No description available.

In this thesis, we investigate several processes affecting coronals and velars in Tamil and Malayalam, two Dravidian languages spoken in southern India. We begin by discussing two assimilation processes which apply adjacent to front vowels, Palatalization, where anterior coronals become palatoalveolar, and Coronalization, where velars are fronted to palatoalveolar. We compare and contrast the feature geometries proposed by Sagey (1986) and Hume (1992) in their ability to adequately express these processes. In Sagey's model, front vowels are argued to be Dorsal. It is thus impossible to express either Palatalization or Coronalization as spreading. In Hume's model, where front vowels are Coronal, both processes involve spreading. However, the model does not formally distinguish between these two processes across languages; thus, it fails to capture the fact that Palatalization is widely attested but Coronalization seems to be restricted to diachronic alternations. In order to express this asymmetry, we adopt the model advanced by Goad & Narasimhan (1994), a revision of Goad (1993), where Palatalization involves spreading but Coronalization is a two-step process, spreading followed by reanalysis. In this model, a single feature (front), defined as "front of articulator", is doubly dependent on both Dorsal and Coronal nodes. Its interpretation is thus partly determined by the node to which it links; it marks apicality in coronals and front of tongue body in dorsals. In Chapter 3, we demonstrate how this model allows us to capture the fact that in Malayalam, only a subset of the anterior coronal consonants, the apicals, form a natural class with front vowels. In Chapter 4, we provide support for the model from languages other than Tamil and Malayalam, both Dravidian and non-Dravidian.

The theory proposed in this thesis, Phonological Pitch, concerns the representation and behavior of the tone feature. It is a formally simple phonological theory constrained by a set of explicit extragrammatical principles. Phonological Pitch contains two major grammatical mechanisms. First, tone is represented with a single multivalued feature (Pitch) whose value can range from 1 to n, where n is a language-specific number with no universal upper limit. Second, the Contiguity Hypothesis states that tone groups in rules must always form contiguous sets, though these groups can vary from rule to rule. Phonological Pitch can be so simple because the power of the grammatical theory is constrained with independently necessary extragrammatical factors. Specifically, limits on the number of tone levels arise from learnability and perceptual constraints, which can be precisely formalized, that also play a role in nonlinguistic domains. Similarly, the Contiguity Hypothesis is derived from psychoacoustic constraints on discriminating between acoustically similar pitches. Other perceptual and physiological constraints explain patterns in the typology of contour tones and in the interactions of tone with other features. The empirical support for Phonological Pitch includes the following. First, languages are attested with as many as five distinct tone levels, and the number of languages with n tone levels gradually decreases as n increases, rather than dropping off abruptly at some point. An analysis using learnability and perceptual constraints can explain this gradual drop better than a universal grammatical upper limit. Second, tone rules can transpose sets of tones up or down by a fixed interval, a fact which is easier to formalize with a single multivalued feature than with a set of binary features. Third, tone groups do not form universal natural classes nor groups with noncontiguous tones, as other tone theories predict. Fourth, tone interacts not only with laryngeal features like voicing, but also with nonlaryngeal features like vowel height, and both the existence and relative rarity of tone-vowel height interactions imply that understanding tone interactions requires reference to extragrammatical physiological factors.

No description available.

Phonemic perception exhibits coarticulation sensitivity, phonotactic sensitivity and lexical sensitivity. Three kinds of models of speech perception are found in the literature, which embody different answers to the question of how the three kinds of sensitivity are related to each other: two-step models, one-step models and lexicalist models. In two-step models (Church, 1987), phonemes are first extracted, and phonotactic repairs are subsequently made on the obtained phoneme string; both phonemic categorization and phonotactic repair are sublexical, and coarticulation sensitivity should only affect initial (prephonotactic) phonemic categorization. In one-step models (Dehaene-Lambertz et al., 2000; Dupoux et al., 2011; Mehler et al., 1990), phonemic categorization and phonotactic repair are sublexical and simultaneous; phonotactic repairs themselves depend on coarticulation cues. Such models can be implemented in two different versions: suprasegmental matching, according to which a speech signal is matched against phonotactics-respecting suprasegmental units (such as syllables), rather than phonemes, and slot filling, according to which a speech signal is matched against phonemes as fillers for slots in phonotactics-respecting suprasegmental units. In lexicalist models (Cutler et al., 2009; McClelland & Elman, 1986), coarticulation sensitivity and/or phonotactic sensitivity reduce to lexical sensitivity. McClelland & Elman (1986) claim a lexicalist reduction of phonotactic sensitivity; Cutler et al.’s (2009) make a claim implying lexicalist reductions both of phonotactic sensitivity and of coarticulation sensitivity. This thesis attempts to distinguish among those models. Since different perceptual processes are assumed in these three models (whether sublexical units are perceived, or how many stages are involved in perceptual processing), our understanding of how speech perception works crucially depends on the relative superiority of those three kinds of models. Based on the results available in the past literature on the one hand, and on the results of perceptual experiments with Japanese listeners testing their coarticulation sensitivity in different settings on the other, this thesis argues for the superiority of the slot filling version of one-step models over the others. According to this conclusion, phonemic parsing (categorization) and phonotactic parsing (repair) are separate but parallel sublexical processes.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Computer Science / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

In this dissertation I examine partial vowel assimilations, where more than one but less than all vowel features pattern together in a phonological rule. The result of this dissertation research is the 'Height Node Geometry'. The particular innovation this geometry makes is to group the height features ( (high) and (low)) under a separate Height Node, as opposed to having the height features report to the Dorsal Node or the Place Node. Motivation for the Height Node Geometry comes from analyses of several phonological processes. First, removing the height features from under the Dorsal Node and the Place Node facilitates a more natural explanation for reduplication in the Petit Diboum dialect of Fe?fe?-Bamileke. Second, placing the height features above the Place Node but still directly or indirectly under the Supralaryngeal Node provides an account for Tunica partial translaryngeal harmony. Finally, vowel harmony in Ewe involves spreading of (+high) and (+low) in the same environment, arguing for a simpler rule of node spread; hence, I propose that the height features stem from a separate Height Node, instead of directly to the Supralaryngeal Node.