29.224, Qs: Phonological Exceptions

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-29-224. Fri Jan 12 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.224, Qs: Phonological Exceptions

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Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 17:07:39
From: Katherine Hout [khout at ucsd.edu]
Subject: Phonological Exceptions

 
Hi everyone, 

I am looking for examples of phonological exceptions for my dissertation.
Because ''exception'' means a lot of different things to different people, I
want to clarify that the subset of things I'm particularly interested in are
phonological alternations/repairs (or failures thereof) which are: 

- restricted to a small(ish) set of lexical items 
- unexpected given the more ''typical'' patterns of the language's phonology

That is, I'm looking at the set of things which often end up in footnotes or
go unmentioned, because they fail to conform (in one way or another) to
otherwise robust generalizations about the language.

I am especially interested in cases of exceptions which are idiosyncratic with
respect to multiple processes, though I am not restricting myself to such
cases. (For those especially interested, I've listed a few examples at the
bottom of this message)

If you have something that fits these general criteria, I'd like to see it!
This is true even if you personally don't think the example is an
''exception'' (for whatever reason that may be--and I'm more than happy to
have that discussion with you as well).

Thank you in advance,
Kati Hout

Examples (abstracted from cases I have worked on):

1. Language 1 has a preference to repair hiatus. There is a subset of stems
which are V-initial and condition or participate in most of these repairs
(e.g. glide formation of a preceding high vowel). However, they exceptionally
fail to undergo a coalescence repair. The key here is the fact that the stems
are failing to participate in a repair that similar stems normally undergo in
the same morphophonological context. This kind of ''failure to participate''
pattern is fairly frequently referenced--e.g. Yine syncope (Kisseberth 1970),
some aspects of Japanese loanword adaptation (Ito & Mester 1998 and onwards).

2. Language 2 repairs complex onsets in several ways depending on segments
involved. Cj onsets are usually repaired via glide deletion. However, a subset
of lexical items instead palatalize the preceding consonant. Unlike the first
example, in this case, the exceptional items are both failing to undergo a
normal repair, but are also exceptionally undergoing an alternative repair. I
am particularly interested in these kinds of ''compositional'' subcases.

3. Language 3 tolerates hiatus at word boundaries/#V, but prohibits it at
morpheme boundaries (this language is similar to Language 1). Stems condition
or undergo one of various repairs to resolve hiatus, depending on context.
However, one apparently V-initial lexical item leaves hiatus unresolved in all
contexts.

4. In language 4, suffixes with +ATR high vowels usually trigger harmony on
-ATR vowels in roots. This language has a +ATR low vowel (<ə>), meaning that
the normal harmony alternation is /a/ → [ə], /ə/ → [ə]. However, one suffix
with a +ATR high vowel exceptionally conditions an /a/ → [e] alternation;
critically, it does *not* condition a /ə/ → [e] alternation (=
saltation/derived environment effect).
 

Linguistic Field(s): Phonology



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