Monosyllables: From Phonology to Typology 9783050060354, 9783050059259

Table of contents :
Table.pdf
Vorwort
Basboll 2
Yuan-Lu Chen 1
So 1
Dreer 1
Orzechowska 1
Michaud1
Zerbian 1
Floricic-Molinu 1
Steiner 1
Stolz 1
Adressen1
Index of authors
Index of languages
Index of subjects

Citation preview

Monosyllables

Studia typologica EditEd by thomas stolz, François JacquEsson and PiEtEr c. muyskEn

Beihefte / Supplements Volume 12 STUF – Language Typology and Universals Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung Editorial Board Michael Cysouw (München) Ray Fabri (Malta) Steven Roger Fischer (Auckland) Bernhard Hurch (Graz) Bernd Kortmann (Freiburg) Nicole Nau (Poznán) Ignazio Putzu (Cagliari) † Anna Siewierska (Lancaster) Stavros Skopeteas (Bielefeld) Johan van der Auwera (Antwerpen) Elisabeth Verhoeven (Berlin) Ljuba Veselinova (Stockholm)

Monosyllables From Phonology to Typology Thomas Stolz, Nicole Nau, Cornelia Stroh (Eds.)

Akademie Verlag

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. © 2012 Akademie Verlag GmbH, Berlin Ein Wissenschaftsverlag der Oldenbourg Gruppe www.akademie-verlag.de Das Werk einschließlich aller Abbildungen ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Das gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Bearbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. Redaktion: Cornelia Stroh Einbandgestaltung: hauser lacour Druck & Bindung: Beltz Bad Langensalza GmbH, Bad Langensalza Dieses Papier ist alterungsbeständig nach DIN/ISO 9706. ISBN eISBN

978-3-05-005925-9 978-3-05-006035-4

Table of Contents

NICOLE NAU, THOMAS STOLZ & CORNELIA STROH Preface ………..…………………………………………………………….…......…

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HANS BASBØLL Monosyllables and prosody: the Sonority Syllable Model meets the word ………… 13 YUAN-LU CHEN Lexical-syllable contrast is preserved: evidence from cross-linguistic investigation of vowel nasality …………………………………………………………….………. 43 CONNIE K. SO Cross-language categorization of monosyllabic foreign tones: effects of phonological and phonetic properties of native language …………………………... 55 IGOR DREER The human factor of economy of effort cross-linguistically: a contrastive analysis of the phonotactic distribution of consonants in Belarusian and French monosyllabic words ...................................................................................... 71 PAULA ORZECHOWSKA Effects of morphology on the syllable structure …………………………….…….… 91

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Table of Contents

ALEXIS MICHAUD Monosyllabicization: patterns of evolution in Asian languages …………………….. 115 SABINE ZERBIAN Morpho-phonological and morphological minimality in Tswana monosyllabic stems (Southern Bantu) …………………………………………………………….…….… 131 FRANCK FLORICIC & LUCIA MOLINU Romance monosyllabic imperatives and markedness .......................................... 149 PETRA STEINER Relations with monosyllables: a view from Quantitative Linguistics……………….. 173 THOMAS STOLZ, SONJA HAUSER & HEIKO STAMER ω → σ → V: The first step towards the comparative grammar of monosyllables ….. 197 List of Contributors …………………………………………………………………. 239 Index of Authors ……………………………………………………………………. 241 Index of Languages ………………………………………………………………… 245 Index of Subjects ……………………………………………………………………. 247

NICOLE NAU (POZNAˆ/POLAND), THOMAS STOLZ & CORNELIA STROH (BREMEN/GERMANY)

Preface

This collection of articles documents the international conference on Monosyllables – from Phonology to Typology which was held from 28–30 October, 2009 in Bremen as part of the program of the Festival of Languages. The idea behind this meeting was to instigate a research network of scholars who take an interest in monosyllables. This research network is supposed to study the phenomenon from as many perspectives as possible and include detailed analyses of individual languages as well as comparative and theoretical studies. A future aim is to write a grammar of monosyllables. The eleven papers published in this edited volume mark the starting point of our project. In modern linguistics monosyllables have most often been studied within phonology, but it is instructive to recapitulate the broader role monosyllabicity has played in the early days of linguistic typology, and to stress what modern typological research of monosyllables will not be about. In leading linguistic circles of German academia in the 19th and early 20th century, the phenomenon was regularly discussed. Monosyllabicity was assigned holistically to entire languages, phyla and types. In the discourse of the time, where typology and genetic classification of languages were often mixed, monosyllabic languages served as the counterpart of the inflecting languages represented by members of the Indo-European phylum and the Semitic phylum. As inflectional morphology was the focus of research and morphologically complex languages were highly esteemed, monosyllabic languages were initially conceived of as inferior. The Schlegel brothers had their share in making these ideas popular. For Friedrich Schlegel (1808: 44–46), there were only two major types of languages, viz. inflecting languages and those which lack inflexion, of which Chinese “mit [seiner] sonderbaren Einsylbigkeit” [“with its strange monosyllabicity”] is given as one of only two examples (the other being “die malayische Grammatik” [“the Malayan grammar”]). His brother August Wilhelm Schlegel (1818: 14) developed the bipartite typology further yielding a set of three major types among which he counted “les langues sans aucune structure grammatical” [“languages without any grammatical structure”]. They are characterized as follows: Les langues de la première classe n’ont qu’une seule espèce de mots, incapables de recevoir aucun développement ni aucune modification. On pourroit dire que tous les mots y sont des raciness, mais des raciness stériles qui ne produisent ni

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plantes ni arbres. Il n’y a dans ces langues ni déclinaisons, ni conjugaisons, ni mots dérives, ni mots composes autrement que par simple juxta-position, et tout la syntaxe consiste à placer les elemens inflexible du langage les uns à côté des autres. De telles langues doivent presenter de grands obstacles au développement des facultés intellectuelle […]. [The languages of the first class have only one kind of words which cannot be developed nor modified further. It can be said that all of these words are roots, but sterile roots which grow neither plants nor trees. In these languages, there are no declinations, no conjugations, no derived words, no compounds apart from simple juxtaposition, and the entire syntax consists in placing the indeclinable elements of the language the one next to the others. Languages of this kind should present great obstacles to the development of the intellectual capacities […].] These thoughts were fully in line with the ideas expressed by Adelung (1806) in his monumental survey of the languages of the world commonly referred to as the Mithridates. To Adelung’s mind, monosyllabicity is a remnant of the primordial stages of human language the persistence of which into modern times he interpreted as an indicator of the cognitively immature disposition of the speakers of monosyllabic languages (Adelung 1806: x–xi, 18, 44 and passim). The common bond of the various opinions about monosyllabicity held by 19th century linguists and philosophers is the conception of grammar as comprising only bound morphology. Hence Schlegel’s above cited description of “languages without any grammatical structure”; similar formulations can be found in linguistic works throughout the 19th century and well beyond. The assumed superiority of inflectional languages is based on the following reasoning: In human cognition, concepts can be divided into major categories and accessory categories. Language is there to express human thought and should provide the most adequate means to represent the relation of the two types of concepts iconically. This means that what forms a cognitive unit – the major concept and its accessory – should also form a unit on the linguistic level. If possible, the linguistic correlates of the thought categories should join to form a morphologically complex word (Humboldt [1830–35] in Flitner & Giel 1963: 606–607). Languages which need several separate words to represent the cognitive unit fail to meet this ideal. A further link between monosyllabicity and the absence of grammar is the implicit assumption that the prototypical morpheme comes in the shape of a syllable. In traditional German philology, for instance, prefixes and suffixes are commonly labelled Vorsilben and Nachsilben – literally pre-syllables and post-syllables, no matter whether the affix indeed contains a vowel, or consists solely of consonants, or even has more than one phonological syllable. The supposed syllabicity of morphemes applies to roots as well as affixes so that a combination of root and affix automatically yields a disyllabic word-form. Since Humboldt’s successors continued to apply holistic models in typology (in lieu of the much more adequate partial typology), it took scholars several decades to overcome at least some of the problems the earlier classification of monosyllabicity had

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raised. This was achieved by constantly refining the erstwhile relatively crude tripartite typology of human languages. New morphological types made it onto the various tableaux such that it became necessary to find a new label for monosyllabic languages. The new term wurzel-isolierende Sprachen (“root-isolating languages”) was meant to differentiate where earlier approaches had lumped all kinds of languages together to form the isolating type. Ringmacher (1996) describes in some detail how linguists like Steinthal had to struggle with the paradox of assumed cultural inferiority of speakers of monosyllabic languages and the obvious cultural achievements of the Chinese people, whose language continued to be the paradigm case of a monosyllabic language in practically all typologies put forward in the early days of linguistics. At the turn of the 20th century, however, most of the leading linguists in Germany agreed that the previous views of monosyllabicity needed to be revised thoroughly and that the assumed monosyllabicity of Chinese was probably wrong or at least not as pronounced as formerly believed (Steinthal & Misteli 1893: 104–105, Gabelentz 1901: 255; Finck 1961: 18). At this point in the history of linguistic thought, the holistic typology of the old school came to a halt – and with it the study of monosyllabicity. After a century of intensive typological investigations, the role of monosyllabicity in the structure-building of human languages remained largely a mystery. Even the revival of typology and research of universals which began in the 1960s has not contributed substantially to changing this state of affairs. We claim that it is high time for a dedicated study of monosyllabicity. Of course, such study is not supposed to connect with 19th century’s wisdom, but to use the theoretical background and the methods of contemporary linguistics. Instead of singling out “monosyllabic languages”, we are interested in monosyllables in (potentially) all languages, their properties in individual languages and cross-linguistically, their place in the individual systems, their evolution and decline. The very nature of monosyllables – their being syllables as well as words – makes studying these items worthwhile for a number of different research questions within various fields of linguistics. The papers collected in this volume shall demonstrate this. The initial paper by Hans Basbøll opens the discussion of such elementary questions as what (phonologically) really is a monosyllable, how such structures come about as the result of phonological processes, and how they may be classified. In his detailed study of Danish he highlights the interaction of principles governing syllable structure and word structure and demonstrates the usefulness of the Sonority Syllable Model for description and typological classification. Two papers use methods of experimental phonetics and draw broader conclusions by contrasting languages: Yuan-Lu Chen investigates the principle of Contrast Preservation, which has been much discussed in phonological theory. The experimental research on nasality in two Chinese languages, Mandarin and Southern Min, leads the author to postulate a concept of lexical syllable on a level between the phoneme and the lexeme. The perception and categorization of tones in Mandarin monosyllables by speakers of three different languages (Cantonese, Japanese, and English) is the topic of Connie K. So’s detailed phonetic study that gives evidence for the principle that non-native pro-

