It is commonly agreed that phonological elements must be prosodically licensed in order to be interpreted phonetically (cf. Ito, 1986). The licensing of segments is generally assumed to follow from the Universal Association Conventions. The licensing of phonological units smaller than the segment, however, has not been fully addressed. There is no agreement on the exact licensing mechanisms at play and on what constitutes a proper anchor for the initial association of floating subsegmentals. This thesis proposes a principled account of subsegmental licensing within the theory of segmental structure known as feature geometry, as modified by Piggott (to appear). It is shown that the manifestation of nasality in Maukaka, Koyaga, Jula, and Terena result from the way licensing operates. It is argued that, universally, floating subsegmental units are licensed through mapping, which associates a unit to an available position. It is also proposed that whenever there is no proper position for the mapping of a subsegmental element, this element may be licensed by Chomsky-adjunction. This type of adjunction has played a role in syllabification but not in the organization of feature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.39274 |
| Date | January 1991 |
| Creators | Tourville, José |
| 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: 001274639, proquestno: NN74577, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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