| ROA: | 191 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Augmentation as Affixation in Athabaskan Languages |
| Authors: | Sharon Hargus, Siri G. Tuttle |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 53 |
| Abstract: | Augmentation as Affixation in Athabaskan Languages Sharon Hargus and Siri G. Tuttle University of Washington The well-known disyllabicity requirement for Athabaskan verbs has been variously analyzed as satisfaction of a disyllabic verb template (Slave, Rice 1990), satisfaction of a monosyllabic prefixal portmanteau consituent (Navajo, McDonough 1990, 1995), or the result of stray consonant syllabification (Ahtna, Causley 1994). In this paper, we present data from other, less-well known languages of the family (Witsuwit'en, Tanana, Sekani, Deg Hit'an) which suggests a different, family-wide analysis of augmentation phenomena. Some of the languages we discuss contain disyllabic verb stems and/or verb stems with syllabic prefixes. The fact that even these forms undergo augmentation indicates that augmentation is independent of base syllable count. We propose that the augment is a tense prefix whose phonological properties follow largely from its vocalic shape (a reflex of Proto- Athabaskan *@) and its particular location in the verbal position class template. The theoretical interest of our simple morphological analysis lies in what it does not include: no disyllabic template, no special prefixal 'stem' morphemes, and no unusual phonological domains. The systematic existence of monosyllabic verbs in some of the languages presents the greatest challenge for any account of disyllabic minimality, including the present one. In our account of monosyllables in one of the languages, we are forced to tackle a longstanding problem in Athabaskan phonologies, namely, a problematic set of onset/coda alternations associated with certain verbal prefixes. We trace the exceptional behavior of these prefixes to a small set of prosodic subcategorization constraints which these morphemes obey. Our analysis relieves Athabaskan verb prefix phonology of much prior complexity, so that the truly phonological constraints required are just members of the normal constraint arsenal. Our analysis thus supports Generalized Alignment in particular and Optimality Theory in general: for the first time in Athabaskan linguistics, these previously problematic alternations can be analyzed entirely within the limits of the assumed theoretical framework. Our analysis affirms Anderson's (1996) and Potter's (1996) proposed accounts of position class morphology as a ranked set of Alignment constraints. Because the constraints which regulate affix order, as well as the prosodic subcategorization constraints mentioned above, are individually ranked, it is possible to encode within the bounds of the theory some of the morpheme-specific phonological phenomena which have bedeviled previous analyses. Consequently, our analysis has uncovered evidence that prosodic constraints may dominate morphological constraints even in a language family without reduplication or prosodically-governed infixation. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |