Issues in Phonology
The following four papers were presented by linguists from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.
Sławomir Zdziebko
Świezi najemnicy vs. wraży piraci: competence and performance in the morpho-phonology of Polish
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
The aim of the presentation is to show that the morpho-phonological replacement of /ʒ/ with /ʑ/ found in Polish in adjectives such as duż-y - duz-i (‘big, nom/voc, sg. - nom/voc, pl.’) is productive and accepted significantly more often than what dictionaries and standard descriptions would suggest. In order to show that I am going to present the results of two surveys conducted among the students of the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin. The first survey featuring 119 speakers, shows that the duż-y - duz-i -pattern is readily generalized to obsolete items such as wraż-y ‘hostile, nom/voc.sg’. Moreover, the recording of 69 speakers of Polish shows that the occurrence of the /ʒ/ → /ʑ/pattern is dependent on certain extra-grammatical factors such as the sex of the speakers (females palatalize more often than males) and the frequency of a relevant stem (more frequent stems are palatalized more often). The latter pattern is interrupted by some grammatical conditioning: frequent stems such as Boż-y ‘of god, nom/voc, sg.’ and chorz-y ‘sick, nom/voc, pl.’ are palatalized significantly less often than less frequent śwież-y ‘nom/voc. sg.’, chyż-y ‘swift, nom/voc. sg.’ and wraż-y ‘nom/voc, sg.’. I will show that the scarcity of forms such as ?Boz-i ‘of god, nom/voc, pl.’ and the virtual absence of forms such as ???choz-i ‘sick, nom/voc, pl.’ should be assigned to the derived nature of the /ʒ/ in both stems.
Ewa Pająk
/o/-raising vs. voicing of obstruents in the history of Polish
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
It is almost unanimously agreed that /o/-raising, in Present-day Polish manifesting itself in /o/~/u/ alternation, is a direct consequence of Compensatory Lengthening operative in c. 10th c., when there was still the distinction between short and long vowels in the system. CL consisted in the lengthening of a vowel at the expense of the jer vowel in the following syllable, which was weakened and ultimately lost. Certain conditions had to be met for the process of CL to operate, the most noticeable being the [+voice] value of the consonant directly following the vowel to be lengthened, and at the same time preceding the disappearing jer.
The significance of the [+voice] feature of the intervening consonant has been widely explored in the literature (e.g. Dunaj 1966, Koneczna 1965, Stieber 1973, Bethin 1998, Sanders 2003). The analyses available vary in their treatment of the unquestionable impact voicing / voicelessness had on the process. Phonetic analyses, phonological reinterpretation of phonetic lengthening and moraic explanations have been put forward, among others. All of the suggested solutions to the problem of voicing in Polish phonological history seem to ignore a crucial aspect of Compensatory Lengthening – that it was a crosslinguistic phenomenon and needs to be interpreted as one. A unified analysis of CL as affecting the majority of Slavic languages, as well as Germanic ones, points to the necessity of perceiving consonants as complex structures (Elements Theory), whose complexity directly impacts the possibility of lengthening. Voicelessness, expressed as an H element attached to fortis obstruents crosslinguistically, contravenes the Licensing relationship between successive nuclear positions in a representation by means of Licensing Absorption.
By manipulating the settings of Government, Licensing, FEN abilities and complexity of consonants (and the interplay of them all), CL and other quantitative processes may be given one common analysis across languages, which is a vital step towards understanding the universal character of linguistic changes and synchronic phonological processes.
References:
Bethin, Ch. (1998) Slavic Prosody. Cambridge: University Press
Carlton, T. (1991) Introduction to the Phonological History of the Slavic Languages
Cyran E. (2012) Cracov voicing is neither phonological nor phonetic. It is both phonological and phonetic. In E. Cyran, H. Kardela and B. Szymanek (eds.), Sound, Structure and Sense. Studies in Memory of Edmund Gussmann. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL
Dunaj, B. (1966) Wzdłużenie zastępcze w języku polskim. (Zeszyty naukowe Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego. Prace językoznawcze PAN, 17.) Warszawa and Kraków: PWN
Harris, J. (1994) English Sound Structure. Oxford: Blackwell
Honeybone, P. (2005) Diachronic evidence in segmental phonology: the case of obstruents laryngeal specifications. In M. van Oostendorp et al. (eds.), The Internal Organization of Phonological Segments. Berlin: M. de Gruyter, 319-354
Koneczna (1965) Charakterystyka fonetyczna języka polskiego. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe
Sanders, N. (2003) Opacity and Sound Change in Polish Lexicon. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California
Scheer, T., M. Zikova (2009) „The Coda Mirror v2”
Stieber, Z. (1973) A Historical Phonology of the Polish Language. Heidelberg: Carl Winter
Zdziebko (2012) Issues in Scotish vowel quantity. Cambrigde: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Elżbieta Brzozowska
The syllable – towards a unified theory
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
The syllable, referred to as “one of the oldest constructs in the study of language” (Goldsmith (2011: 164)) has found its place in all linguistic theories and frameworks, starting from structuralism (Pulgram (1970)), through natural generative phonology (Vennemann (1972)), the Optimality Theory (Féry and van de Vijver (2003)) and, finally, the Government Phonology framework (Cyran (2006), Harris and Gussman (1998)). Apart from theoretical considerations, experimental research aimed at testing (native) speakers’ intuitions concerning the location of syllable boundaries and the syllabic affiliation of given segments has always constituted an indispensable element of the quest for discovering the ultimate theory of the syllable.
