| ROA: | 36 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Generalized Alignment and Morphological Parsing |
| Authors: | Rene Kager |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 22 |
| Abstract: | Generalized alignment and morphological parsing ROA-36 morfpars.ps. --.rtf, --.word Rene Kager Utrecht University This paper addresses the role of word-level prosody in the overdetermination of morphological structure, focussing on secondary stress patterns of Sibutu Sama, Diyari, Dyirbal, and Warlpiri. Stress patterns in these languages are due to different instantiations of the general constraint format of generalized alignment (McCarthy & Prince 1993). The paper has contributes to three issues. First, it presents evidence for various domains in alignment: (morphological) Morpheme, Root, and Stem; and (prosodic) Foot and PrWd. Second, it supports the definitions of PrWd and stem as recursive categories (McCarthy & Prince 1993). Third, it argues that pattern variability is due to equal ranking of constraints. The interest of Sibutu Sama resides in its variable secondary stress pattern in a subset of prefixed words. This variability is due to equal ranking of a morpho-prosodic alignment constraint ALIGN-ROOT-L "all roots must start with a foot" and purely prosodic alignment ALL-FT-L "all feet must stand at the left word edge". The interest of Diyari, Dyirbal, and Warlpiri is that they are minimally different in their morpho-prosodic alignment constraints, while all three languages share the constraint configuration ALIGN- MORPHEME-EDGE >> PARSE-SYLL >> ALL-FT-L. Finally, I show that alignment theory offers a better understanding of demarcative stress patterns on empirical and conceptual grounds. Empirically, alignment theory fares better than rule-based theory in the analysis of variable secondary stress in Sibutu Sama. In the conceptual domain, alignment theory offers a unified account of demarcative stress. This contrasts with the conspiracy-based account of demarcative stress in standard rule-based phonology, which is essentially reduce it to an accidental constellation independent of rules (directional foot construction in some morphological domain, re-parsings applying to its output). :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |