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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (31 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2017)
Cameron et al. (2010) and Fruehwald & Gorman (2011) present the pattern of homorganic consonant cluster reduction in Catalan as a challenge to Baković’s (2005) theory of antigemination, which predicts that any feature ignored in the determination of consonant identity for the purposes of antigemination in a given language must independently assimilate in that language. I argue that the pattern in Catalan is not a counterexample to this prediction if the reduction process is analyzed as coalescence, following Wheeler (2005), rather than as deletion.
    Cover page: Apparent ‘sufficiently similar’ degemination in Catalan is due to coalescence
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2014)
    As the token generative phonologist invited to comment on the article by Hickok (henceforth H.), I feel that it is incumbent upon me to both clarify some terms and to counter an assumption about the content of generative theories of phonology made in H.'s article. While I restrict myself most specifically to H.'s article, I hope that these comments are also of some use to others who, like H., aim to integrate the ideas of various traditions in models of speech processing. © 2013 © 2013 Taylor & Francis.
      Cover page: Phonemes, segments and features
      • Article
      San Diego Linguistic Papers, Issue 1 (2003)

      Affix vowels often alternate to agree with stem vowels in a pattern dubbed root-outward harmony. I propose that root-outward harmony is subject to a condition that a stem not be phonologically altered under affixation. This analysis accounts most parsimoniously for the core empirical generalization of root-outward harmony: that stem vowels never alter-nate to agree with affix vowels even if the only alternative is for stem and affix to dis-agree. Analyses in terms of underspecification and/or directionality capture this generali-zation less readily. I formalize the proposed analysis in terms of stem-affixed form faith-fulness in Optimality Theory and compare it with likely alternatives.

        Cover page: Vowel harmony and stem identity
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2009)
        Abstract In this piece I adopt the standard textbook definition of abstractness in generative phonological theory, “the degree to which a UR [= underlying representation] of a morpheme may deviate from its associated PRs [= phonetic representations]” (Kenstowicz & Kisseberth 1979, p.179). I also adopt the perspective that a phonological analysis, independently of its degree of abstractness, is (only) as adequate as the motivation and evidence that can be produced in favor of it and against substantive alternatives. This is the focus of my remarks in this piece, featuring a thorough critique of the motivation and evidence for the abstract geminate rhotic representation of the intervocalic trill in Spanish (Harris 1969, 1983, 2001, 2002).
          Cover page: Abstractness and Motivation in Phonological Theory
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2016)
          Stress in vowel-final non-verbs in Spanish regularly falls on the penultimate syllable, while stress in consonant-final words regularly falls on the final syllable. There are two main classes of exceptions to this regularity: stress on the syllable preceding the regular one, and stress on the syllable following the regular one. Harris (1983) provides arguments that the second class of exceptions is morphologically systematic, but falls short of the stronger claim that this pattern is simply a subcase of the regular stress pattern. I argue here that there is much to be gained from this stronger claim, including a simple and elegant analysis of the first class of exceptions.
            • Article
            Wondering at the Natural Fecundity of Things: Essays in Honor of Alan Prince (2006)

            My goal in this paper is to demonstrate how the basic logic of constraint ranking in Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004) directly predicts the disjunctive application of processes in an 'elsewhere' relationship without the need for a separate principle like the Elsewhere Condition (the EC; Anderson 1969, 1974, Kiparsky 1973) and its attendant problems of formulation in the theory of ordered string-rewriting rules (SPE; Chomsky & Halle 1968). The various details of the empirically correct ormulation of the EC (Halle 1995, Halle & Idsardi 1997) that must be independently stipulated in SPE all fall out as a necessary consequence of constraint ranking logic in OT.

              Cover page: Elsewhere Effects in Optimality Theory
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2017)
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2022)
                Kisseberth (1970b) distinguishes rules in Tunica (Haas 1940) that are subject to a constraint penalizing adjacent stresses from rules that are not subject to this constraint. This distinction appears on the surface to be particularly suited to a straightforward analysis within OT (Prince & Smolensky 1993): No-Clash is ranked above constraints responsible for the rules that are subject to it and below constraints responsible for the rules that are not. The full range of relevant facts in Tunica suggest that No-Clash is only crucially dominated and violated lexically, however; postlexically, No-Clash is undominated and there are no adjacent stresses on the surface. An analysis is within Stratal OT (Bermúdez-Otero 1999, Kiparsky 2000) is proposed and defended.
                  Cover page: The Tunica Stress Conspiracy Revisited
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2005)
                  Avoidance of adjacent consonants that are 'sufficiently identical' - that is, identical except for possible differences in a small subset of specific features - is argued to result from joint satisfaction of a constraint against geminates (identical adjacent consonants) and other active constraints that independently require assimilation with respect to those features ignored in the determination of identity. The crux of the proposal is the dependence of antigemination on independent assimilation processes, a prediction that is independently verified in case studies from English and Lithuanian. The factorial typology of constraints at the core of the proposal is demonstrated to closely fit a significant range of observed cases. © 2005 Cambridge University Press.
                    Cover page: Antigemination, assimilation and the determination of identity
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2007)
                    This paper is about opaque interactions between phonological processes in the two senses defined by Kiparsky (1971, 1973) and discussed in much recent work on the topic, most notably McCarthy (1999): underapplication opacity, whereby a process appears to have failed to apply in expected contexts on the surface, and overapplication opacity, whereby a process appears to have applied in unexpected contexts on the surface. Specifically, I demonstrate that there are three distinct types of overapplication opacity in addition to the only case discussed and properly categorised as such in the literature, counterbleeding. The analysis of each type of opacity in terms of rule-based serialism and in terms of Optimality Theory is discussed, emphasising the strengths and weaknesses of the two frameworks in each case. © 2007 Cambridge University Press.
                      Cover page: A revised typology of opaque generalisations*
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