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sodic categories will be assimilated to the categories of the listener’ native prosodic system. Issues of phonotactics and their implications for theories of word structure are discussed in the papers by Igor Dreer and Paula Orzechowska. Dreer analyses the distribution of consonants in Belarusian and in French on the background of the theory of Phonology as Human Behavior, testing its predictions of preferred positions for certain classes of phonemes. Orzechowska investigates consonant clusters in the coda of English and Polish words, with special consideration of monosyllables. Like Dreer, she looks for principles behind observed preferences, but her analysis, using the model of Net Auditory Distance, leads her to emphasize the interplay of phonotactics with morphology. With Alexis Michaud’s paper we come back to the evolution of monosyllables and to the issue of monosyllabic languages, defined as languages where monosyllables serve as the basic structure in the lexicon. In his broad and insightful investigation of East and Southeast Asian languages the author is concerned with the processes leading to monosyllables as well as those leading back to polysyllables, and with monosyllabicity as an areal phenomenon. While Michaud focuses on languages that are known to prefer monosyllables, the papers by Sabine Zerbian and Franck Floricic & Lucia Molinu present the complementary point of departure by investigating monosyllables as marked structures in languages. Zerbian analysis monosyllabic stems in the Southern Bantu language Tswana that pose a problem to the minimality condition requiring word-forms to have at least two syllables. She shows that both phonological and morphological minimality are needed to adequately account for the data. Violation of a minimality constraint is also the topic of Floricic & Molinu’s paper, who investigate monosyllabic imperatives across Romance languages. They demonstrate that a functional explanation is needed for these structures, in addition to phonological factors and frequency considerations. Another angle of research and a different methodology is presented in Petra Steiner’s paper on the use of quantitative linguistics for the study of monosyllables. To test her hypothesis of the validity of the Čebanov-Fucks law and predictions about entropy of syllable length, she uses data from the Chadic language Goemai. The final paper by Thomas Stolz, Sonja Hauser and Heiko Stamer is meant to outline some of the major chapters the grammar-to-be of monosyllables should comprise. They concentrate on one type of monosyllables, namely those consisting of a vowel only, and explore the formal and functional characteristics of words of this class across a broad variety of languages, using dictionaries as well as parallel texts as their sources. The predominance of phonology-inspired studies notwithstanding, this collection of articles is suggestive of a wide range of association lines which connect monosyllables to a variety of areas of linguistic research, viz. morphology, syntax, lexicon, etc. We are confident that future studies will reveal many more of these interconnections. We are grateful to the authors who have contributed to this volume and thus have helped us immensely to get our project on monosyllabicity going. We are also indebted to the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE) for funding the conference on

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which this edited volume is based. A word of thanks goes to the representatives of the Akademie Verlag who accepted our book on their programme of publications. Nicole Nau, Thomas Stolz & Cornelia Stroh

Poznań and Bremen, June 2011

References Adelung, Johann Christoph (1806): Mithridates oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde mit dem Vater Unser als Sprachprobe in bey nahe fünfhundert Sprachen und Mundarten. Erster Theil. Berlin: Vossische Buchhandlung. Finck, Franz Nikolaus (41961): Die Hauptypen des Sprachbaus. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Flitner, Andreas & Giel, Klaus (eds.) (1963): Wilhelm von Humboldt. Werke in fünf Bänden. III: Schriften zur Sprachphilosophie. Stuttgart: Cotta’sche Buchhandlung. Gabelentz, Georg von der (21901): Die Sprachwissenschaft. Ihre Aufgaben, Methoden und bisherigen Ergebnisse. Leipzig: Tauchnitz. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1827–29): Ueber die Verschiedenheiten des menschlichen Sprachbaus, in: Flitner, Andreas & Giel, Klaus (eds.), 144–367. Humboldt, Wilhelm von (1830–35): Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaues und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts, in: Flitner, Andreas & Giel, Klaus (eds.), 368–756. Schlegel, August Wilhelm (1818): Observation sur la langue et la littérature provençales. Paris: Librairie Grecque-Latine-Allemande. Ringmacher, Manfred (1996): Organismus der Sprachidee. H. Steinthals Weg von Humboldt zu Humboldt. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. Schlegel, Friedrich (1808): Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. Ein Beitrag zur Begruendung der Alterthumskunde. Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer. Steinthal, Heymann & Misteli, Franz (1893): Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft. Zweiter Teil: Charakteristik der hauptsächlichsten Typen des Sprachbaues. Berlin: Dümmler.

HANS BASBØLL (ODENSE/DENMARK)

Monosyllables and prosody: the Sonority Syllable Model meets the word∗

Abstract A monosyllable is a syllable and a word at the same time, and the focus of the paper is the interaction of principles of syllable structure with principles of word structure. The isolated syllable, which is a prototypical monosyllable (isolability being a main criterion of wordness), can be illustrated by my Sonority Syllable Model. It derives the sonority hierarchy, from existing vs. excluded segment types, through the implication: [vocoid] implies [sonorant] implies [voiced], thereby predicting the order: voiceless, voiced obstruents, consonantal sonorants, glides. It is discussed what happens at the margins of the isolated monosyllable (the status of sibilants). Other issues of syllable-word interaction are how morphological operations can affect phonotactics (Danish imperative formation), and the significance of the category of monosyllabic (as against polysyllabic) stems in word prosody (Danish stød). I shall end by a few typological suggestions on how to classify monosyllables, departing from the Sonority Syllable Model.

1. The Sonority Syllable Model To understand the nature of a monosyllable, we must consider the notions of both syllable (cf. Basbøll 1999) and word (cf. Basbøll 2000), a monosyllable being a syllable and a word at the same time. The focus of my paper is the interaction of principles of syllable structure with principles of word structure. It is well known among phonologists and phoneticians that segments (vowels and consonants) can be ranked according to their so-called inherent sonority, or inherent strength (where strength and sonority would be “inversely proportional”, as illustrated with the examples below). This idea goes back at least to Jespersen (1897–1899) and Sievers (1876) and has been used in different ways throughout modern phonology, cf. Blevins (1995: 210–213) and Laver (1994: 503–505). Obstruents are generally said to be less “sonorous” (or “stronger”) than nasals, nasals less “sonorous” (or “stronger”) ∗

I am indebted to Nina Grønnum for many useful remarks on the manuscript, both concerning contents and style. I should add that she does not agree with some of the phonetic claims made in section 1.

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than liquids, and liquids less “sonorous” (or “stronger”) than vowels. The order of segments in a syllable seems to follow the main principle that the most sonorous (or “weakest”), segment is the peak, and that sonority decreases – and strength increases – from the peak to the margins of the syllable, in both directions from the peak (cf. Vennemann 1988). I shall use the term “sonority” (and “sonority hierarchy”), rather than “strength”, in the following. There are many unclarities or problems in such an account. One area of problems concerns the foundation of phonotactics (see Basbøll 2005: 173–180 for exemplification, discussion and references): It can be based upon what I term inductivism, i.e. sonority hierarchies are seen as generalizations over observed phonotactic patterns, either language-specifically or cross-linguistically; the problem here is that there is no argument independent of order relations for the hierarchies postulated, thus the danger of circularity crops up. Or it can be based upon what I term phonetic primitivism, i.e. the belief that sonority is an independent phonetic parameter that can be phonetically defined; to my knowledge, such a belief has not been substantiated as yet. It can also be based upon what I term innatism or nativism, viz. that the hierarchy is in some way genetically transmitted (specific to the faculté du langage), in a strong Chomskyan sense; I do not want to subscribe to such a claim. The approach I favour, to be presented below in this section, has a foundation that I term general-phonetic deductivism. Another area of problems has to do with the definition of the segment types occurring in sonority hierarchies: vowels, liquids, nasals, and so on. They can be termed major classes of segments (see Basbøll 2005: 109–127). In particular, “liquid” is an illdefined term since the sound types it is supposed to cover, viz. laterals and “r-sounds”, compass many highly divergent sounds which do not behave in a uniform fashion with respect to sonority hierarchies. A further, but related, area of problems is the actual placement in a sonority hierarchy of particular segment types, obstruents being an obvious example. It is often claimed that fricatives are higher on the sonority scale than plosives, but this claim is problematic (as shown by e.g. the recurring clusters of /s/ plus plosive in many languages, see section 1.3). To say that e.g. a Danish monosyllable like straks is phonologically polysyllabic (with syllable-marginal /s/ forming (a) separate, perhaps degenerate, syllable(s)), is in my view an unacceptable escape route. My purpose here is to present a non-circular foundation of a sonority hierarchy that can be used in phonotactic descriptions cross-linguistically without the inherent flaws I find in many alternative sonority (or strength) hierarchies. Three conditions for the application of the model to phonotactic patterns in different languages must be indicated at the outset: (1) it is not a model that predicts all phonotactic restrictions, both because there are many restrictions unrelated to sonority, and because some languages (like Georgian) present consonant clusters which cannot be predicted by any explicit, detailed and unitary sonority hierarchy (cf. section 6.1); (2) some sound types in the languages of the world (like voiced aspirated plosives, in particular) are difficult to range into a strong model of the type I am using, and even

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though such sound types may be rare, they cannot be ignored (cf. section 1.3); (3) the level of application for phonotactic regularities is not discussed here even though it is relevant: should the segments be phones, phonemes, or morphophonemes, for example?

1.1. Vocoid: the prototypical peak of a syllable All languages of the world can be described using syllables as structures. The point of departure here is taken in this fact and in the observation that all languages have vowel segments which form the peak of a syllable. Some, but not all, languages also have nonvowels (“consonants”) that can form the peak of a syllable (such as /l/ in the second syllable of English little, or in the only syllable of Czech vlk ‘wolf’). The mirror-image situation also applies: all languages of the world have non-vowels (“consonants”) that do not form the peak of a syllable. Some, but not all, languages also have vowels that do not form the peak of a syllable, e.g. so-called semi-vowels or glides, such as the first segment in the French monosyllable oui which is (regardless of phonetic transcriptions either with [w], or with [u] with a non-syllabicity diacritic) phonetically a vowel despite its function as non-peak. Thus it can safely be concluded that the prototypical peak of a syllable is phonetically a vowel segment, which is not the case for the prototypical nonpeak (which is phonetically a non-vowel, i.e. a consonant). The point of departure here is thus taken in the prototypical syllabic peak, i.e. a phonetic (as against “functional”) vowel, viz. a speech sound with unobstructed passage midsagitally in the vocal tract (and thus without noise). Since the distinction between the purely phonetic sense of “vowel” (regardless of function as peak or non-peak in a syllable), and the functional sense of “vowel” (where “vowels” are only used as a term for segments forming the syllabic peak, not for e.g. semi-vowels or glides), is crucial when founding a sonority hierarchy, I shall follow the terminology of Pike (1943: 78, 142) for vowels in a purely phonetic sense: vocoids. Thus non-syllabic phonetic vowels (often called glides or semi-vowels, including non-lateral approximants in modern IPAterminology) are vocoids, just like full or neutral vowels, to get the terminology used here straight from the start. The purpose of section 1 is, as said above, to establish a model of the syllable, based upon inherent sonority of phonological segments; and if one in such an endeavour would use a definition of vowels implying any kind of peakfunction in the syllable, the whole approach would be doomed to circularity (cf. Ohala 1992, for example). I insist that my Sonority Syllable Model does not run this risk. In the phonological literature, phonetically unsatisfactory definitions of vowels and consonants (in different terminologies), and for distinctive features used to characterize them (like vocalic, consonantal, and so on) abound (see Basbøll 2001 and 2005: 115ff.). Ladefoged (1971: 91) aptly says about his feature Consonantal: “This feature has a different status from all other features in that it can be defined only in terms of the intersection of classes already defined by other features. Thus nonconsonantal sounds are

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nonlateral and sonorant [and also oral/HB]. They correspond largely to what Pike (1943) called vocoids, which he defined as central resonant orals”. I think such a “cover feature” (in Ladefoged’s terminology) is, methodologically speaking, clearly preferable to other – positive – definitions in the case at hand (Occam’s razor). I have (since Basbøll 1973) used an equation as the formal definition of vocoid: [vocoid] =DEF [sonorant, –stop, –lateral] The features used here are all strictly binary. The marked (phonetically homogeneous) member of the opposition has no ‘+’ (the ‘+’ may be said to be implied): Vocoids constitute a phonetically homogeneous class, their opposite member (contoids according to Pike’s terminology) do not, since they include plosives and fricatives as well as sonorant laterals, for example. Sonorants are defined acoustically (following Ladefoged 1971: 58: “a comparatively large amount of acoustic energy within a clearly defined formant structure”, cf. Ladefoged 1971: 93: “greater acoustic energy in the formants”); they are – as their complementary class (obstruents), by the way – phonetically homogeneous. Obviously, laterals constitute a phonetically homogeneous class (whereas nonlaterals, including vocoids as well as nasals and obstruents, have nothing significant in common – apart from not being lateral). With this formal definition of vocoids, we are able to define six major classes of segment types, without using any features at all in addition to the three features used in the formal definition of vocoids, viz. sonorant, lateral and stop. This I consider a considerable methodological gain (still according to Occam’s razor), compared to the introduction of further features with new definitions. That there are six major classes defined from three binary features, rather than the logical maximum of eight (23), is due to the incompatibility of the features stop and lateral (the latter demanding free passage laterally in the mouth, the former excluding such a free passage): vocoids, sonorant laterals, nasal consonants, (non-lateral) fricatives, fricative laterals, and plosives (cf. Pike 1943: 142, chart 2). Notice that the laterals having a particular position in the sonority hierarchy are exactly those which are sonorant, not fricative.

