29.3241, Diss: Izon; Ijoid; General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Phonology; Syntax; Typology: Nicholas Rolle: ''Grammatical tone: Typology and theory''

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3241. Wed Aug 22 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3241, Diss:  Izon; Ijoid; General Linguistics; Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Phonology; Syntax; Typology: Nicholas Rolle: ''Grammatical tone: Typology and theory''

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Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2018 12:07:38
From: Nicholas Rolle [nicholas.rolle at gmail.com]
Subject: Grammatical tone: Typology and theory

 
Institution: University of California, Berkeley 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2018 

Author: Nicholas Rolle

Dissertation Title: Grammatical tone: Typology and theory 

Dissertation URL:  https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5ck8s48r

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Linguistic Theories
                     Morphology
                     Phonology
                     Syntax
                     Typology

Subject Language(s): Izon (ijc)

Language Family(ies): Ijoid


Dissertation Director(s):
Larry M Hyman
Sharon Inkelas

Dissertation Abstract:

The topic of this study is grammatical tone (GT), which I define as a
tonological operation that is not general across the phonological grammar, and
is restricted to the context of a specific morpheme or construction. In
typologizing grammatical tone, I frame it in terms of dominance effects
(Kiparsky & Halle 1977, Kiparsky 1984), and divide GT into two types. Dominant
GT systemically deletes the underlying tone of the target, while non-dominant
GT does not systemically delete it. From a survey of GT, I develop a
typological principle called the dominant GT asymmetry, which states that
within a multi-morphemic constituent, the dominant trigger is a dependent
(e.g. a modifier of affix), and the target is a lexical head or a dependent
structurally closer to the lexical head. In this way, dominance is always
directed ‘inward’ within morphological hierarchical structure, supporting
earlier statements such as Alderete’s (2001a, 2001b) ‘Strict Base Mutation’. 

For any theoretical model of dominant vs. non-dominant GT, I show there are
three problems that must be addressed: the origin problem (where does the
grammatical tune come from), the erasure problem (why do the underlying tones
of the target go unrealized), and the scope problem (what determines where the
grammatical tune docks, i.e. its scope).

Under this theory, the origin problem is attributed to floating tones which
are part of the underlying representation of the trigger. A major claim is
that there is no representational difference between dominant and non-dominant
tone: both involve floating tonemes. I implement my model within Distributed
Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), whereby triggers of dominant GT are not
constructions (as in classic Cophonology Theory – Inkelas 1998), but rather
individual vocabulary items (following Sande & Jenks 2017). Dominant triggers
have a special cophonology which ranks a constraint enforcing dominance higher
than default constraints. This dominant constraint should be understood as a
special type of faithfulness: correspondence between a matrix derivation and
an abstract basemap consisting of only unvalued tone bearing units, e.g. an
input-output basemap //ⒽⓁ + ττ// --> \\τ́τ̀\\. This addresses the erasure
problem. The central insight here is that dominant GT should be characterized
as a special type of paradigm uniformity effect, a hypothesis referred to as
dominance as transparadigmatic uniformity.

To address the scope problem I develop a theory in which syntactic structure
is mapped to a hierarchical morpho-phonological tree via an operation at
spell-out called hierarchy exchange. Within instances of dominant GT, a mother
node in the morpho-phonological tree consists of the trigger of the
grammatical tune (one daughter) and the target (the other daughter). The
cophonology of the trigger scopes over the entire sequence, with cophonologies
applying cyclically at each node resulting in ‘layers’ of grammatical tone. 

A major component of this model is that hierarchy exchange preserves the
inside-out derivational history of the syntactic module by referencing
asymmetrical c-command. In this way, syntax/phonology interface models which
appeal to c-command are essentially correct, the most relevant being McPherson
(2014) and McPherson & Heath (2016). I conclude that the real legacy of
c-command may not be linearization (Kayne 1994), but rather is in delimiting
the scope of morphologically-triggered phonological operations.




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