Martha McGinnis: phonological arguments for late insertion? (reply to Dan Everett)

[Martha McGinnis]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the information... sounds like an interesting project.
But is this really an argument against Lexical Phonology?  LP doesn't
necessitate structure-preserving postlexical rules, but I don't think
it rules them out either.  The situation might be different if we
found a 'lexical' phonological rule that ISN'T structure-preserving.
Anyway, the facts you describe are interesting -- thanks for the
suggestion.

-Martha


>There is an interesting fact, not quite like what you asked for, but
>leaning in the same direction. In recent field work, a colleague of mine
>and I have discovered an interesting process of post-lexical structure
>preservation in the Ge language, Suya (no other studies of this language
>exist). There is a rule of phrase-final lenition of voicless occlusives
>which is blocked just in case there is no lexical phoneme corresponding to
>the lenited form. So, for example, p --> w and t --> r, but nothing
>happens to k. This is because w and r are independently needed phonemes in
>the language, but there is no corresponding continuant in the velar
>position.
>
>What this means is that one of the basic tenets of Lexical Phonology, that
>structure-preservation is evidence for phonology in the lexicon, becomes
>much less secure.
>
>Or so it seemeth to me. The paper is in progress. Hope to have it done in
>a couple of months, when I get out from under some other things.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Dan Everett


mcginnis at ucalgary.ca