[HPSG-L] Selection of phonology in nonlocal dependencies and raising

maxwell maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu
Tue Mar 1 16:51:53 UTC 2016


On 2016-03-01 05:10, Guy Emerson wrote:
> A phenomenon which is less bounded than "a/an" is consonant 
> dissimilation
> (see e.g. Bye, 2011): e.g. the Georgian suffix "-uri" becomes "-uli" if 
> the
> stem has an "r" somewhere (but not also an "l" after the "r").

I haven't followed the literature on this for many years, and I can't 
claim to be an HPSGer.  But it strikes me that it might be useful for 
purposes of discussion (no claims to the theoretical value) to think of 
a typology or spectrum of locality in phonological processes, like this:

1) Adjacent phoneme(s)
2) Phonological features which might be claimed to be adjacent on a tier 
(vowel harmony, tone processes)
3) Non-adjacent phonemes within word (Georgian ex. above, although one 
could argue that this is (2); glottalization dissimilation in Quechua)
4) Phonemes adjacent across clitic boundaries (possibly differing by 
type of clitic)
5) Phonemes adjacent across major category word boundaries (liaison in 
French, mutation in Celtic languages)

Don't read too much into the order I've listed these in--I think Guy's 
saying that he thinks of (3) as more non-local than (4).

    Mike Maxwell
    University of Maryland







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