1.2. Universal logic of segment types: independent of time and order (sequencing) As developed in section 1.1, the point of departure is the prototypical syllabic peak, which is a vocoid (a phonetic – as against “functional” – vowel). All vocoids are, necessarily, sonorant: this follows from the definition (section 1.1). But some sonorants are not vocoids, viz. prototypical (sonorant) laterals (which are [sonorant, lateral]) and nasal consonants (which are [sonorant, stop]). Furthermore, all sonorants are, necessarily, voiced: again, this follows from the definition used here (Ladefoged 1971: 58, 93) combined with the phonetic (articulatory and acoustic) fact that in order to get great acoustic

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energy in the formants (and this particularly concerns F1 due to the diminishing energy for higher formants), the vocal chords must vibrate. On the other hand, there are nonsonorant sounds, called obstruents that are voiced. Also voiceless segments occur, of course. This universal logic of segment types, built exclusively on existing vs. excluded segment types (in this case on the existence of sonorant non-vocoids (contoids) and voiced non-sonorants (obstruents), and – with our definitions – on the exclusion of e.g. voiceless sonorants) can be formulated as an implication: [vocoid] implies [sonorant] implies [voiced]. This universal logic of segment types, which is independent of any aspect of time or order, can be depicted by a set of (concentric) Euler’s circles (Figure 1):

Figure 1: A set of (concentric) Euler’s circles depicting the logical relation between vocoids, sonorants and voiced segments – independently of any time- or order aspect (from Basbøll 2005: 194)

1.3. Introduction of time: a syllable model emerges When the dimension of time is introduced into the set of concentric circles, a set of relevant order classes of phonotactics follows, predicting the order (up to the peak): voiceless segments, voiced obstruents, consonantal sonorants, vocoids; and the mirrorimage order in the final part of the syllable. Thus the introduction of the time dimension turns the model into a Sonority Syllable Model (Figure 2):

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Figure 2: Identical to the set of Euler’s circles depicted in Figure 1, but with the addition of the dimension of time which turns the figure into a syllable model (from Basbøll 2005: 184) Figure 2 is equivalent to the following sequence of order classes (Figure 3):

Figure 3: In content identical to Figure 2, but depicted as a sequence of order classes for phonotactics of a (mono)syllable (from Basbøll 2005: 185) The unique strength, as far as I am aware, of the Sonority Syllable Model (compared to other models of such hierarchies) is its determination from the universal logic of segment types, i.e. from existing vs. excluded segment types. Once its foundation is accepted, there is nothing that can be changed (apart from the definition of distinctive features, see just below) in the model in order to make it predict different phonotactic patterns. It has often been proposed that fricatives should have higher sonority than plosives in a sonority hierarchy. Now, what does the Sonority Syllable Model say about that? First of all, it is impossible to include a feature responsible for the distinction between fricatives and plosives in the set of Euler’s circles depicted in figure 1: A circle corresponding to such a feature (representing either [–stop] or [(+)continuant], according to terminology) cannot be placed anywhere in Figure 1 because nasal consonants (which are [sonorant] but have a complete obstruction in the oral cavity and would thus be [stop] or, equivalently, [–continuant]) undeniably exist; this is within my model logically incompatible with the – likewise securely established – existence of voiced fricatives (which are [–sonorant, –stop]). The only feature I can imagine that could distinguish between plosives and fricatives and that could be entered into a version of my model (see below), is a feature like “perceptually continuant”, covering sonorants (including nasals) and fricatives, but not plo-

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sives (the term “continuante” has been used in French for such a distinction). But notice that such a feature (*[perceptually continuous]), if accepted in phonology at all, will be incompatible with the feature [voiced] in the model: the circle for *[perceptually continuous] can neither be placed closer to the center of the circles (in Figure 1) than [voiced], due to the existence of voiceless fricatives (which offends the implication “*[perceptually continuous] implies [voiced]”); nor can the circle for *[perceptually continuous] be placed farther away from the center of the circles (in Figure 1) than [voiced], due to the existence of voiced stops (which offends the implication “[voiced] implies *[perceptually continuous]”). The conclusion is that a feature like *[perceptually continuous] can only be seen as an alternative to Figure 1, viz. as part of the implication chain: [vocoid] implies [sonorant] implies *[perceptually continuant] This implication chain (which can, of course, be depicted as a set of concentric Euler’s circles corresponding to Figure 1) is crucially different from Figure 1 in its predictions: it predicts the possibility of phonotactic patterns in monosyllables with initial sequences of voiced obstruent + voiceless obstruent, and similarly, final sequences of voiceless obstruent + voiced obstruent within one syllable; at the same time, it excludes – within one syllable – all initial sequences of fricative + plosive and all final sequences of plosive + fricative. The predictions of Figure 1 are the exactly opposite: sequences of voiced obstruent + voiceless obstruent initially, and of voiceless obstruent + voiced obstruent finally within one syllable are excluded, but not sequences with fricatives more marginally than plosives in the syllable. The predicted sequences of Figure 1 are well known to occur, but the predicted sequences of the alternative model (with *[perceptually continuous]) would be very hard to master phonetically (if claimed to exist, they should be documented by observing their glottis configuration: that the shift in voicing predicted by the alternative model does in fact occur). I leave the issue here at that (there are other principles which govern phonotactics unrelated to the sonority hierarchy, but I do not enter into a discussion of these here). Two further points. Is the maximal version of the Sonority Syllable Model the one depicted in Figures 1–3? I take the answer to be: no, one further phonologically relevant distinctive feature satisfies the criteria for entering into the implication chain underlying the model (whereas the large majority of distinctive features do not): [spread glottis], which I understand as meaning “widely spread glottis”. (The following argument may be phonetically problematic and should be taken with some reservation, due to the occurrence of voiced breathy consonants; it depends on the exact definitions of the features). It is probably true that all voiced segments have non-spread glottis (i.e., a glottis position where the vocal chords are not widely apart). But the opposite is definitely not true: there are segments that are voiceless but do not have (widely) spread glottis. In fact, it was demonstrated by Frøkjær-Jensen et al. (1971) that in Danish, the aspirated plosives [ph ts kh] have spread glottis, like the voiceless frikatives (e.g. [s f]), whereas the unaspirated plosives [bW dW g% ] are voiceless but do not have (widely) spread glottis.

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This bipartition of voiceless segments (in [spread glottis] vs. [–spread glottis]), still in the sense of “widely spread glottis”, agrees with a number of phonological characteristics. This means that the maximal version of the Sonority Syllable Model can be based upon the following implication chain (the fact that I have mentioned examples from Danish has no bearing on its generality, everything on the features is based on general phonetics and logical principles): [vocoid] implies [sonorant] implies [voiced] implies [–spread glottis] One consequence of this implication chain in the Sonority Syllable Model is that its most marginal segments have the feature [spread glottis]. This makes very good sense phonetically, in my view: the isolated monosyllable, which is the prototypical isolated syllable, starts and ends in rest position which has, obviously, widely open passage through the glottis (for breathing). But it must be kept in mind that the possibility of this outermost circle of the model is less secured than that of the other circles (see just above), and more dependent on a specific and perhaps controversial feature definition, therefore I consider the maximal version of the Sonority Syllable Model as less securely established than that which has been used elsewhere in this section (sections 1.1, 1.2 and 1.4).

Figure 4: Maximal version of the Sonority Syllable Model (including segments with [spread glottis] at the margins) as applied to Danish monosyllables. Active semi-circles (initially and/or finally) are boldfaced (from Basbøll 2005: 222) When the Sonority Syllable Model is applied to a specific language, some of its circles are typically non-active, i.e. they do not predict any specific orderings of segments in that language (see further section 6.1 below). This is no violation of the logic of the model: in an implication chain where “A implies B implies C” it is, by logical necessity, also the case that “A implies C” – this corresponds to the removal of a circle in the model. Furthermore, different circles can be non-active in either margin of the syllable. Figure 4 depicts the model of the isolated monosyllable in Danish, where active circles (in either part of the syllable) are boldfaced.

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1.4. Syllables in words: extending the Sonority Syllable Model

Figure 5: Model of the maximal native Danish word of the prototypically native prosodic structure with just one stressed syllable, which is initial, and at most two posttonic syllables both with the phoneme /ə/ as peak. The figure is simplified (for ease of readability), see the text (from Basbøll 2005: 247) Figure 5 represents a model of the maximal native Danish word of the prototypically native prosodic structure with just one stressed syllable, which is initial, and at most two posttonic syllables both with the phoneme /ə/ as peak. The figure is simplified (for ease of readability) in four respects: (1) the circle for [–spread glottis] (which is the least securely established in the model, cf. section 1.3) in the stressed syllable is lacking; (2) it is explicitly indicated that the peak of the stressed syllable is a full (i.e., nonneutral) vowel (“V”), and that /ə/ is the peak of the two weak syllables; (3) it is indicated that there is, outside the peak, a circle for [vocoid] in the stressed syllable, i.e. there can be non-syllabic vocoids (glides) both before and after the peak; and (4) the arrow representing time is not indicated even though the figure is a model of three consecutive syllables in one word. These simplifications are specific to this figure, and to Danish, of course, and not part of the general model. Three further points are worth noting in this connection. First, the peak is, by convention, the center of the set of concentric Euler’s circles depicting the model. It will most often be the circle [vocoid], but for certain syllables the circle for [vocoid] can be non-active, and [sonorant] will in such syllables be the innermost active circle and thus contain the peak (cf. Czech vlk ‘wolf’, English little). The peak will still, also in such cases, be a peak of sonority, thus respecting the basic principle of sonority syllables. Second, different syllables may have widely different structural complexities, e.g. depending on their peak. In Danish, the decisive distinction in this respect is that between full vowels, which can be the peak of monosyllables, and non-full = neutral vow-

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els (or schwa vowels) which cannot. The syllable with a full vowel peak contains four circles of the model: [vocoid], [sonorant], [voiced] and [–spread glottis] (even though the last one is not depicted in the simplified Figure 5). The immediately posttonic syllable in this model of the maximal native (simplex) word (with the prototypical native prosodic pattern) contains only two circles, viz. [vocoid] (which is in such syllables the phoneme /ə/) and [voiced]. And the final syllable (if there is a third syllable) only contains the circle [vocoid]. A word like blomstrende ‘flourishing’ ['bW lZmsdW -nə] /blɔmstrənə/ can illustrate the model of Figure 5 (see also just below in this section). Third, the model in Figure 5 can be taken to conceptualize the particular status of the most marginal segments of the stressed syllable, viz. those which are voiceless, and (although this is not depicted in the simplified version of Figure 5), with spread glottis. These segments can be seen (conceptualized) as not belonging uniquely to a particular syllable. The salient sibilants, which are prototypical representatives of this category, occur in a surprisingly large number of intervocalic clusters, or interludes (see Basbøll 2005: 234–239). Phonologically, they belong to the preceding (strong) syllable, but phonetically, they rather belong to the following (weak) syllable. Also, the final part of the word can consist of non-syllabic morphemes consisting exclusively of [–spread glottis] segments. The word just mentioned, viz. blomstrende ‘flourishing’ ['bW lZmsdW -nə] /blɔmstrənə/, can be provided with phonological syllable boundaries (which are relevant for phonotactics) as follows: /blɔmst.rən.ə/. This syllable structure allows the simplest possible account for segment combinations and their manifestations (see Basbøll 2005: 202–247). Phonetically speaking, the syllable boundaries would be different: ['bW lZm.sdW -.nə]. I return to the issues of phonotactics and (mono)syllables in section 6.1 below.

