Examinando por Autor "Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti"

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    An argument for phonological stress in french: the syntagm over contrast
    (Cambridge University Press, 2022-01-11) Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti
    It is standardly assumed that French does not have word-stress, rather it has phrase-level prominence. I will advance a number of arguments, many of which have appeared already in the literature, that cumulatively suggest that French roots are characterized by phonological prominence, even if this is non-contrastive. By prominence, I mean a syntagmatically distributed strength that has all the phonological characteristics of stress in other Romance languages. I will remain agnostic about the nature of that stress, eschewing the lively debate about whether French has feet, and if so what type, and at what level. The structure of the argument is as follows. French demonstrably has phonological word-final strength but one wonders what the source of this strength is. Positionally, the initial position is strong and, independently of cases where it is reinforced by other factors, the final position is weak. I will argue, based on parallels with other Romance languages, that French word-final strength derives from root-final phonological stress. The broader significance of this conclusion is that syntagmatic properties are enough to motivate underlying forms, even in the absence of paradigmatic contrasts (minimal pairs).
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    A classless analysis of Italian nouns and their theme-vowel alternations
    (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Centre de recherche sur la langue et les textes basques (IKER), 2023-02-05) Lampitelli, Nicola ; Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti
    The decompositional, non-lexicalist, approach to word-structure and the theory of roots have proven highly rewarding. One grey area, however, comes from Romance since, rather than roots, the word structure primitive appears to be the stem: root + ‘stem-formative/theme vowel’. Regardless, there have been perspicacious decompositional accounts of Italian, however these are still marred by the large number of morphological/item-specific irregularities, motivating arbitrary noun classes. Additionally, there are roots that do not inflect: consonant-final and vowel-final forms when these are oxytonic or loanwords. Given these irregularities, previous analyses in Italian have included the use of lexical exceptions and class features. We challenge the use of class features in generating the attested patterns (and their exceptions). Instead, we propose a new categorisation of root-shapes, which, when combined with the exponents of nominal inflection, produce the correct surface pairings, as well as the non-alternating forms. In our analysis, there is no diacritic or special marking of lexical exceptions, all forms inflect regularly in accordance to their phonological shape. This requires the innovation of one new mechanism (Inhibition), but we back it up by showing that it leads to an unexpected beneficial prediction that solves a long-standing problem associated with Raddoppiamento Sintattico (RS).
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    Cross-morphemic palatalisation in Getxo basque: empty positions, bipositionality and place licensing
    (De Gruyter Mouton, 2022-09-06) Balogné Bérces, Katalin Anikó; Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti
    The variety of Basque characteristic of Getxo exhibits a form of coronal palatalisation that takes place intervocalically within and across words, triggered by a preceding [i] or [j]. This system in particular is interesting because it sets up a paradox as it both applies and does not apply at the word-level. The rule is sensitive to the leftward phonological context within the word-level and the rightward phonological context at the phrase level since in Getxo the trigger and target of palatalisation must come from the same word, yet the process only occurs if this sequence precedes a vowel-initial juncture: /in##V/, /il##V/. A previous solution involves stating palatalisation as a lexical rule and invoking a Duke-of-York Derivation to generate the masses of lexical exceptions attested largely in loanwords. This account misses a crucial generalisation, which is that, loanwords or not, there are no lexical exceptions across morphemes. We capture this generalisation and resolve the ordering paradox by relating palatalisation to the positional distribution of place features general in the language. This analysis involves positional underspecificaiton of nasals/laterals and a coronal default place of articulation. Underspecified nasals and laterals need place when they "become onsets"across word-boundaries, including through palatal spreading. In the reanalysis there are no "lexical exceptions"since these are underlyingly specified for place; neither is there need for word-level versus post-lexical phonology.
