gemination as non-local lengthening anne pycha, uc berkeley

Gemination as non-local lengthening

Anne Pycha, UC Berkeley

Geminates

Phonology Phonetics C C C C

/t/ [t:] [rel = ]

• Complex segments with internal detail– Characterize what gemination “does”

Overview

• Problem: Release features…– Seem to play no role in length contrasts– Even though they “should”

• Phonetic study: Hungarian…– Source of lengthening comes from the right– Most likely to lengthen frication, but doesn’t

• Phonological problems, and possible solutions…– Affricate representations– Geminate representations

Overview

• Proposal: Gemination as morpheme strengthening– Degrees of fortification

– Degrees of lengthening

• Predictions– Cross-linguistic

– Hungarian-internal

Release features

• Problem (Part 1): Release features seem to play no role in length contrasts.

• Closure duration as primary perceptual cue to singleton-geminate contrast.– Lisker 1958: Swedish, Marathi, Telugu– Pickett & Decker 1968: English– Obrecht 1965: Arabic– Repp 1983: English

• Suggests diminished role for release.

Affricates

• Reasonable: Release features play bigger (or different) role when they are distinctive

• Example: Affricates, where release corresponds to frication

• Expectation: Frication portion of affricate might lengthen under gemination

Affricates

Shilluk (Eastern Sudanic, Sudan)“it should be clarified that the lengthening

[of t] is evidenced on the closure phase” (Gilley 1992: 27).

Anejom (Malayo-Polynesian, Vanuatu)“Geminate /t/ also occurs, with the stop

onset, but not the fricative release, being lengthened – thus [t:]” (Lynch 2000: 24)

Affricates

Attested: C C

T S

Unattested?: *C C

T S

Affricates

Problem (Part 2) Reasons to think frication should lengthen under gemination

1. Affricates can pattern like fricatives– Hungarian, Yucatec Maya

– Segmental status for frication (S)

– Fricative segments lengthen under gemination, so frication should too

Affricates

2. Perception of affricate does not require stop closure portion

– Fricatives: gradual rise in noise– Affricates: abrupt rise in noise– Noise alone suffices for affricate percept

• English listeners (Repp et al. 1978)• Hungarian listeners (Tarnóczy 1987)

– Suggests ‘independence’ of S

Affricates

3. Listeners appear to need it!– Pattani Malay: singleton/geminate contrast in

initial position– Abramson (1986 et seq.):

Listeners make length distinction in utterance-initial position

• True for all consonants, even voiceless stops where no apparent cues are present, as well as fricatives

• Exception: Affricates, at 50%• Why not lengthen the S?

Release features

Turkish (Lahiri & Hankamer 1988)

• Articulatory data: closure duration: significant VOT: significant

Phonetic study

• Goal: test reality of constraint on lengthened S within an affricate

• Context:– Affricates in geminate environment

– Source of gemination: rightmost (S) side

– Most likely to produce lengthened frication.

• Method: duration measurements.

Phonetic study

• Language: Hungarian

• Affricates: [ts, t, dz, d, ty, dy]

• Previous research– Magdics (1969)

– Szende (1974)

– Tarnóczy (1987)

Phonetic study

Affixal gemination in Hungarian

Root Instrumental

kert ‘hat’ kert-tel

piros ‘red’ piros-sal

baj ‘trouble’ baj-jal

ketrec ‘cage’ ketrec-cel

etc…

Phonetic study

Affixal singletons

Superessive case

[tat-on] ‘buckle-Sup’,

[va-on] ‘iron-Sup’

[kat-on] ‘fringe-Sup’

Affixal geminates

Instrumental case

[tat-tal] ‘buckle-Instr’,

[va-al] ‘iron-Instr’

[kat-tal] ‘fringe-Instr’

Stimuli (from Papp 1969)

• Noun roots ending in… – Affricates /t, ts/

– Corresponding obstruent /t/

– Corresponding sibilants /s, /– Stop-sibilant clusters /ps, p, ks, k/

• Monosyllabic roots: /kat/ ‘fringe’

• Disyllabic roots: /pamat/ ‘mop’

Stimuli

8 word shapes (CVC, CV:C, etc)

x 5 segment types /ts, t, t, s, /x 2 repetitions of each shape

x 3 speakers

= 240

189 noun roots

Stimuli: Clusters

All noun roots ending in clusters 11

Shapes:

CVCC /gips/

CVNCC /skunks/

C(C)VC(C)VCC /kyklops/

Data: Environments

Each noun root (n=200) in two different environments:

Intervocalic singleton: /kat-on/(Super)

Intervocalic geminate: /kat-Cal/ (Instr)

Results: Raw durations

0

50

100

150

200

250

T T: S S: TS T:S

All consonants

Results: Raw durations

0

20

40

60

80

100

120Within affricates

T T: S S:

Calculation: Ratio in disyllable

k a t o n

(Subject 4) t = 0.1 aton

= 0.1 aton

Results: Ratio in disyllable

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Plain S

Plain T

Affricate S

Affricate T

Discussion

Affricates under affixal gemination

• Duration of T changes

• Duration of S stays basically the same

…even in “rightmost” environment that (according to locality) should affect S

Constraint on lengthened S seems to be real

Discussion

Typical account:– Instrumental suffix has empty slot, /-Cal/

– Spreading fills C with features

* C V C - C V C

k a t a l– Locality problem

Rethinking affricates

• Re-think representation of affricates?

