Phonetics and Phonology on Monday
Want to find out more about the Factorial Typology of Prosodic and Morphological Constraints and Classhood in English? Hideki Zamma will answer all your questions at the Phonetics and Phonology Workshop this Monday. Here’s the abstract:
Since Chomsky and Halle (1968), it has been widely assumed that English suffixes can be divided into two major categories (Siegel (1974), Allen (1978), Kiparsky (1982), Halle and Mohanan (1986), Halle and Vergnaud (1987), Benua (1997), etc.). The defining characteristics of classhood include, for example, (i) whether or not a suffix is stress-neutral and (ii) whether or not a suffix is capable of attaching to the root base. From time to time in the literature, however, it is pointed out that some suffixes have “dual membership” in both of the classes. In other words, the same suffix sometimes exhibits both stress-neutral and root-attaching behaviors (Aronoff (1976), Selkirk (1982), Fudge (1984), Szpyra (1989), Giegerich (1999), etc.). This fact has posed a serious problem to any theory of lexicon with dichotomy, because it suggests that some of the characteristics in suffixation might not be attributed to the difference between the two classes.
This paper proposes that a proper analysis of the problem at hand can be given within the framework of Partial Ordering Theory (Anttila and Cho (1998), Anttila (2002)). Assuming that various groupings in the lexicon can have different constraint rankings, the dual membership suffixes can be analyzed as having the same rankings as Class 1 and 2 at the same time. Moreover, a POT analysis predicts a different type of suffixes not observed to date. This kind of suffixes is actually borne out in an overwhelming investigation utilizing the SOED.
Based on a research on the same dictionary, it is also investigated how many suffixes (out of 120) actually belong to each class. Considering the distributional facts revealed from the investigation, it is further discussed if they can be theoretically predicted from POT.
You can stay up-to-date on the workshop by visiting their website every day.