| ROA: | 136 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Stress and quantity in Old and early Middle English: Evidence for an optimality-theoretic model of language change |
| Authors: | Ricardo Bermudez-Otero |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 25 |
| Abstract: | Through an analysis of Old English stress assignment and early Middle English Trisyllabic Shortening, this paper illustrates two of the advantages enjoyed by the historical linguist working in OT: Firstly, OT is singularly efficient in accounting for phonological patterns which exhibit non-uniformity. As a result, OT can prove extremely useful in providing synchronic analyses of apparently troublesome reconstructed languages. Most importantly, OT relieves the historical linguist of the task of attempting to constrain the diachronic evolution of stratified phonological grammars. These points are illustrated with an account of stress and quantity in Old English, where various non-uniformity effects may be observed. Most strikingly, NONFIN can render derivational suffixes unstressable, but not lexical roots; similarly, it only allows heavy derivational suffixes to be stressed, whilst stressed root-syllables may be light or heavy. In previous analyses, root and suffixal stress had to be assigned at separate lexical levels. Secondly, OT opens up the possibility of devising a truly restrictive, and hence explanatory, model of language change in generative grammar. Since in an optimality-theoretic framework change consists primarily of constraint-reranking, OT can narrow the scope of language change directly by limiting the number of constraints that may be reranked at any one time. In the strongest form of this strategy, UG only allows a single constraint to be reranked at any one time (Reranking Maximality Hypothesis). It is shown that early Middle English Trisyllabic Shortening respected the Reranking Maximality Hypothesis, despite the relatively large number of constraints involved. Ricardo Bermudez-Otero University of Manchester mfcpgrb@fs1.art.man.ac.uk |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | This article has been withdrawn. |