• Traditional representation is ordered:

C

T S


Phonology: Unordered representation (Lombardi 1990) T

C

SPhonetics: Universal ordering = TS


Evidence: “anti-edge effects” (Lombardi 1990)

• Sensitivity to T from right– Basque

– Turkish

• Sensitivity to S from the left– Yucatec Maya MSCs

– Hungarian


• Gemination as an “anti-edge effect”?

• Source of lengthening: right (next to S)

• Target of lengthening: left (T)

….TS-al

• Problem: Gemination can target both T and S independently (not just T)

• Unordered representation doesn’t help


C C

T

[rel = S]

Closure feature with dependent release


Problem: we lose unity of behavior between affricates and fricatives

C versus C

T S

[rel = S]


Root node spreadingX X

T SProblem: lost fact of lengthened T


• No good solution for affricate representation

• Geminate representation: Is the C-slot the problem?

Rethinking geminates

• Alternative: suffix -al triggers strengthening in the root– Intuition: -al is “weak”

– Converse: Root is “strong”

– Suppose that: Strong-weak relationships are manifested during morpheme concatenation

– Manifestation is violable


Strength relationship

Roots > Suffix -al

kat > al

Manifestation:Fortification, and/or

Lengthening


• Multiple ways for roots to be fortified– Have stress (cf. Smith 2001)

– Segments have more stricture:• J• S• T


• Multiple ways to for roots to be longer:– Have a mora (cf. Hayes 1992)

– Have a coda

– Have a longer segment

Analysis

Proposal for Hungarian• Length requirement for roots:

– Have a coda

• Strength requirement for roots:– Have coda = T (most stricture)

• Implemented as subcategorization frame[…VC]σ-al

T

Analysis

[…VC]σ-al

T

/lat-al/ lat.Cal lat.tal

Continuous syllabification to template (Itô 1986)

Analysis

Stricture requirement is violable:lat lat.talvas vas.sal *vat.salbaj baj.jal *bat.jal

Faith [stricture] >> T“Keep underlying stricture.”

Analysis

Stricture requirement is violable:

/n:-el/ *n:tel

Dep [stricture] >> T

“Do not insert stricture.”

Analysis

Stricture requirement becomes apparent…

S S Phonetics

/kaC-al/ kaC Cal kaC Cal

T T T S

Analysis

Clusters/gips-el/ gip.sel

Analysis

• Alignment: Requires morpheme and syllable edges to coincide– Simple segments (same)

– Affricates (unclear)[kat][al] kat.Xal *kat.al,

*kat.al

– Clusters (different) [gips][el] gips.Xel *gips.sel

Predictions

1. Morphology as determining factorRoots > Suffixes:Meithei (Tibeto-Burman, India)Acooli (Nilotic; Uganda)Ibibio (Eastern Sudanic; Nigeria)Hup and Yuhup (Maku; Brazil)Maithili (Indo-Iranian; India)Mokilese (Malayo-Polynesian, Micronesia)

Predictions

2. Preference for strong strictures“The presence of a geminate continuant

consonant in the segment inventory implies the presence of a corresponding non-continuant” (Kirchner 2001) Language 1: TT Language 2: TT, SS*Language 3: SS

Predictions

3. Gemination is one degree of lengthening

• Cross-linguistic evidenceThese (Nilotic, Sudan; Yip 2004)

à-kw ‘I plant’

-kw ‘you (sg) plant’

á-kw ‘I planted’

• Hungarian evidence

Predictions

/gips-el/ gip.sel• C-slot analysis:

– No gemination because *CCC– No root lengthening

• Lengthening analysis:– No gemination because σ templates satisfied– Degrees of lengthening could still occur– Target = [p]

Data: Clusters

Hungarian noun roots ending in clusters PS, KSPS KS/gips/ /skunks//tap/ /teks//naps/ /boks//mumps/ /vok//tritseps/ /uviks//kyklops/


-20% 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

S

P

“Non-lengtheners”:2/3 of cluster tokens


0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

S

P

“Lengtheners”:1/3 of cluster tokens

Conclusions

• Problems for affricate representation remain (/t- t/ t:)

• Gemination as morpheme strengthening addresses locality problem in Hungarian

• Makes testable predictions – Cross-linguistic patterns of morpheme

combinations– Cross-linguistic patterns of preference for T over S– Gemination as a degree of lengthening

gemination as non-local lengthening anne pycha, uc berkeley

Documents

affricates t t

c c t s slide

gemination slide

c ts slide

independence of s slide

significant slide

disyllable slide

real slide