2. Sound structure of Danish (vs. Swedish) 2.1. Weakening processes in Danish (contra Swedish), and the resulting syllable structure Compare Swedish gata, koka ‘street, cook’ [ˇ}+ːta, ˇkhuːka] (with word accent 2) with their Danish cognates gade, koge ['}%æːðə '}%æːðL , 'khɔːwə 'khɔː^]. The Danish forms (of which the two without [ə] are by far the most common) represent the combined effect of obstruent weakening/vocalisation of consonants (the intervocalic obstruents in Swedish corresponding to approximants/glides in Danish, also [ð] being an approximant) and schwa-reduction (the final full vowel /a/ in Swedish corresponding to the neutral, very weak and assimilable/deletable, vowel phoneme schwa in Danish). These processes (sound changes) started in the middle ages, and by and large, they left Swedish and Norwegian unaffected. Both Swedish gata and koka [ˇ}+ːta, ˇkhuːka] have two syllables with clear boundaries (/CV.CV/), which is the expected syllable structure typologically.

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Quite on the contrary, Danish gade, koge koge ['}%æːð, 'khɔː^] have a completely different syllable structure where the location of the syllable boundary and even the number of syllables is unclear: true disyllables, something unclear, or even monosyllables? The syllable structure can be formulated as this: /CVC.ə/, i.e. the intervocalic /C/ belongs, phonologically speaking, to the former, not the latter, syllable. The inventory of consonants in such an intervocalic position (before a schwa-phoneme) is completely different from the syllable-initial inventory of consonants (compare Ota (name), Oda (name) ['oːtsa, 'oːdW a] vs. note ‘note’, node ‘musical note’ ['noːdW ə, 'noːðL ]; [ð] is impossible before full vowels such as [a]).

Figure 6: Syllabic-moraic structures for the Danish examples (k)oge o(ver) to the left, (l)uge u(denfor) in the middle, and (h)årdere at åre(lade) to the right (from Rischel 2003: 279) The vocalization of consonants and the frequent (but not obligatory) schwa-reductions thus result in long monotonous vocalic stretches (with respect to vowel quality and dynamics, not tonally, cf. Rischel 1970) making the Danish sound structure indistinct (‘unclear’) by weakening cues for word and syllable boundaries or even making them nonexistent. Rischel (2003) gives some perhaps extreme, but phonetically completely realistic, examples of such long monotonous stretches of vocoids (phonetic vowels) (k)oge o(ver) ’boil over’ [regional pronunciation], (l)uge u(denfor) ‘weed outside’, h()årdere at åre(lade) ‘harder (to) bleed’. The two last examples are absolutely Standard Copenhagen speech, and very natural indeed. The non-parenthesized letters correspond to the vocalic stretches in question: in the middle part of Figure 6 a single vowel [u] stretches over three syllables with a total of five morae (the first and last of the /u/-phonemes representing long vowel phonemes); and in the right part of Figure 6, a single vowel [(] stretches over six syllables representing a total of eight morae (the first and the penultimate vowel being phonemically long). (A situation which could be evoked for the last (admittedly extreme) example, is a couple of vets, e.g. in a zoo, discussing which animal would be more (or less) difficult to bleed, cf. Rischel 2003: 280). A consequence of such structures as those of Figure 6 is that the phonetic difference between true monosyllables, and strings whose only vocoid (phonetic vowel) represents more than one syllable, is very slight (cf. section 6.3).

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2.2. Overview of cues for detecting sound structure in Danish contra Swedish Grønnum (e.g. 2003, 2005) has identified a number of systematic differences in cues available to detect the sound structure in Danish vs. Swedish. In particular, Danish suffers from weak signals prosodically: Stress is signaled by rather weak segmental cues, there are no specific juncture cues, no (or little) preboundary lengthening, an absence of compulsory sentence accents and an absence of compulsory local signals to utterance function. Table 1 is based upon Grønnum’s work. coda lenition light stressed syllables schwa elision /r/ elision semi-vowel elision length vacillation word accents (tonal) final lengthening compulsory sentence accent signal for utterance function

Danish yes yes yes yes yes yes no no no weak and global

Swedish no no no no no no yes yes yes strong and local

Table 1: Based upon Grønnum’s work, see Grønnum (2008). Phonetic and phonological processes/features that are important for easy/difficult access to the sound structure of Danish vs. Swedish1

2.3. Possible consequences of the indistinct Danish sound structure It is a well-known fact that foreigners (including our Scandinavian relatives) have difficulties decoding and understanding Danish. We hypothesize that the vocalization (weakening) of obstruents and the schwa-reductions (see sections 2.1 and 2.2) face addressees with great challenges in the process of communication. In this section some indications are given that Danish is hard to understand (orally), and that the Danish sound system may be hard to grasp; but this is, of course, not the same as claiming that Danish is more difficult than other languages overall, or that the sound structure is the only obstacle to communication. That the Danish sound structure does indeed present great difficulties for perception is in our mind beyond reasonable doubt (cf. Bleses et al. 2011, Bleses et al. 2010). Figure 7 shows that radio news in Danish are much more difficult to understand for other Scandinavians than Swedish or Norwegian radio news (in a well-designed very large experiment reported by Delsing & Åkesson 2005). 1

Grønnum has informed me (p.c.) that she will now change the answers for “final lengthening” into “moderate” (for Danish) and “comprehensive” (for Swedish), cf. Tøndering (2008).

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Figure 7: The understanding of radio news in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, by Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns with Swedish (S) and Finnish (F) as their mother tongue (Finland is officially bilingual, the overwhelming majority speaking Finnish). The y-axis represents understanding, with 10 as maximum (graph based on figures from Delsing & Åkesson 2005) Furthermore, the Danish sound structure may, as claimed above, present Danish children, in particular, with an extraordinarily hard task of segmentation which may affect their early comprehension abilities (see Bleses & Basbøll 2004, Bleses et al. 2011). Anyhow, it is a fact that Danish children score low in perception (8–15 months, in particular from 12 months) in Communicative Development Inventory-tests, see Bleses et al. 2008). An example of this is shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8: The graph depicts median values of a subset of a large cross-linguistic survey based upon the MacArthur-Bates-Communicative Development Inventory (from Bleses et al. 2008)

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3. Syllables and suffixes: child language input as a case 3.1. Weak past tense suffixes in Scandinavia: the syllable as bridge Weak past tense suffixes in Scandinavian languages are – generally (except the nondistinct Swedish variety in Table 2 – syllabic (Bleses et al. 2011). Table 3 presents the main forms in the four Scandinavian languages Danish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Swedish and Icelandic (Faroese and Norwegian Nynorsk are not included). The table illustrates some cues for syllabicity of this suffix according to the following hypothesis: for a syllabic suffix, the more salient the cues for syllabicity are, the more easy is the identification/segmentation of the suffix, e.g. for the child in the process of language acquisition. The three columns with numbers depict the following: the number of syllables in the past tense suffix; the number of separate vowel segments, i.e. those which are non-assimilated to their neighbour(s), in the past tense suffix; and the number of sonority rises from the stem-final consonant. It is significant, we believe, that Danish has weaker cues for syllabicity of the past tense suffix than the other Scandinavian languages, something which can be supposed to be a challenge when the sound code shall be cracked. See Table 2.

Danish -ede Norwegian -et -a Swedish -ade -a Icelandic -aði -aðir -uðum -uðuð -uðu

Spoken forms

Syllables in past tense suffix (1,2) [0 for other types of verbs]

Separate vowel segments (non-assimilated to their neighbour(s)) in past tense suffix (0,1,2)

Sonority rises from the stemfinal C (0,1,2)

Word accent cue for suffix (non-stød/ toneme 2) (0,1)

[' lɔː^ð̩] [' lɔː^ð]

2 1

0 0

0 0

(1) (1)

[ˇlɔːvət] [ˇlɔːva]

1 1

1 1

1 1

1 1

[ˇlɔːvadə] [ˇlɔːva]

2 1

2 1

2 1

1 1

[' lɔːvaðɪ ] [' lɔːvað7rW ] [' lɔːvʏðʏm] [' lɔːvʏðʏð̥] [' lɔːvʏðʏ]

2 2 2 2 2

2 2 2 2 2

2 2 2 2 2

0 0 0 0 0

Table 2: Depicting cues for syllabicity of the weak past tense suffix in Danish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Swedish and Icelandish (based upon the principles of Bleses et al. 2011: Table 3)

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3.2. Suffix boundaries in vocalic strings: syllables as signals Table 3 represents a calculation (from Bleses et al. 2011) of the signaling of suffix boundaries (word-internal boundaries before an inflectional suffix) by means of sonority, in agreement with the hypothesis of the syllable as a bridge. Departing from the knowledge that Danish glides and approximants (vocoids) often correspond to obstruents (stops and fricatives) in Swedish and Norwegian (cf. section 2), we ask how important this difference is, quantitatively, in true child language input (Child Directed Speech). We took part of our Danish child language input data and calculated (in our Olam-system, see Madsen et al. 2002 and Basbøll & Lambertsen 2008), from the distinct (dictionary) pronunciations in our codings: (1) we determined how often a suffix boundary occurs between two [vocoid] segments (including glides and non-lateral approximants), compared to all occurrences of such a boundary between two segments (vowels and/or consonants); (2) we then deleted all schwa-vowels (/ə/), thereby getting a most reduced variant of Danish (in real life, reductions would be supposed to be somewhere in between these two figures, but the difference was small anyhow, as shown in the table); (3) finally, we took the distinct Danish input (as in (1)) and replaced glides and non-lateral approximants with obstruents, in syllable-final position (i.e. the position in which Danish consonant weakening takes place), thereby “reversing consonant weakening” in a sense. More specifically, for each of the steps (1), (2) and (3), we registered the number of cases where a suffix boundary occurred between two vocoids (including glides and non-lateral approximants, e.g. the word form mad+en ‘the food’ ['mQːlðən] would in step (1) count as having a ‘+’ in a vocalic string since both [ð] and [ə] are vocoids), and how many times it would occur between two segments which are not both vocoids (as in ball+er ‘balls’ ['bW allɐ] since only [ɐ] but not [l] is a vocoid). In step (2), mad+en would be calculated from ['mæːlðn] (reduced) and thus counted as not having a ‘+’ in a vocalic string (since only [ð] is a vocoid but not [n]). In step (3), finally, the [ð] in ['mæːlðən] – the distinct Danish form – will be counted as a non-vocoid since it is in syllable-final position where it corresponds to an obstruent in Swedish/Norwegian, and mad+en in step (3) is therefore counted as not having ‘+’ in a vocalic string. This is, of course, a very crude measure, and only an experiment or an illustration (in the absence of genuine Swedish or Norwegian phonetically analyzed data of the sort). But the result was interesting: about 30% suffix boundaries in Danish occurred in a vocalic string, i.e. where sonority does not give a cue for segmentation; in “simulated Swedish/Norwegian” (calculated from Danish), only 8% suffix boundaries occurred in a vocalic string. See Table 3.

