In this thesis I investigate the crucial role played by government in phonology in explaining various processes such as epenthesis, vowel deletion, vowel harmony, consonant assimilation, as well as the syllabification of skeletal points along with their segments into constituents, and the organization of these constituents in the word. It is argued that all these phonological processes are determined by governing relations units contract with each other. / Given that government applies in phonology defining the constraints under which it operates is an integral part of such a research program. The aim of this thesis then, is to analyze different phonological processes in terms of government and to determine what the relevant constraints are. The processes that are considered involve governing relations between nuclei that are adjacent at the level of nuclear projection. I show that in considering branching constituents as governing domains, government within such domains is subject to a special constraint, viz. the Minimality Condition that has been proposed by Chomsky (1986). In addition I demonstrate that only the immediate projection of a given head counts as a barrier to government from the outside. / Another proposal of this thesis concerns the treatment of the alternations between schwa and zero in French in terms of a relation of proper government. From such a perspective, I show that an empty nucleus is realized as zero when it is properly governed by a following nucleus. Proper government is a stronger case of government and is subject to certain additional conditions. Among them are the following: the proper governor must have phonetic content and subject to parametric variation, it can only properly govern one empty governee.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.75950 |
| Date | January 1988 |
| Creators | Charette, Monik |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Department of Linguistics.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 000916513, proquestno: AAINL52428, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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