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    Initial lenition and strength alternations (v/b) in Neapolitan: a laryngeal Branchingness condition
    (Ubiquity Press, 2020-02-20) Russo, Michela; Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti
    In Central and Southern Italian dialects, the word-initial position plays host to a large number of strength-based alternations involving voiced stops. In this paper we look specifically at the v/b pair in Neapolitan. Strikingly, the absolute initial position appears to be weak with the voiced stop patterning phonologically like a singleton in word-medial position (v). After a variety of morphemes however, roots surface with the strong version of the consonant (b). These root-initial consonants (which would otherwise surface as weak) pattern phonologically like word-internal geminates. The strong form of the alternating consonant is a voiced stop. The initial position, although it hosts the weak allophone, is neither prosodically nor positionally weak. Voiceless stops, whose lenition actually is positionally conditioned, surface with their strong variant in this position. Rather than initial positional weakness, we identify a specific condition on the voiced stop variant (b). The voiced stop alternations that characterise initial-weakness are caused by a Branchingness (feature sharing) condition that plays a crucial role in determining strength. The alternating pairs are subject to a condition by which they must be bipositional in order to be strong. The (root) initial position is not weak, indeed only a positionally strong position could host such a contrast. Positional strength and Branchingness weakness have a quasi-morphological interplay that potentially aids the identification of morpheme boundaries. Though the pattern we describe is phonological, we speculate that it could constitute an intermediate step in the morphologisation of initial strong/weak alternations, a typological step toward developing initial mutation.
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    Labiovelars and the labial-velar hypothesis: phonological headedness in bare element geometry
    (Ubiquity Press, 2021-10-07) Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti
    This paper begins by strengthening the labial-velar hypothesis with a novel interpretation of the allophonic distributions of labials and velars in Lusoga. The labial-velar hypothesis (Backley & Nasukawa 2009) is an Element Theory proposal that labial and dorsal consonants can be marked by same 'dark' place feature |U| (cf. grave (Jakobson & Halle 1956)). The difference between Lab and Dors is that Lab is the headed manifestation of |U|, while Dors is headless. However, by hypothesis, this appears paradoxical for labial-velar stop complex segments (collectively labelled KP). These would seem to be headless and headed at the same time. This leads to an exploration of the term 'headedness' in phonology. Building on the positives of previous approaches, and pairing back the assumptions to the first principles of combination (Merge), I come up with a novel theory of headedness for segment-internal structure: Bare Element Geometry (BEG). The labial-velar hypothesis, in light of BEG, is then applied to KP. A close investigation of KP's typological distribution and behaviour, especially in Guere (Western Kru) leads to the discovery that it has two root nodes each with its own place node and, contrary to the previous literature, that its parts are phonologically ordered. KP having two ordered root nodes allows BEG's model of headedness since the same dark place feature |U| is both headed and headless in different parts of the structure. This asymmetric theory of headedness also correctly predicts Cahill (1999)'s empirical observation that KP is never headed by Dorsal (rather than Labial).
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    Metrical exceptionality and stress shift in romanian nouns and adjectives
    (Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona = Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Centre de Lingüística Teòrica, 2022-04-26) Alexei, Sofia; Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti
    This paper proposes a reanalysis of stress in Romanian nouns and adjectives. We will argue that an analysis in Strict CV Metrics produces a simple account of the stress facts of Romanian without arbitrarily dividing the lexicon into regular and irregular words. The result is a system, which, although entirely lexically marked, always has accent falling within a determined metrical window; one that is not defined by syllables or feet, but CV syllabification. In this reanalysis, all forms share precisely the same conditions on stress. Moreover, the fact that the window is defined in CVs rather than syllables uniquely makes the correct prediction that nouns/adjectives of the shape CV́.CV.CVC are impossible. Previous accounts that split the lexicon into “regular” and “irregular” forms have no obvious way to exclude this particular shape, despite it being truly unattested in the language, unlike the stated “exceptional” patterns, all of which are attested. We further use the Strict CV metrical window to correctly predict a pattern of stress shift observed with the adjectival suffix -ik. The implications for diphthong structures in Romanian are also discussed.