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Danish distinct Danish reduced Simulated Swedish/Norwegian

no. of boundaries within seg+seg sequences 33.381 20.087 33.381

no. of boundaries within vocalic sequences 9.623 6.406 2.687

% of boundaries within vocalic sequences 28.8% 31.9% 8.0%

Table 3: Frequency of pre-suffix-boundaries within vocalic sequences as % of presuffix-boundaries within segments (vowels and/or consonants), in Danish distinct, Danish reduced and in “simulated Swedish/Norwegian” (calculated from Danish, but reversing Danish “final consonant weakening”)2

4. Suffixes in words: grammaticalized positions In this section I shall present (i) a general model for the integration of suffixes in word structure (section 4.1), (ii) its application to Danish, i.e. the way the model is grammaticalized (sections 4.2–4.3), and (iii) the classification of suffixes based upon these general principles (sections 4.4–4.5).

4.1. Integration of suffixes into word structure: a general model The more independent a suffix is with respect to what precedes in the word, the less it will be expected to be integrated in the word structure: Criteria: is the suffix added to new words? – yes, as default – well, to a subset of new words (only) – no, it is not Criteria: is the suffix added to a word rather than to just a stem? – yes, always – no, not always Criteria: is the suffix signaled phonotactically as an ending? – yes, it is – no, it is not According to these criteria the following taxonomy of degrees of integration of suffixes into word structure can be established: Least integration with what precedes in the word: 2

From Bleses et al. (2011, Table 4). Danish child language input (from Odense Twin Corpus and Kim Plunkett’s Childes-corpus, cf. Basbøll & Jørgensen 2010). The part of our corpus analysed here contains 47.757 utterances with 216.829 coded words.

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– default ending for new words – and always added to a word, not just to a stem Most integration with what precedes in the word: – not added to new words – and not phonotactically signaled as an ending There are three possibilities in between (in the order of decreasing degree of integration): – default but not always added to a word; – added to some new words (only); – not added to new words but phonotactically signalled as an ending.

4.2. Grammaticalization of suffix positions in Danish The way Danish grammaticalizes these five degrees of integration of suffixes into word structures is, I claim: Least integration with what precedes in the word: – default ending for new words – and always added to a word (not just to a stem) Medium integration with what precedes in the word: – default but not always added to a word; – or added to some new words (only); – or not added to new words but phonotactically signaled as an ending Most integration with what precedes in the word: – not added to new words – and not phonotactically signaled as an ending Thus I propose that Danish has grammaticalized the two extreme degrees of integration predicted by the model (section 4.1), but not any distinction between degrees lying in between the extremes. This means, as a hypothesis, that there are three phonologically relevant positions for Danish suffixes (for the criteria employed, see further sections 4.4 and 4.5 below). -er (bil-er ‘cars’)

P3

Least integration:

PL

Medium integration: (only one category in Danish)

-e (elsk-e ‘love’) -Ø (nip-Ø ‘sip’) P2 PT -te (men-te ‘meant’)

Most integration:

PL

INF

PL

-e (dreng-e ‘boys’)

P1

These three positions for inflectional suffixes in the word structure for Danish each define a phonological domain (see further section 4.5). The category with medium integration is a heterogeneous one, lexically and grammatically speaking (but not phono-

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logically), and the reason why it contains both a default ending and a suffix generally not employed in new words, deserves a few comments: (1) INF -e (schwa) is default in new words, so why should it not take P3 (the position of least integration)? Answer: IMP is often not a well-formed syllable nor a well-formed word: cykl! hamstr! klatr! E.g. cykl! ['sy}̊l] goes counter sonority. Danes do not like it and avoid it and prefer: (a) either cykl! ['sy}̊lW ] with voiceless [lW ], a true monosyllable (no offence of the sonority principle); (b) or cykl! ['sy}̊lL ] with syllabic [lL ] which thus becomes identical to the noun cykel, a disyllable. This means that the infinitive suffix /ə/ is not always added to a wellformed syllable or a well-formed word (['syɡ̊l] is neither), hence the infinitive suffix /ə/, although it is the default ending for this grammatical category, within my model belongs to the position P2 (lexicalized, i.e. within the basic word). (2) In men-te ‘meant’ ['meːndW ə], for example, the long vowel phoneme signals the presence of a suffix, i.e. that the word form is polymorphemic: a single lexeme cannot contain a long vowel before a consonant cluster of this type (nasal + stop).

4.3. Word structure in Danish: integration of suffixes Figure 9 presents an overview of Danish word structure according to the principles established in sections 4.1 and 4.2.

Figure 9: Word structure in Danish, based upon the four different positions established in sections 4.2 and 4.3 (P3 is not split up in P3A and P3B since it is, phonologically speaking, a single position with a single effect; P4 is the position for clitics) (from Basbøll 2009: 20) Figure 9 builds upon the following principles for positions in Danish word structure (cf. Diderichsen’s “Sentence Scheme” which can be considered a parallel within syntax to my model of word structure with a number of positions which can be filled by grammatical content according to general and language-specific principles, see Diderichsen 1946): Never more than one inflection on a position Consequence: bil-er-ne ‘car+PL+DEF’ shows that P3 must be split: -er (PL) on P3A and -ne (DEF) on P3B (same effect phonologically, therefore P3 is not split up into P3A and P3B in Figure 9, since it is, phonologically speaking, a single position with a single effect). Specific restrictions for inflectional suffixes in Danish word structure:

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Only one can be filled of the set { P1 P2 P3A } P2 can only be filled by verbal suffixes The position P4 on the scheme is not inflectional strictly speaking since it occurs after the word. It is the position filled by the so-called genitive or possessive (cf. English), which is a clitic: træet-s grene ‘the branches of the tree’ { [ ( hus e ) ] } s ‘House+PL+GEN’ { [ ( hus e ) ] ne } s ‘House+PL+DEF+GEN’ Genitive-s occurs at the end of phrases (as a clitic): Kongen af Danmark’s bolsjer ‘The king of Denmark’s sweets’ Hende jeg mødte i går’s mand ‘Her I met yesterday’s husband...’

4.4. Fully productive suffixes in Danish Now we go to the set of inflections which are both used as default endings in their grammatical category and which are always added to a word (not just to a stem); there is just one phonological form for each grammatical category. Table 4 presents the full set for Danish (which is more like German in its complexity, but more like English by its defaultish endings): Nouns:

PL DEF SG:

utrum

DEF PL PL + DEF

Adjectives

NEU PL/DEF/GRADE COMP SUP

Verbs:

PRES

active

PAST PAST PTC PRES PTC GERUND PASS

* means integratable (in the basic word)

ər* ən nə ənə t* ə* rə st r* ədə* əd* ənə* ən* s

neuter: əd

Table 4: Adapted from Basbøll (2005: 358)3 3

The placement in a different column for def. sg. neuter has no significance. The ‘*’ means that the suffix in question can be lexicalized, i.e. occur in the basic word (on P1 or P2), in addition to the placement on P3. The inflectional suffixes with ‘*’ thus have two positional possibilities, viz. P3A and P1 (for simplex non-verbs, i.e. nouns and adjectives) or P3A and P2 (for verbs). The suffixes without a ‘*’ take the position P3B.

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In summary, the following generalizations on the relation between grammatical content and position in the word (relevant for phonology) obtain: P3A and P3B are the positions for non-integrated (fully productive) inflectional endings (a well defined inventory, as shown in table 4). P3A and P3B are filled by different grammatical categories. As said above, endings which can occur on P3A can also be integrated, but not endings occurring on P3B: P3B: – –

Nouns: DEF; Adj: COMP, SUP; Verbs: PASS;

P3A: – –

Nouns: PL; Adj: PL/DEF/GRADE, NEU; Verbs: all other grammatical categories than PASS (e.g. PRES, PT)

4.5. Lexicalized suffixes and phonological domains P2 is the position for integrated inflectional endings of simplex verbs. The reason verbs have the position P2 for integrated suffixes (but not simplex non-verbs), is, according to my analysis, the fact that the stem of many verbs is neither a normal word nor a normal syllable, even though imperative = stem (cf. hækl!, ændr! etc.). Danes react negatively to such forms, see section 4.2. P1: the position for integrated inflectional endings of simplex non-verbs and (lexicalised) verb forms with vowel shortening (like bag-te, bud-t). All endings which have another phonological content than the fully productive ending (the ending that can fill P3) of that grammatical category, are integrated (i.e. occur on P1 or P2). This is in agreement with the fact that such endings must be considered a part of the lexical information of the lexemes in question, they cannot be constructed from default principles. gulere mentes

{ [ ( gul - e) ] re } { [ ( men ) te ] s }

COMP PT PASS

of gul of mene

‘yellow’ ‘mean’

As shown in Figure 9, the phonologically relevant positions for suffixes P1, P2, P3 and P4 define three phonological domains indicated on the figure, viz. min-word, basic word and max-word; in addition, the word including the P4-position can be considered a fourth domain (a kind of Prosodic word). Phonological rules that apply for each of the three domains of Figure 9, are, within segmental phonology: Min-word (i.e.. “( .... )” in Figure 9, incl. P1): Vowel shortening before CC. Example: lyst ['lysdW ] ‘light+NEU’ (/t/ ([dW ]) on P1), from lys non-neuter ['lyːls].

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Basic word (i.e. “[ .... ]” in Figure 9, incl. P2 (regardless of what is inside): Dropping of [ð] (an approximant) before /t/. Example: født ['føːldW ] ‘born+PP’ (/t/ ([dW ]) on P2), from føde INF with [ð]: ['føːð̩ə 'føːð 'føðð̩]). Max-word: so-called post-lexical phonology, e.g. many assimilations. Within prosodic phonology, the principles for stød are crucial, see section 5.

5. Monosyllables and stød: language state and language change 5.1. Stød: a syllable rhyme prosody Stød is, according to the brilliant 18th century scholar Jens P. Høysgaard (1698–1773), pronounced with something reminding of a “push”, like et meget lidet hik (1747: 273), i.e. ‘(like) a very little hiccup’ (stød is a laryngeal syllabic rhyme prosody). The absence or presence of this ‘little hiccup’-like phenomenon can be the only difference distinguishing words having otherwise identical pronunciations (see e.g. Basbøll 2005, 2008; Grønnum & Basbøll 2007, in press). Examples are: ven, vend! ‘friend’, ‘turn!’ ['vɛn, 'vɛnl]; musen, musen ‘the muse’, ‘the mouse’ ['muːsən, 'muːlsən]; vandet, vandet ‘watery’, ‘the water’ ['vanəð, 'vanləð]. It is also found in the traditional Danish pronunciation of Latin: in?sula, insularum, aman?t (in orthography, with ‘?’ added for stød). Stød is not limited to the native vocabulary, however. The following are some of my favourite composers (of German or Austrian origin, except Sibelius): Hän?del, Moza?rt, Beetho?ven, Schu?bert, Bra?hms, Wag?ner, Sibe?lius. There is just one Émile Zola [so'la], but modern literature would benefit from having more Zola?er [so'læːlɐ] (Danish pluralisation).