In the present paper we will be concerned with surveying a number of vital aspects of experimental studies on L1 syllabification. More specifically, drawing on the previous research in the field, we will seek to establish how experimental research into L1 syllabification should be structured and conducted so as to produce plausible results with a solid empirical ground. Three main aspects of such research, i.e. the choice of the stimuli, choice of the tasks and experimental procedures will be given attention to. The discussion will be preceded with a section devoted to adducing the major assumptions concerning the syllable structure, evidence that it is indeed existent and a brief overview of the details concerning the syllabification process itself. In the last section, on the other hand, we will discuss some findings of L2 syllabification studies so as to see how they pertain to the results obtained in L1 syllabification research.
References:
Cyran, E. 2006. Polish and English syllable structures. How different are they? Zeszyty Wszechnicy Świętokrzyskiej. Filologia Angielska 1/23, 151-160.
Féry, C. and R. van de Vijver, eds. 2003. The syllable in Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldsmith, J. 2011. The syllable. In: Goldsmith, J., Riggle,J. and A.C.L. Yu (eds.) The handbook of phonological theory. Wiley-Blackwell. 164-196.
Harris, J. and E. Gussman. 1998. Final codas: why the west was wrong. In: E. Cyran (ed.), Structure and interpretation – studies in phonology. Lublin: Folium. 132-162.
Pulgram, E. 1970. Syllable, word, nexus, cursus. The Hague: Mouton.
Vennemann, T. 1972. On the theory of syllabic phonology. Linguistische Berichte 18: 1-18.
Paweł Tomasz Czerniak
The structure of the North Welsh diphthongs in the CVCV theory
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
Welsh diphthongs have received a substantial deal of attention from various theoretical standpoints, none of which provided an unambiguous account. Ambiguities concerning what a diphthong in Welsh is and what it is not appeared in early descriptive accounts of Welsh Phonology (e.g. Morris-Jones 1913, Sweet 1913) and recurred in theoretically-grounded analyses (e.g. Generative Phonology in Awbery 1984, Government Phonology in Buczek-Zawiła 2002, Substance-Free Phonology in Iosad 2012).
North Welsh has the total of thirteen closing diphthongs. The final member is always a lax vowel [ʊ], [ɪ] or [ɨ], while the initial one, except for [ɑːɨ], is generally short and lax but may be tense and lengthened (Ball and Williams 2001: 45-47). The problem with a phonological analysis of NW diphthongs is that the two members behave like two separate unit vowels: diphthongs share few distributional properties with long vowels, the first member often undergoes the same morphophonological changes as corresponding unit vowel, while only the second member takes part in epenthesis. These (ir)regularities will be captured from the viewpoint of the CVCV theory.
Strict CV theory associates all segments with non-branching onsets (Cs) and non-branching nuclei (Vs) (Lowenstamm 1996, Szigetvári 1999, Scheer 2004). If a segment is long, its melody is associated with two constituents straddling an empty one of the opposite kind. Consequently, both diphthongs and vowel hiatuses are represented as two vocalic melodies attached to two Vs separated with an empty C. Owing to the fact that a diphthong is supposed to enjoy greater frequency and regularity in a language, it will be suggested that the two members of a diphthong are controlled by a lateral relation, while those of a hiatus are not.
References:
Awbery, Gwellian M. 1984. “Phonotactic Constraints in Welsh.” In Welsh Phonology: Selected Readings, edited by Martin J. Ball and Glyn E. Miller, 65-104. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.
Ball, Martin J. and Briony Williams. 2001. Welsh Phonetics. New York: Edwin Mellen Press.
Buczek-Zawiła, Anita. 2002. “Diphthongs in Welsh – Hybrid Domains.” Beyond Philology 2: 7-33.
Iosad, Pavel. 2012. “Representation and Variation in Substance-Free Phonology. A Case Study in Celtic.” PhD diss., University of Tromsø.
Lowenstamm, Jean. 1996. “CV as the Only Syllable Type.” In Current Trends in Phonology. Models and Methods, edited by Jacques Durand and Bernard Laks, 419-441. Salford: ESRI.
Morris-Jones, John. 1913. A Welsh Grammar. Historical and Comparative. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Szigetvári, Péter. 1999. “VC Phonology: A Theory of Consonant Lenition and Phonotactics.” PhD diss., Eötvös Loránd University.
Scheer, Tobias. 2004. A Lateral Theory of Phonology. What is CVCV, and why Should It Be?, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Sweet, Henry. 1913. “Spoken North Welsh.” In Collected Papers of Henry Sweet, edited by Henry Cecil Wyld, 409-484. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Photos by Anna Prażmowska
