Full text available by request. Send me e-mail: catherine-ringen@uiowa.edu
·
Laryngeal Features in German (with M. Jessen)
·
In spite of the fact that voiced (obstruent) stops in
German are markedly different from the voiced stops in languages like Russian
and Hungarian, all of these languages are usually claimed to have stops that
contrast in [voice]. It is well-known
that initially and when preceded by a word that ends with a voiceless sound,
German so-called “voiced” stops are usually voiceless, that intervocalically
both voiced and voiceless stops occur, and that syllable final (obstruent)
stops are voiceless. Such a
distribution is consistent with an analysis in which the contrast is one of
[voice] and syllable final stops are devoiced.
It is also consistent with the view that in German the contrast is
between stops that are [spread glottis] and those that are not. On such a view, the intervocalic voiced
stops arise because of passive voicing of the non [sg] stops. The purpose of this paper is to present
experimental results that support the view that German has underlying [sg]
stops, not [voice] stops.
· Constraints on Voice: An OT Typology (with O. Petrova, R. Plapp, S. Szentgyörgyi)
· Voice assimilation has been the subject of much discussion in the literature of generative phonology, including recent work within the framework of Optimality Theory by Lombardi (1999). The purpose of this paper is to show that there are problems with Lombardi’s account and to propose an alternative which builds on the insights of her analysis, but does not suffer from its shortcomings. First, we show that there are empirical problems with Lombardi’s account of Russian, German, Yiddish (& Hungarian), and Swedish. Second, following Jessen (1989, 1998) and Iverson and Salmons (1995), among others, we propose an alternative laryngeal typology which distinguishes between languages with distinctive [spread glottis] (e.g. German, Icelandic) and those with distinctive [voice] (e.g. Hungarian, Russian).
|
Orvokki Heinämäki |
and |
Catherine O. Ringen |
|
University of Helsinki |
|
University of Iowa |
·
In native Finnish non-compound words, back harmonic
vowels ([u], [o], and [a]) do not co-occur with front harmonic vowels
([y], [ø], [æ]). Neutral or transparent vowels ([i], [e]) occur in words with
both front and back harmonic vowels. This means that suffixes with harmonic
vowels have two alternants: one that is used with roots with back harmonic
vowels and one that is used with roots with only front vowels. The situation is
more complex with disharmonic loanwords. Although it is often claimed that with
disharmonic words (most of which are loans), suffix vowels agree with the last
harmonic root vowel, (Kiparsky 1973), the situation is not so simple. Suffix
vowel choice is categorically front or back with some disharmonic forms, but
there is variation in suffix vowel choice in other cases. Discussions of
Finnish vowel harmony by Halle and Vergnaud (1981), Kiparsky (1981),
Välimaa-Blum (1987), Steriade (1987), Campbell (1980) note this variation.
Halle and Vergnaud suggest that there are different dialects whereas
Välimaa-Blum claims that different rules apply in different styles, Kiparsky
suggests that different vowels are opaque in different styles, and Steriade
claims that vowel harmony applies at different points in the derivation in
different styles.
·
Our empirical investigations of vowel harmony in
Finnish loanwords suggest that these accounts are not correct. Our data seem to
support the claim that stress plays a role in determining suffix vowel quality
and that there is a hierarchy of harmonic strength: some vowels are more
strongly harmonic than others.
Back to Catherine O. Ringen's page
Revised 30 September 1999