5.2. First literary evidence of stød? Hemming Gadh’s anti-Danish speech vehemens oratio contra Danos, said to have been held in 1510 according to Magnus (1554), contains the following passage [my emphasis]: Nec ut cæteri homines loqui dignantur, immò more tussientium, aut verba in medio gutture formantium, ita de industia proloquuntur, ut superius labium in sinistrum, inferiusque in dextrum latus distorquentes, ex singulari oris deformitate, singularem gloriam sese assequi posse existiment. (Magnus 1554, quoted after the 2nd ed. 1617: 875 [boldfacing mine]). In a Swedish translation from later in the same century, the passage sounds: Der till medh: så wærdas de icke heller att talla som annat folck, utan tryckia ordhen fram lika som the willia hosta, och synas endeles medh flitt forwendhe ordhen i strupan, for æn de komma fram, sammaledes wanskapa the munnen, då

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the talla, wridhan och wrengan, så att the draga then offwra leppen till then wenstra sidon och den nedra till then högra sidon, menandes dett wara sig en besynnerlighe prydning och wellståndh (quoted after Söderberg 1908). In English, this would be: ‘Also this: nor do they worthy themselves to speak like other people, but press the words forward as if they will cough, and appear partly to deliberately turn the words around in the throat, before they come forward (i.e. out of the mouth), partly they misshape the mouth when they speak, twist it and turn it, so that they pull the upper lip to the left side and the lower to the right side, thinking this to be a particular ornament and well-standing.’ [My translation] This is probably the first literary evidence of stød, with the strong suggestion of laryngeal activity.

5.3. The Non-Stød model The general principle is: a syllable that is heavy in a specific sense, in my terminology bimoraic, has stød (i.e., presupposing it has long sonority in the rhyme and primary or secondary stress). Phonologically, the locus of stød is the second mora. Our task is thus to account for Non-Stød, i.e.: which heavy syllables have Non-Stød? Non-Stød can be lexically specified, either according to parts of the vocabulary or tied to individual lexical items. This is Lexical Non-Stød, which applies in the nonnative vocabulary generally, and as the marked case in the native vocabulary. (Notice that native includes the Latin, Greek and German parts of the Danish vocabulary, but not English and French.) Examples are torsk ‘cod’, spleen; ven ‘friend’, balkon (the last two examples with extraprosodic final C) ['ts(ːs}%, 'sbW liːn, 'vɛn, bW al'khZŋ]. Non-Stød can also be morphologically specified, depending on word structure having different positions for suffixes. This is Morphological Non-Stød which applies in the native vocabulary as the unmarked case. Examples are Non-Stød in huse, spillet ’houses, played’ ['huːsə, 'sbW eləð 'sbW elð̩]. Figure 10 gives a summary of The Non-Stød system in Danish: The Stød System: | Lexical Non-Stød | Morphological Non-Stød ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Native-like: | marked | unmarked ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Foreign-like: | general | irrelevant -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Figure 10: The two kinds of Non-Stød according to my model, viz. Lexical Non-Stød and Morphological Non-Stød, cross-classified with respect to the native and non-native part of the lexicon (as fas as stød is concerned). Notice that native includes the Latin, Greek and German parts of the Danish vocabulary, but not English and French

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5.4. Morphological Non-Stød: monosyllabic vs. polysyllabic stems Two subcases: (a) the penultimate syllable of the min-word – ”(…)” – has Non-Stød (b) a monosyllabic stem before a syllable has Non-Stød (domain: basic word ”[…]”)

husenes { [ ( hus e ) ] ne } s ‘House+PL+DEF+GEN’ (a) mu?senes { [ ( mus ) ] ene } s ‘House+PL+DEF+GEN’ tals { [ ( tal ) ] } s, without stød gulere { [ ( gul e) ] re } (a) COMP of gu?l ‘yellow’, mentes { [ ( men ) te ] s } (b) PT PASS of mene ‘mean’ mene { [ ( men ) e ] } (b) INF mene ‘mean’ The difference between P1, P2, P3 and P4 is decisive.

-e on P1 -ene on P3 -s on P4 -e on P1 -te on P2 -e on P2

5.5. Is morphological Non-Stød changing? And what about monosyllables? Grønnum & Basbøll (2007) give the following examples, taken from Grønnum’s collection through a decade of unexpected stød forms in the Danish Radio, see Figure 11. Simple nouns in the plural ['f(ːmuːʔ ɐ] formuer ‘fortunes’ but ['f(ːmuːu] formue is always without stød in the singular; ['Zmʁɔːʔ ðɐ] områder ‘areas’ but ['Zmʁɔːðə] område is always without stød in the singular (2007: 203) Compound nouns in the plural ['viːnn+wʔ nə] vinnavne ‘wine names’ but ['n+wnə] navne alone is always without stød in isolation; ['syːyhuːʔ sə] sygehuse ‘sickhouses (i.e. hospitals)’ but ['huːsə] huse alone is always without stød in isolation (2007: 204) Figure 11: Examples of unexpected stød occurrences that point towards an ungoing simplification of the principles of Morphological Non-Stød (see text) (from Grønnum & Basbøll 2007: 203; 204) Seen from the point of view of the Non-Stød Model, such a change would not affect the phonological part of the model: bimoraic syllables will still have stød. Also the lexical part: Lexical Non-Stød, encompassing Extra-Prosodicity and Lexical specification [– stød], will still apply as before. Only Morphological Non-Stød will have to be modified. And the notion of monosyllabic stem becomes even more important. If the cases of “unexpected stød” collected by Grønnum through many years, are being generalised, the tendency could be, seen from the perspective of the Non-Stød Model (Grønnum & Basbøll 2007, in press): Instead of two subcases of Morphological Non-

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Stød, we just get one, and even that with a simplification. As Grønnum & Basbøll (2009), state for the core of the native Non-Stød-system: from a specific morphological parsing: before semi-productive (P2-) syllabic suffixes only mono-syllabic stems have no stød to unspecified morphological parsing: before any syllabic suffix, only mono-syllabic stems have no stød to mainly phonological parsing: in any word which phonetically resembles a stem + syllabic suffix, only monosyllabic stems have no stød Figure 12: From Grønnum & Basbøll (2009)

6. Typological suggestions and the Sonority Syllable Model 6.1. Phonotactic typology and the Sonority Syllable Model There are two mutually exclusive models of the Sonority Syllable Model, viz. (A) with [voiced] and (B) with [perceptually continuous] after [sonorant] (cf. section 1.3). Predictions of model A and B differ crucially: According to Model A, fricatives can be more marginal than plosives (cf. Germanic languages); according to Model (B), voiced plosives can be more marginal than voiceless fricatives (a phonetically improbable situation, I claim). Both these models agree with the basic principles of the Sonority Sylable Model, and it cannot be excluded that some languages are in disagreement with model A but not with model B; but model A is undoubtedly the more plausible model for phonotactics, and I shall use this as my point of departure as basis for a phonotactic typology. The following questions are relevant when the Sonority Syllable Model is to be used for the phonotactic description of a given language (Basbøll 1994 and 2005: 193–199): (1) What is the maximal part of the Sonority Syllable Model not falsified by Phonotactic Patterns of the given Language? (2) What is the active part of the Sonority Syllable Model not falsified by Phonotactic Patterns of the given Language? (3) How many segments from each order class are allowed? (4) Which further restrictions can be found (e.g. *homorganity filters on the Sonority Syllable Model)? These questions must be asked separately for each Phonotactic Pattern of the given Language: e.g. there can be different models (with a different number of active circles) of stressed and unstressed syllables, for example (cf. section 1.4), or for native vs. (different types of) foreign words, and so on. When different languages are compared

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phonotactically, the Sonority Syllable Model can be used as the foundation, viz. a tertium comparationis (cf. Basbøll 1994 and 2005: 199–201).

6.2. Morphonotactic typology: combining phonotactics & morphology I shall only suggest a few relevant typological questions here, and refer to Dressler & Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (2006) for an interesting attempt towards founding a linguistic (sub)discipline of morphonotactics, with clear typological perspectives. Which Phonotactic Patterns (cf. section 6.1 just above) are found with respect to morphology? A separation of different strata of imported words can be relevant here. Are there non-syllabic prefixes and/or non-syllabic suffixes? And if so, what are the phonotactic consequences? In Danish such suffixes, whether derivational or inflectional, are all obstruents with [spread glottis], i.e. they belong to the most marginal order class of the Sonority Syllable Model: e.g. +sk (adjectivizing), +st (superlative), and the most marginal suffix in the word (cf. section 4.3), viz. clitic =s (possessive). Which reductions (e.g. as fast speech processes) depend on morphological structure, and how? What is the role of morphonotactics in acquisition?

6.3. Prosodic typology and the floating situation of monosyllables in Danish We have considered the following criteria for a second syllable in a Danish word (cf. section 3), i.e. for something that results in non-monosyllabicity: – – – –

sonority rise after the peak (not immediately, but after a preceding fall) non-stød (even though there is long sonority, cf. section 5.4). (Non-stød in a heavy syllable can also be due to the non-native character of the word, cf. section 5.3 on lexical non-stød.) a weak syllable tonally (cf. Grønnum 2007) extra segment length

Danish words like the following are not structural monosyllables: mente, spildte, time, bide, mase ‘meant, wasted, hour, bite, crush’; they are in very distinct pronunciation: ['meːndW ə, 'sbW ildW ə, 'tsiːmə, 'bW iːðə, 'mæːsə]. But in more casual speech they can be, and often are, pronounced like this: ['meːndW , 'sbW ildW , 'tsiːm, 'bW iːð, 'mæːs]. Grønnum & Basbøll (2001) measured consonant length with respect to syllabic and moraic structure, assimilation and stød, and in Basbøll (2005: 272–279) I draw consequences of these measurements for my model of syllabic-moraic structure. A basic methodological question is: Are such forms really perceived as disyllables? Or just identified (by the addressee) with a distinct form which satisfies criteria for nonmonosyllabicity? What is really a monosyllable, and what is not, and what is the basis for an answer, these are still intriguing questions.

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7. Conclusion The Sonority Syllable Model (section 1) offers a non-circular framework for the typological study of phonotactics, based upon the universal logic of (existing vs. excluded) segment types. Segments with [spread glottis] constitute the margin of the prototypical isolated syllable, viz. the monosyllable (which is simultaneously a syllable and a word). Even though the sonority hierarchy is crucial for any account of the order of segments in syllables, it is, however, only one of several criteria distinguishing between monosyllables and polysyllables (cf. section 6.3). The sound structure of Danish presents particular challenges for those who must crack the language code, not least the language acquiring child (section 2). This is due, I claim, to two – still active – weakening processes which have conspired to make Danish phonetic structure opaque, right from the middle ages, viz. final obstruent weakening and schwa reduction. As a consequence, it is not always possible to locate the appropriate syllable boundaries within one smoothly developing sonority slope – or even to determine the correct number of syllables. This furthermore contributes to the opacity of morpheme boundaries in Danish (according to the hypothesis of the syllable as bridge, section 3.1), much more so than in its closest relative, Swedish. Thus the difference between monosyllables and polysyllables is often opaque in Danish. In this language there is, however, an important further criterion for distinguishing monosyllables from polysyllables, viz. the stød (a laryngeal syllable rime prosody). In section 4, I present a general model for word structure and its grammaticalisation in Danish, and it turns out (in section 5) that the difference between monosyllabic and polysyllabic stems is crucial for the distribution of (non-)stød. In section 6, finally, some typological consequences are considered, and it is concluded that the distinction between monosyllables and polysyllables is far from being as clearcut as is often taken for granted.

