| ROA: | 344 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Morphological haplology in a constraint-based morpho-phonology |
| Authors: | Ingo Plag |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 17 |
| Abstract: | Morphological haplology in a constraint-based morpho-phonology Ingo Plag plag@mbox.anglistik.uni-hannover.de The paper is published in Wolfgang Kehrein and Richard Wiese (eds.) 1998. Phonology and Morphology of the Germanic Languages, 199-215. Tübingen: Niemeyer. ABSTRACT Morphological haplology has been defined as the absence of "an affix or clitic [...] when the adjacent part of the stem is homophonous to it" (Stemberger 1981:791), or as the avoidance of adjacent identical morphs (e.g. Menn/McWhinney 1984). Although haplology is dealt with in a large number of publications, a satisfactory general account of this phenomenon is still lacking. Thus, it is often difficult to arrive at firm generalizations because identity avoidance, though wide-spread in the world's languages, seems extremely variable not only across languages, but also within one language. Part of the problem lies in the conceptualization of the phenomenon itself. The above-mentioned definitions of haplology indicate that identity avoidance may affect repeated morphs, morphemes that are only partially identical, and even non-morphemic material. It is unclear whether these phenomena should indeed all be subsumed under the label of haplology. Furthermore, the jury is still out on at least three other questions, the first being whether haplology can be defined in universal terms, or only as peculiar to individual morphological processes. The second question is whether haplology should be accounted for by rules or by output-oriented restrictions. Finally, it remains to be shown whether haplology can be regarded as a purely phonological phenomenon or not. Starting from earlier constraint-based approaches to haplology (e.g. Yip 1998) this paper proposes that morphological haplology results from a family of universal, violable output-oriented constraints on the repetition of identical phonological elements (OCP (feature), OCP (segment), OCP (onset), OCP (nucleus), OCP (onset, nucleus)). This proposal differs from earlier constraint-based models (e.g. Yip 1998) in important respects. It eliminates constraints that make reference to morphological instead of phonological structure, i.e. Yip's OCP (affix) and OCP (stem), and adds subsyllabic constituents to the inventory of elements to which OCP constraints can refer. This has two main consequences. First, in this approach, morphological haplology is exclusively triggered by phonological constraints (in interaction with other prosodic and morphological constrtaints), which is both empirically and theoretically preferable. Second, by eliminating OCP (affix) and OCP (stem) as constraints, I argue against the Repeated Morph Constraint. It is shown that both the Repeated Morph Constraint and Stem-End-Haplology are different consequences of the same mechanisms. In the account I propose, the similarities of haplology phenomena across and within languages are explained by the universality of the phonological constraints at work. At the same time, the observable variability of haplology among different morphological categories in one language and across languages turns out to be the consequence of language-specific rankings of the OCP constraints. The interaction of OCP constraints with other prosodic and morphological constraints can also explain the apparent variability of haplology among derivatives of the same morphological category (cf., for example strychnin-ize vs. femin-ize vs. *feminin-ize). These points are illustrated with data from English (-ize derivatives), German (female person nouns in -in) and Dutch (person nouns and comparatives in -er), for which a unitary account has not yet been proposed. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |