraints’, using the terminology of Ellison (1994), and argues for the rehabilitation of internally layered feet in metrical representations (i.e. feet with one layer of recursion). By means of a computer-generated factorial typology, we demonstrate that the constraint set proposed here generates the full typology of binary and ternary rhythm. The resulting typology suggests that there is no absolute boundary between binary and ternary systems; rather, a continuum emerges, such that binary and ternary feet may coexist in rhythmic stress systems.