Abbreviations COMP DEF GEN GRADE IMP INF NEU PASS

comparative definite genitive non-positive grade imperative infinitive neuter passive

PAST PL PP PRES PT PTC SG SUP

past (tense) plural past participle present (tense) past tense participle singular superlative

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References Basbøll, Hans (1973): Notes on Danish consonant combinations, in: Annual Reports from the Institute of Phonetics, University of Copenhagen 7, 103–142. Basbøll, Hans (1994): How to derive the sonority syllable from the prototypical peak, in: Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 27, 51–65. Basbøll, Hans (1999): Syllables in Danish, in: van der Hulst, Harry & Ritter, Nancy (eds.), The syllable: views and facts. (Studies in Generative Grammar 45). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 69–92. Basbøll, Hans (2000): Word boundaries, in: Booij, Geert; Lehmann, Christian & Mugdan, Joachim (eds.), Morphologie. (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 17.1). Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 377–388. Basbøll, Hans (2001): What can be derived from just three binary features: Occam’s razor and major classes for phonotactics, in: Grønnum, Nina & Rischel, Jørgen (eds.), To honour Eli FischerJørgensen: Festschrift on the occasion of her 90th birthday. (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague 31). Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel, 74–99. Basbøll, Hans (2003): Prosody, productivity and word structure: the stød pattern of modern Danish, in: Nordic Journal of Linguistics 26, 5–44. Basbøll, Hans (2005): The phonology of Danish (series Phonology of the World’s languages, Durand, Jacques (ed.)). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Basbøll, Hans (2008): Stød, diachrony and the Non-Stød model, in: North-Western European Language Evolution 54/55, 147–189. Basbøll, Hans (2009): Is nothing something, or isn’t it anything? Zeroes in Danish prosodic morphology, in: Fraser, Bruce & Turner, Ken (eds.), Language in life, and a life in language: Jacob Mey – a festschrift. (Studies in Pragmatics 6). Oxford: Emerald, 19–24. Basbøll, Hans & Jørgensen, Rune Nørgaard (2010): Dansk – de smås store udfordring! Fra lyd til ord i danske børns sprogtilegnelse, in: Vejleskov, Hans (ed.), Børnesprog. Fra det 12. Nordiske Symposium om Børnesprogsforskning. Copenhagen: UCC, 3–14. Basbøll, Hans & Lambertsen, Claus (2008): Correspondances entre phonèmes et lettres: calculs de quelques exemples français par le système de requêtes et de codage OLAM. Presentation at Phonologie du français contemporain: variation, interfaces, cognition. Paris, 11–13 December 2008. http://www.projet pfc.net/index.php?option=com_docman&task=cat_view&gid=942 &Itemid= 179&limitstart=5 Bleses, Dorthe & Basbøll, Hans (2004): The Danish sound structure – Implications for acquisition in normal and hearing impaired populations, in: Schmidt, Erik; Mikkelsen, Ulla; Post, Inge; Simonsen, Jørn Borcher & Fruensgaard, Kirsten (eds.), Brain, hearing and learning. Proceedings of the 20th Danavox Symposium. Copenhagen: Holmen Center Tryk, 165–190. Bleses, Dorthe; Basbøll, Hans; Lum, Jarrad & Vach, Werner (2010): Phonology and lexicon in a crosslinguistic perspective: the importance of phonetics, in: Journal of Child Language, 38(1), 61–68. Bleses, Dorthe; Basbøll, Hans & Vach, Werner (2011): Is Danish difficult to acquire? Evidence from Nordic past tense studies, in: Language and Cognitive Processes, 26, 1193–1231 (published online January 2011). Bleses, Dorthe; Vach, Werner; Slott, Malene; Wehberg, Sonja; Thomsen, Pia; Madsen, Thomas O. & Basbøll, Hans (2008): Early vocabulary development in Danish and other languages: a CDI-based comparison, in: Journal of Child Language 35, 619–650.

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Blevins, Juliette (1995): The syllable in phonological theory, in: Goldsmith, John A. (ed.), Phonological theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 206–244. Delsing, Lars-Olof & Åkesson, Katarina (2005): Håller språket ihop Norden? En forskningsrapport om ungdomars förståelse av danska, svenska och norska. TemaNord 573. Diderichsen, Paul (1946): Elementær Dansk Grammatik. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna (2006): Proposing morphonotactics, in: Rivista di Linguistica 18(2), 249–266. Frøkjær-Jensen, Børge; Ludvigsen, Carl & Rischel, Jørgen (1971): A glottographic study of some Danish consonants, in: Hammerich, L. L.; Jakobson, Roman & Zwirner, Eberhard (eds.), Form and substance: phonetic and linguistic papers presented to Eli Fischer-Jørgensen. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 123–140. Grønnum, Nina (1999): Syllables at multiple levels of representation in Danish, in: Syllabes, Journées d’Études Linguistiques, Nantes, 25–27 mars, 1999, 24–29. Grønnum, Nina (2003): Why are the Danes so hard to understand, in: Galberg Jacobsen, Henrik; Bleses, Dorthe; Madsen; Thomas O. & Thomsen, Pia (eds.), Take Danish for instance. Linguistic studies in honour of Hans Basbøll. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 119–130. Grønnum, Nina (2005): Fonetik & Fonologi. Almen og dansk. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Grønnum, Nina (2007): Rødgrød med fløde. En lille bog om dansk fonetik. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag. Grønnum, Nina (2008): Dansk udtale. Presentation in Dansk Sprognævns Repræsentantskab [the council of the official Danish language committee], October 3, 2008. Grønnum, Nina & Basbøll, Hans (2001): Consonant length, stød and morae in Standard Danish, in: Phonetica 58, 230–253. Grønnum, Nina & Basbøll, Hans (2007): Danish stød. Phonological and cognitive issues, in: Solé, Maria-Josep; Beddor, Patrice Speeter & Ohala, Manjari (eds.), Experimental approaches to phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 192–206. Grønnum, Nina & Basbøll, Hans (2009): Recent developments in the distribution of Danish stød – and their theoretical implications. Presentation at 5th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe. Copenhagen, 25–27 June 2009. Grønnum, Nina & Basbøll, Hans (in press): Danish stød. Towards simpler structural principles?, in: Niebuhr, Oliver & Pfitzinger, Hartmut (eds.), Prosodies. Context, function, and communication. (Series Language, Context, and Cognition.) Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Høysgaard, Jens Pedersen (1747): Accentuered og Raisonnered Grammatica. Copenhagen: Johann Christopher Groth. Reprinted in: Bertelsen, Henrik (1920/1979) (ed.). Danske Grammatikere fra Midten af det syttende til Midten af det attende Aarhundrede vol. 4. Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 251–488. Jespersen, Otto (1897–1899): Fonetik. Copenhagen: Det Schubotheske Forlag. Ladefoged, Peter (1971): Preliminaries to linguistic phonetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Laver, John (1994): Principles of phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Madsen, Thomas O.; Basbøll, Hans & Lambertsen, Claus (2002): OLAM – et semiautomatisk morfologisk og lydstrukturelt kodningssystem for dansk, in: Odense Working papers in Language and Communication 24, 43–56. Magnus, Johannes (1554): Historia de omnibus Gothorum Sueonumque regibus [published by O. Magnus], 2nd edn. [published by Schürer] (1617).

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Ohala, John J. (1992): Alternatives to the sonority hierarchy for explaining segmental sequential constraints, in: Papers from the parasession on the syllable. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society, 319–338. Pike, Kenneth L. (1943): Phonetics: a critical analysis of phonetic theory and a technic for the practical description of sounds. University of Michigan Publication in Language and Literature, vol. 21. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Rischel, Jørgen (1970): Acoustic features of syllabicity in Danish, in: Proceedings of the 6th international congress of phonetic sciences. Prague, 767–770. Rischel, Jørgen (2003): The Danish syllable as a national heritage, in: Galberg Jacobsen, Henrik; Bleses, Dorthe; Madsen, Thomas O. & Thomsen, Pia (eds.), Take Danish for instance. Linguistic studies in honour of Hans Basbøll. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 273–282. Sievers, Eduard (1876): Grundzüge der Lautphysiologie zur Einführung in das Studium der Lautlehre der indogermanischen Sprachen. Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel. [Since 1881 with the title Grundzüge der Phonetik zur Einführung in das Studium der Lautlehre der indogermanischen Sprachen] Söderberg, V. (1908): Det Hemming Gadh tillskrifna talet mot danskarna, in: Historiska Studier tillägnade Professor Harald Hjärne på hans sextioårsdag den 2 maj 1908 af lärjungar. Uppsala/Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 645–74. Tøndering, John (2008): Skitser af prosodi i spontant dansk. Unpublished Ph.D.-thesis, University of Copenhagen. Vennemann, Theo (1988): Preference laws for syllable structure. Berlin: de Gruyter.

YUAN-LU CHEN (TAIWAN)

Lexical-syllable contrast is preserved: evidence from cross-linguistic investigation of vowel nasality

Abstract Contrast preservation has been proposed as a formal property of the grammar, which works as a counter-force against neutralization. However, the level at which contrasts are preserved has not been well argued. This paper explores the interaction of nasality spreading and contrast preservation in a vowel nasality non-contrastive language (Mandarin Chinese) and a vowel nasality contrastive language (Southern Min), with two production experiments. Given that vowel nasality in Mandarin is noncontrastive, the degree of nasality spreading to vowels in Mandarin is taken as the baseline of no contrast preservation effect. When the degree of nasality spreading to vowels in Southern Min is less than that in Mandarin, there is a contrast preservation effect. It is found that contrasts are preserved at the lexical syllable, which is a level high than phoneme but lower than the morpheme.

1. Introduction Contrast preservation has been proposed as a formal property of the grammar (Bradley 2001; Flemming 1995 [2002], 2004; Łubowicz 2003; Padgett 2003a, b; Sanders 2003), which works as a counter-force against neutralization. However, the level at which contrasts are preserved has not been well argued. This paper explores the interaction of nasality spreading and contrast preservation in Mandarin and Southern Min, with two production experiments. It is found that contrasts are preserved at the lexical syllable, which is a level higher than phoneme and lower than the morpheme. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: In section 2, I introduce the contrast preservation mechanism used within the framework of Optimality Theory and specify the research objective. Section 3 describes the background of the experiments, in which I lay out the interaction of nasality spreading and neutralization in Mandarin and Southern Min and the significance of bilingualism in the two languages. Section 4 explains the production experiments and discusses the results. Section 5 concludes the paper.

