Gnomes and Trolls in thePhonology of Bangor

Welsh

Tomasz Czerniak

The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

czerniakto@gmail.com

Celtic DaysZamość, 13-14 June 2014

The scope of the presentation

• What sound phenomena are phonological?

• What sound phenomena are not phonological?

• If not, why not and what are they?

• Why can’t Initial Consonant Mutation be phonology?

• What Gnomes and Trolls are there in ICM?

What sound phenomena are phonological?

• Lass (1984: 63-64)

– ‘pure’ phonological results are conditioned by phonological factors

– Every alternation wants to satisfy language’s phonotactic rules

• ten boys did you

• [tem boɪz] [dɪdʒuː]

• photograph photography

• [ˈfɘʊtɘgrɑːf] [fɘˈtogrɘfi]

• dogs cats mouses

• [dogz] [kæts] [mausɪs]

What sound phenomena are not phonological?

• Mohanan (1986: 8-10)– Lexical phonology (rule application) is sensitive to morphological

boundaries and features (gender, number, case, etc)

house ~ to house

[haus] ~ [hauz]

electric ~ electricity ~ kitty

*ɪˈlektrɪk] ~ *ɪlɘkˈtrɪsɘti+ ~ *kɪti+

race ~ racial

*reɪs+ ~ *reɪʃɘl+

– Post-lexical phonology (rule application) does not require any morphological information (can rely on phonological conditioning)

miss her ~ miss you

*mɪs hɜː+ ~ *mɪs juː+

*mɪsɘ+ ~ *mɪʃuː+

If not, why not and what are they?

• If not, why not? (Chomsky 1965: 15-18)– The Syntactic Component (specifies the Deep Structure and the

Surface Structure)

– The Semantic Component (determines the semantic interpretation of the Deep Structure)

– The Phonological Component (determines the phonetic interpretation of the Surface Structure)

Syntactic

Component

Semantic

Component

Phonological

Component

Language as modules• Fodor (1983: 45-101)

• domain-specificity(a computational system is responsive only to those stimuly it is able to interpret)

• Information-encapsulation(the information processed by a module cannot be altered by any other part of the system)

• Restricted access(most levels of computation are not directly accessible to the central system)

If not, why not and what are they?

• and what are they? (Scheer 2012: 93-110)– Morphology and Syntax / Morphosyntax

– number, gender, aspect, mood, tense, etc.

– Phonology

– Place of articulation, manner of articulation, stress, length, voicedness, etc.

• Morphosyntactic information has to be translatedinto phonological vocabulary so that Phonology(Module) could process it

• ‘Gnomes and Trolls’ are Interface phenomena

Initial Consonant Mutation is not phonology

• Morris-Jones (1913: 161-177), Williams (1980), Ball and Müller (1992), Thorne (1993: 21-94), King (2003: 13-19), Borsley, Tallerman and Willis (2007: 19-26)

• dog his dog her dog their dog

• *kiː+ *i giː+ *i xiː+ *i kiː+

• garden his garden her garden their garden

• *garð+ *ir arð+ *i garð+ *i garð+

• belly his belly her belly their belly

• [bol] [i vol] [i bol] [i bol]

Initial Consonant Mutation is not phonology

• Morris-Jones (1913: 161-177), Williams (1980), Ball and Müller (1992), Thorne (1993: 21-94), King (2003: 13-19), Borsley, Tallerman and Willis (2007: 19-26)

• Lexeme his her their

• Radical Soft M. Asp. M. Rad.

Not a bit!• Radical p t k b d g m ɬ r̥h

• Soft b d g v ð [] v l r

• Nasal m̥ n̥ ƞ̊ m n ƞ

• Aspirate f θ x

Why ICMs seem phonological

• Radical p t k

• Aspirate f θ x

• Radical p t k b d g m ɬ r̥h

• Soft b d g v ð v l r0000001

• Radical p t k b d g

• Nasal m̥ n̥ ƞ̊ m n ƞ

Why ICMs seem phonological (to some)

• Composition of consonants in Autosegmental Theory (Goldsmith 1976; Schane 1984; Anderson and Ewen 1987; Bloch-Rozmej 2008; Cyran 2010)

• [p] labiality friction stopness voicelessness

• [b] labiality friction stopness

• [v] labiality friction

Why ICMs seem phonologica• Cyran (1996, 1997, 2010)

• [p] labiality friction stopness voicelessness

• [b] labiality friction stopness

• [v] labiality friction

• [p] labiality friction stopness voicelessness

• [b] labiality friction stopness

• [v] labiality friction

• [m] labiality nasality

• [v] labiality

• [g] stopness

• [ ]

• Why should a historical process receivecontemporary synchronic validity?

• Why should morphology have direct influence upon segmental structure?

• Certain lexical items fail to undergo mutation(gêm ‘game’, braf ‘nice’)

• New lexical items undergo the same mutationsby analogy ([driƞk]-[ðriƞk], [tʃokled]-[dʒokled])

• There is nothing in contemporary Welsh

phonology that would betray lack of FRICTION

It’s not even Morpho-Phonology(Phono-Morphology)

• Hannahs (2013: 134-142)

• Pattern Extraction

Conditioning is no longer phonologicalso why should the results be?

RADICAL

Soft Mutated

Aspirate MutatedNasal Mutated

• It’s productive / extended by analogy(affricates, borrowings, neologisms, noncewords)

• It’s arbitrary (g > nothing, m > v)

• Halle and Marantz (1993: 124-129)

• After the vocabulary form the Lexicon is inserted, allomorphy is obtained due to stem readjustment

• One segment is substituted with another

– Phonological representations are immune to non-phonological information (restricted access)

– Morphology inserts whole segments but not phonologicalproperties (domain-specificity)

• The initial consonant of the stem is replaced with an appropriate (SM, AM, NM or Radical) reflex dictatedby a morphological rule

• The precise consonant is selected form a pool of arbitrary (historically accidental) segments

If not phonology then what?

Initial Consonant Mutation

• A lexical entry is selected (‘dog’)

• It is placed in a syntactic context (her dog)

• Vocabulary Insertion takes place (/i/+/ki/)

• Stem Readjustment (/ki/ >> Asp Mut)

• /k/ is changed into /x/ according to the accidental pattern acquired by the user

• NOW phonology applies:

– Puts stress on /ki/ *i ‘xi+

– Lengthens the stressed vowel *i ‘xi:+

Reference:

Anderson, John M. and Colin J. Ewen. 1987. Principles of Dependency Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ball, Martin J. and Nicole Müller. 1992. Mutation in Welsh. London and New York: Routledge.

Booij, Geert E. 1985. ”The Interaction of Phonology and Morphology in Prosodic Phonology.” In Phono-Morphology. Studies in the Interaction of Phonology and Morphology, edited by Edmund Gussmann, 23-43. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego.

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Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam and Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.

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Reference:

King, Gareth. 2003. Modern Welsh: A Comprehensive Grammar. London and New York: Routledge.

Lass, Roger . 1984. Phonology. An Introduction to Basic Concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mohanan, Karuvannur P. 1986. The Theory of Lexical Phonology. Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.

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