Ryan Bennett

Lightest to the Right: An Apparently Anomalous Displacement in Irish

This article analyzes mismatches between syntactic and prosodic constituency in Irish and attempts to understand those mismatches in terms of recent proposals about the nature of the syntax-prosody interface. It argues in particular that such mismatches are best understood in terms of Selkirk’s (2011) Match Theory, working in concert with constraints concerned with rhythm and phonological balance. An apparently anomalous rightward movement that seems to target certain pronouns and shift them rightward is shown to be fundamentally a phonological process: a prosodic response to a prosodic dilemma. The article thereby adds to a growing body of evidence for the role of phonological factors in shaping constituent order.

The uniqueness of metrical structure: rhythmic phonotactics in Huariapano *

This article argues that, contrary to some recent proposals, a given phonological form may be organised into at most one array of metrical structure at a time. The bulk of the paper is dedicated to a case study of Huariapano, a language that has been claimed to motivate multiple, coexisting but autonomous, layers of metrical parsing. I show that this conclusion is premature: both stress and segmental patterning in Huariapano can be modelled within a single system of constituency, once context-dependent variation in foot form is taken into account. The reanalysis developed here also draws on the idea that foot-initial syllables may be targeted by augmentation or fortition processes even when unstressed. Independent evidence for foot-initial strengthening is furnished by segmental phonotactics in a range of other languages.

Mayan phonology: Mayan phonology

This paper presents an overview of the phonetics and phonology of Mayan languages. The focus is primarily descriptive, but the article also attempts to frame the sound patterns of Mayan languages within a larger typological and theoretical context. Special attention is given to areas which are ripe for further descriptive or theoretical investigation.

Introduction to Mayan Linguistics

This special issue of Language and Linguistic Compass is dedicated to a three-part survey of the grammatical structure of Mayan languages. The articles in this collection focus on core, wellstudied aspects of Mayan linguistics: phonology (Bennett), syntax (Coon), and semantics (Henderson). The perspective taken is broadly typological, but also informed by theoretical issues in formal linguistics. Our goal is to share the richness of Mayan languages with the broader linguistic community, in the hopes of encouraging future research on these fascinating languages. This introduction includes an overview of the Mayan language family and its internal structure (Section 2), as well as a discussion of the kinds of publications that we’ve drawn on in compiling the target articles (Section 3). We close with an outline of the glossing and transcription conventions that we’ve adopted for this special issue (Section 4).

An Ultrasound Study of Connemara Irish Palatalization and Velarization

Author(s): Bennett, Ryan; Chiosain, Maire Ni; Padgett, Jaye; McGuire, Grant | Abstract: We present the first ultrasound analysis of the secondary palatalization contrast in Irish, analyzing data from five speakers from the Connemara dialect group. Word-initial /pʲ(bʲ) pˠ(bˠ) tʲ tˠ kʲ kˠ fʲ fˠ sʲ sˠ xʲ xˠ/ are analyzed in the context of /iː uː/. We find, first, that tongue body position robustly distinguishes palatalized from velarized consonants, across place of articulation, manner, and vowel place contexts, with palatalized consonants having fronter and/or higher tongue body realizations than their velarized counterparts. This conclusion holds equally for labial consonants, contrary to some previous descriptive claims. Second, the nature and degree of palatalization and velarization depend in systematic ways on consonant place and manner. In coronal consonants, for example, velarization is weaker or absent. Third, the Irish consonants examined resist coarticulation in backness with a following vowel. In all of these respects Irish palatalization is remarkably similar to that of Russian. Our results also support an independent role for pharyngeal cavity expansion/retraction in the production of the palatalization contrast. Finally, we discuss preliminary findings on the dynamics of the secondary articulation gestures. Our use of principal component analysis (PCA) in reaching these findings is also of interest, since PCA has not been employed a great deal in analyses of tongue body movement.

Prosodic Smothering in Macedonian and Kaqchikel

This article deals with a so-far unnoticed phenomenon in prosodic phonology, which we dub prosodic smothering. Prosodic smothering arises when the prosodic status of a clitic or affix varies with the presence or absence of some outer morpheme. We first illustrate prosodic smothering with novel data from two genetically unrelated languages, Macedonian (Slavic) and Kaqchikel (Mayan). We then provide a unified account of prosodic smothering based on a principled extension of the theory of prosodic subcategorization (e.g., Inkelas 1990, Peperkamp 1997, Chung 2003, Yu 2003, Paster 2006, Bye 2007). Prosodic subcategorization typically involves requirements placed on items to the left or the right of the selecting morpheme. We show that prosodic smothering naturally emerges in a theory that also allows for subcategorization in the vertical dimension, such that morphemes may select for the prosodic category that immediately dominates them in surface prosodic structure. This extension successfully reduces two apparent cases of nonlocal prosodic conditioning to the effects of strictly local prosodic selection.

Contextual predictability influences word and morpheme duration in a morphologically complex language (Kaqchikel Mayan)

The probability is one of the many factors which influence phonetic variation. Contextual probability, which describes how predictable a linguistic unit is in some local environment, has been consistently shown to modulate the phonetic salience of words and other linguistic units in speech production (the probabilistic reduction effect). In this paper the question of whether the probabilistic reduction effect, as previously observed for majority languages like English, is also found in a language (Kaqchikel Mayan) which has relatively rich morphology is explored. Specifically, whether the contextual predictability of words and morphemes influences their phonetic duration in Kaqchikel is examined. It is found that the contextual predictability of a word has a significant effect on its duration. The effect is manifested differently for lexical words and function words. It is also found that the contextual predictability of certain prefixes in Kaqchikel affects their duration, showing that contextual predictability may drive reduction effects at multiple levels of structure. While the findings are broadly consistent with many previous studies (primarily on English), some of the details of the results are different. These differences highlight the importance of examining the probabilistic reduction effect in languages beyond the majority, Indo-European languages most commonly investigated in experimental and corpus linguistics.

Output optimization in the Irish plural system

In this paper I argue that a subpattern of Irish plural allomorphy should be analyzed as output optimizing in character. Specifically, I claim that stress-sensitive alternations between the plural suffixes -(e)anna and -(e)acha are conditioned by constraints on metrical well-formedness. This analysis connects with independent facts about the the prosodic prominence of [ax] sequences in Irish phonology. I further argue that an explanatory analysis of these patterns must make use of the notion of surface optimization. Alternative frameworks that eschew surface-oriented optimization mechanisms fail to account for synchronic and diachronic properties of the Irish plural system.

Tongue body shape during the production of Irish palatalization and velarization

Irish is an endangered Celtic (Goidelic) language that has a rare phonemic contrast between palatalized and velarized consonants for all places and manners of articulation. Using ultrasound tongue body imaging of 15 native speakers we provide comparative data on the phonetic realization of the contrast, specifically focusing on how place, manner, and vowel context each affect tongue body position during production for each of the three major dialects. Using principal components analysis, we find evidence for the role of tongue root advancement in the contrast independent of the (less surprising) roles of tongue body frontness and raising. This data have consequences for our understanding of the relationship between phonetic and phonological categories as well as the role of perceptual saliency in shaping inventories.