| ROA: | 291 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Re-examining Spanish 'Resyllabification' |
| Authors: | Timothy L. Face |
| Comment: | Phonetic symbols in IPA Garamond font, available as "Other" file |
| Length: | |
| Abstract: | Re-examining Spanish 'Resyllabification' Timothy L. Face The Ohio State University Revised version of paper presented at the 29th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, University of Michigan, April 8-11, 1999. This paper reexamines Spanish syllabification, focusing on "resyllabification", within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) and Correspondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince 1994). The first part of the paper presents the data relevant to syllabification in Spanish, showing preferences for a consonant to be an onset, both within a word and across word boundaries, for the formation of complex onsets within words but not across word boundaries, and for the interaction of syllabification and aspiration in those dialects of Spanish where /s/ aspiration is not limited to coda position. It is also seen that syllabification across prefix boundaries shows exactly the same pattern as syllabification across word boundaries. This leads to the proposal that prefixes have a different status than do suffixed morphemes, and specifically that they are phonological domains (PDs). A PD is defined as a grouping of morphemes that is the input to the phonology. A PD may consist of one or more morphemes, but only PDs (and not individual morphemes within a polymorphemic PD) can be referred to by the phonology. Taking into consideration the morphological status of prefixes, a new analysis of Spanish syllabification is provided using universal constraints independently motivated in previous studies, and by making minor modification to the Uniform Exponence constraint proposed by Kenstowicz (1995) and used by Colina (1997) in her attempt to account for Spanish "resyllabification". Previous analyses of Spanish syllabification have had trouble dealing with prefixes, or have ignored them altogether. Previous accounts are reviewed, pointing out where they fall short. The account offered in this paper is superior to previous accounts in two ways: (1) It recognizes the morphological distinction between prefixes and suffixed morphemes, and (2) it is able to account correctly for data about which previous analyses make false predictions. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |