Allomorphy conditioned by syntactic adjacency

[David Gil]

Dear all,

A formal structural pattern in which a sentence is parsed into phrasal
phonological units of one or more W(ords) each, eg.

[W W W] [W W W W W] [W W]

and then, within each unit, F(inal) forms are marked differently from
N(on-final) ones, eg.

[N N F] [N N N N F] [N F]

is widespread in Southeast Asian languages.

Perhaps the most striking example of this is the tone-sandhi patterns of
the Southern Min languages of China. Numerous formally analogous
examples involving alternations of phonological features such as
intonation, glottalization, vowel epenthesis and others occur in various
dialects of Malay and Indonesian.  In one such dialect, Kerinci, spoken
in the highlands of central Sumatra, such alternations have become
grammaticalized, and are used to encode grammatical features such as
definiteness and thematic roles.  For details see:

Prentice, D.J. and A. Hakim Usman (1978) "Kerinci Sound-Changes and
Phonotactics", in S.A. Wurm and L. Carrington eds., Second
Interrnational Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings,
Fascicle 1, Western Austronesian, Pacific Linguistics Series C - No. 61,
Australian National University, Canberra, 121-163.

Steinhauer, H. and A. Hakim Usman (1978) "Notes on the Morphemics of
Kerinci (Sumatra)", in S.A. Wurm and L. Carrington eds., Second
Interrnational Conference on Austronesian Linguistics: Proceedings,
Fascicle 1, Western Austronesian, Pacific Linguistics Series C - No. 61,
Australian National University, Canberra, 483-501.

David


--
David Gil

[currently in Indonesia]

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 49-341-3550321
Fax: 49-341-3550119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de
Webpage:  http://monolith.eva.mpg.de/~gil/