| ROA: | 1182 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Vowel Harmony in Qiang: An Optimality Theoretic Account |
| Authors: | Nate Sims |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 8 pg |
| Abstract: | Qiang is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by approximately 110,000 people in the mountainous region of northwest Sichuan, China. The data for this analysis comes from a descriptive grammar (LaPolla & Huang, 2003) and an article on the vowel system by (Evans & Huang, 2007). The Yadu dialect of Qiang has a complex system of vowel harmony in which vowels across morpheme boundaries agree in terms of the features: [low], [back], and [round]. This harmony does not apply to mono-morphemic lexical items. There is an opacity effect caused by a counter-feeding interaction between [back] and [round] harmony. This paper demonstrates how a deviation from classic OT (Prince & Smolensky 1993-2004), and instead the use of LCC (Smolensky, 1997) is required to account for the processes of vowel harmony. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | Tibeto-Burman, Qiang, Vowel Harmony, Optimality Theory, LCC, Phonology |
| Article: | Version 2 Version 1 |