Scribd
Upload
16 views

Introducing Phonology

Uploaded by

bp7dspvfqt
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
16 views

Introducing Phonology

Uploaded by

bp7dspvfqt
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 1

152 INTRODUCING PHONOLOGY

occurs in an open syllable. The discovery of this generalization allows us


to posit the following vowel shortening rule.

(7) V ! [-long]/ __ CC

This rule is all that is needed to explain both the invariant CVC stems and
the alternating CV:C ~ CVC stems. Underlyingly /do:s-hin/ undergoes (7)
and gives the surface form [doshin] – all other forms preserve the under-
lying length of the vowel. The existence of this rule also explains why we
do not find the surface sequence V:CC – a long vowel before a cluster of
two consonants – anywhere in the data, as such sequences undergo vowel
shortening.
We turn next to the stems with the shape CVCVC ~ CVCV:C such as p’axat
~ p’axa:t. Since we have already encountered a rule which accounts for
alternations in vowel length, we should immediately suspect that this
length alternation is the same as the one just accounted for in CV:C ~ CVC
stems. When we inspect the contexts where the long-vowel variant occurs,
we see that there are long vowels when a vowel-initial suffix is added, and
short vowels when a consonant-initial suffix is added. In other words, these
stems are virtually the same as /CV:C/ stems, except that they have the
underlying shape /CVCV:C/. We initially hypothesized that there was a rule
of vowel shortening based on /CV:C/ stems, and that rule nicely handled
those data. The way we formulated that rule was quite general, since it only
said “shorten a long vowel before two consonants.” Such a statement
predicts that, if there are other stem shapes such as /CVCV:C/, they too will
undergo that rule. We have now discovered that such stems do undergo the
shortening rule, providing independent support for that rule.

Epenthesis. This reduces the unsolved part of the problem to two


remaining classes of stems. In one of those, there is an alternation between
presence versus absence of a vowel, and in the second group there is an
alternation in vowel length as well as an alternation in the presence versus
lack of a vowel in the second syllable; this should make us suspect that the
vowel shortening rule applies to the second of these sets. Concentrating on
the contexts where the stem has the shape CV(:)CVC as opposed to the
shape CVCC, we notice that CV(:)CVC appears before consonant-initial
suffixes and CVCC appears before vowel-initial suffixes. We do not know
at this point whether the second vowel is underlyingly part of the stem and
is deleted in one context, or whether the vowel is inserted in a different
context. Therefore, we will consider both possibilities: consideration of
alternative hypotheses is an essential part of problem solving.
First suppose that the vowel is not part of the underlying representation
of the stem. In that case, we assume the following representations

(8) underlying ʔilk-hin ʔilk-k’a ʔilk-al ʔilk-it


surface ʔilik-hin ʔilik-k’a ʔilk-al ʔilk-it
underlying ʂa:lk’-hin ʂa:lk’-k’a ʂa:lk’-al ʂa:lk’-it
surface ʂa:lik’-hin ʂa:lik’-k’a ʂalk’-al ʂalk’-it

You might also like