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ROA:214
Title:Emergent templates: the unusual case of Tiene
Authors:Larry M. Hyman, Sharon Inkelas
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Abstract:Tiene is unusual among Bantu languages in imposing prosodic restrictions on

derivational verb morphology. The Tiene verb stem fits the Bantu mold: a

CV(C) root combines with zero or more -VC derivational suffixes and an

obligatory final vowel. However, Tiene requires derived stems to be either

CVVCV or CVCVCV, where C2 and C3 agree in nasality, C2 is coronal, and C3

is grave. The latter constraints drive infixation when the root ends in a

grave consonant and the suffix is coronal. An Optimality Theory analysis

is provided which derives the two templates, furthering McCarthy and

Prince's (1994) program of prosodic morphology in Optimality Theory.

The data have an interesting added theoretical implication. As Tiene

shows, segmental (rather than prosodic) conditions can force infixation,

bringing up the question of how Optimality Theory is to capture the well-

known generalization that infixes are never more than one prosodic (rather

than segmental) constituent away from a word edge.
Type:Paper/tech report
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Article:Version 1