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2. Raising the puzzle: at which level are contrasts preserved? Contrast preservation has been proposed as a formal property of the grammar and is proposed as various constraints in different approaches within the framework of Optimality Theory (Bradley 2001; Flemming 1995 [2002], 2004; Łubowicz 2003; Padgett 2003a, b; Sanders 2003). It is important to note that when one says X and Y contrast with each other, it must be specified in what sense X and Y are different. Consider the taxonomy of languages, for example. German and English contrast with each other in the sense that they are different languages. Yet, from the perspective of language family, German and English do not contrast with each other as they are both Germanic languages. At different levels of analysis, the same objects have different contrast relations. In the literature, the approaches on contrast preservation have hidden assumptions about the level at which contrasts are preserved. In Flemming (1995 [2002]), contrast preservation is accomplished with Minimal Distance (MinDist) constraints, in which perceptual difference between segments is valued. Within the MinDist approach, each segment has an intrinsic value. When the difference between values of different segments is smaller than specified by a given constraint, the given constraint is violated. The MinDist approach suggests that contrast preservations are done at phoneme level. Padgett (2003a,b) proposes the constraint *MERGE to preserve contrasts. This constraint states that no word of the output has multiple correspondents in the input. This approach suggests that contrast preservations occur at the word level. In Łubowicz (2003), contrast preservation is formalized as PC constraints; the PC constraints ban neutralizations by comparing the mappings from underlying forms to phonetic forms. These mappings are called scenarios in Łubowicz’s terms. Scenarios are valued according to whether any neutralization occurs. When it occurs, the scenario is bad. By comparing scenarios, PC constraints monitor the mappings between inputs and outputs; this implies that PC constraints ban neutralization of all the units which can be put into the input. For example, given a language which has a chain shift, /A/→[B] and /B/→[C], the chain shift would be analyzed in Łubowicz’s approach as follows: Scenarios i. /A/→[C] /B/→[C] ii. /A/→[B] /B/→[C]

PC constraint *

Table 1: PC approach In scenario (i), /A/ and /B/ have identical outputs; thus, scenario (i) violates the PC constraint. However in scenario(ii) the contrasts remain. With this mechanism, neutralizations are banned.

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In the approaches above, contrast preservation occurs at (an) assumed level(s) without satisfying justifications. Below, (1) shows the working hypotheses regarding the level at which contrasts are preserved. (1)

At which level are contrasts preserved? Flemming (2002, 2004): phoneme level Padgett (2003a,b): word level Łubowicz (2003): every level

The goal of this paper is to test the validity of these hypotheses with two production experiments. Yet, even before performing the experiments, it is possible to reject the every-level contrast preservation hypothesis set forth by Łubowicz (2003). It is worth noticing that contrast at a given level leads to contrast in higher levels. Consider the nasal coda in the Mandarin examples shown in (2a) and (2b). (2) (2a) (2b)

The smallest level contrast /tçiŋ/ [tçiŋ] ‘whale’ /tçin/ [tçin] ‘gold’

(2a) and (2b) differ from each other in their nasal coda. This coda contrast itself is a phoneme contrast, between /ŋ/ and /n/. The phoneme contrast leads to a contrast in at least three higher levels: rhyme contrast, syllable contrast, and morpheme contrast. If the contrast is preserved at multiple levels, it should be concluded that the lowest level contrast is preserved in lieu of that of all the levels. This is because if the lowest level contrast is preserved, then the contrasts in the higher levels must be preserved, too. In other words, we should look for the lowest level at which contrast is preserved. Thus it can be said that the every-level contrast preservation hypothesis of Łubowicz (2003) is redundant and not legitimate. Two working hypotheses remain to be tested: phoneme contrast preservation (Flemming 2002, 2004) and word contrast preservation (Padgett 2003a,b).

3. Cross-linguistic investigation within the same speaker This paper explores the vowel nasality in Mandarin and Southern Min respectively. These two languages are chosen for two reasons. First, they treat vowel nasality differently. Nasality on vowels in Southern Min is contrastive, but not in Mandarin; thus the grammars of these two languages are expected to have different interactions with nasality spreading. Second, in Taiwan many people are bilingual in Mandarin and Southern Min, and this bilingualism provides the possibility to do a cross-linguistic investigation on nasality within the same speaker.

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3.1. Nasal spreading and neutralization In Southern Min vowel nasality is contrastive, but not in Mandarin, as shown in (3): (3) (3a) (3b)

Different treatments of vowel nasality in Mandarin and Southern Min Mandarin: [ta.mən] or [tã.mən] ‘they’ Southern Min: [sua] ‘sand’; [suã] ‘mountain’

In (3a) the pre-nasal /a/ can be nasalized without changing the meaning, which shows that vowel nasality in Mandarin is not contrastive. However, in (3b) ‘sand’ and ‘mountain’ in Southern Min are a minimal pair, whose members differ from each other only in the nasality of the second vowels. The pre-nasal vowel can be nasalized because of nasality spreading of a following nasal sound, as depicted in Figure 1: C

V]σ + N V

[-nasal] [αnasal] [+nasal]

Figure 1: Nasality spreading In Mandarin, because vowel nasality is not contrastive, nasality spreading does not cancel the contrast between inputs. Given this, contrast preservation does not interact with nasality spreading in Mandarin. On the other hand, in Southern Min, nasality spreading must cancel the contrast at the phoneme level, but not necessarily at higher levels, because there could be accidental gaps. This is depicted in Figure 2: a. Contrast at phoneme level is canceled /V/ [ ] / / b. Contrast at morpheme-level is canceled /CV/ [C ] /C / c. Contrast at morpheme-level is NOT canceled /CV/ [C ] Ø (gap: /C / is not existing)

Figure 2: Interaction between nasality spreading and neutralization (arrows in dotted lines represent nasality spreading)

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In outhern in both / / and / / occur. If /V/ is realized as [ ] as is the case in (a), then both / / and / / will be realized as the same honetic form, [ ], canceling the phoneme contrast. owe er, thou h / / occurs in outhern in, there are cases in which /C / is an accidental gap. This is the case shown in (c). In this case, even with nasality spreading, neutralizations do not occur. Contrast preservation would interact with nasality spreading only when there is a corresponding underlying form.

3.2. Mandarin and Southern Min Bilingualism Many people in Taiwan are bilingual in Mandarin and Southern Min. This bilingualism provides the possibility for cross-linguistic investigation on nasality within the same speaker, for whom nasality spreading is not blocked by the contrast preservation effect in one language but may occur to prevent neutralization at a certain level in the other language. By conducting experiments with bilingual speakers of Mandarin and Southern Min, we can have tokens of each language uttered by the same vocal apparatus; with properly designed reading tokens, it is possible to make the difference of Mandarin and Southern Min grammar the only independent variable.

4. Production experiments The production experiment aims to investigate the acoustic quality of pre-nasal vowels in Mandarin and Southern Min respectively. Given that in Mandarin nasality spreading has nothing to do with neutralization and thus no contrast preservation effect will block nasality spreading, the acoustic quality of the pre-nasal Mandarin vowels is taken as a controlled condition, in which there is no contrast preservation effect. On the other hand, in Southern Min nasality spreading may cancel the contrast at different levels. Pre-nasal vowels in Southern Min are the focus, because in Southern Min there are several potential levels at which nasal spreading would cause contrast canceling. When the degree of nasalization in Southern Min is greater than or equal to that in Mandarin, it is judged that there is no contrast-preservation effect. Recall that we have two working hypotheses: phoneme-contrast preservation (Flemming 2002, 2004) and word-contrast preservation (Padgett 2003a, b). Two production experiments are conducted to test these hypotheses.

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4.1. Experiment I Experiment I is conducted to test the validity of phoneme contrast preservation as described by Flemming (2002, 2004). 4.1.1. Method The experiment is a reading task. The acoustic quality of vowels is the target to study. 4.1.1.1. Participants Two male and two female speakers from National Chung Cheng University participated in this experiment. They are bilingual native speakers of Mandarin and Southern Min. 4.1.1.2. Materials The reading tokens were each incorporated into two-syllable fake proper names, in which the first syllable is the reading token, and the second syllable has a nasal onset. With this setting, the noise caused by the difference between syntactic or morphological structures of the reading token and the nasality spreading form is avoided. The tokens were placed into sentences to make the utterance natural. Table 2 shows the reading tokens:1 Mandarin Southern Min

Reading Tokens /kha51/ “喀” /kha21/ “敲”

Corresponding Forms /khã51/ non-existing /khã21/ non-existing

Table 2: Reading tokens in Experiment I Note that the Southern Min reading token /kha21/ has no existing corresponding form (i.e. /khã21/). 4.1.1.3. Procedure The participants listened to a Mandarin talk show for two minutes before reading the Mandarin sentences, in order to become used to Mandarin grammar. Similarly, before they read the Southern Min sentences, the participants listened to a Southern Min talk show for two minutes. Afterwards they were taught what the written forms of the tokens are in the context where there is no nasal. Then, the token was shown within a sentence; the participants read the sentences, and their utterances were recorded through a micro1

See the appendix for the complete reading paradigms.

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phone. Half the participants completed the Mandarin reading task first, and the other half completed the Southern Min reading task first. 4.1.1.4. Quantifying nasality Chen (1997, 2000) shows that the vowel nasality is related to the difference between the amplitudes of the first format (A1) and that of the nasal peak at low frequencies (P0). If A1-P0 is smaller, then the degree of nasalization is greater. The tokens are analyzed with the software Cool Edit 2000 using same the settings as in Chen (1997, 2000), 25.6 ms Hamming window and 512-pt FFT. The difference between A1 and P0 was measured every 10 ms. Figure 3 provides an example of A1 and P0 measurement.

Figure 3: Non-nasalized [a], where A0 is -32.34dB and P0 is -36.01dB Chen (2000) defines the duration of the nasalized part of a vowel as the period of time which starts when A1-P0 is below the minimum of non-nasal [a] and terminates at the end of the vowel. This paper quantifies the degree of nasality spreading by the percentage of nasalized duration. 4.1.2. Prediction of the phoneme-contrast preservation hypothesis Recall that the degree of nasality spreading in Mandarin is taken as a controlled condition in which there is no contrast preservation effect. When the degree of nasalization in Southern Min is greater than or equal to that in Mandarin, it is judged that there is no contrast-preservation effect. Nasality in Southern Min is contrastive in vowels. This means that a Southern Min non-nasalized vowel /Vi/ always has a nasalized correspondent / i/. Thus, nasality spreading always cancels the contrast at the phoneme level (i.e. both /Vi/ and / i/ are realized as [ i]). The Southern Min reading token /kha21/, which is a morpheme, accidentally has no corresponding nasalized form (i.e. /khã21/). Thus, nasality spreading

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will not cancel the morpheme contrast; however, the phoneme contrast will be canceled because both /a/ and /ã/ will be realized as [ã]. If the phoneme contrast is preserved as suggested in Flemming (2002, 2004), it is expected that the Southern Min reading token /kha21/ will be less nasalized than the Mandarin token /kha51/. 4.1.3. Results and discussion In this experiment, the Southern Min tokens are more or equally nasalized compared to the Mandarin ones. The percentages of nasalization for each token are shown below.

Participant1 Participant2 Participant3 Participant4

Mandarin /kha51/ 喀 66.66% 95% 100% 100%

Southern Min /kha21/ 敲 100% 98% 100% 100%

Table 3: Percent of nasalization of vowels in Experiment I Given that, in Mandarin, nasality spreading would not cause any neutralization and the contrast preservation effect does not apply, the degree of nasality spreading can be seen as the result of no contrast preservation effect. If the degree of nasality spreading in a Southern Min token is greater than or equal to that of Mandarin tokens, then the contrast preservation effect does not work on it. The degree of nasalization in Southern Min is greater than or equal to that in Mandarin. Thus in Southern Min the contrast between /a/ and /ã/ is not preserved. Based on this finding, it can be concluded that contrast preservation does not occur at phoneme or syllable level. In short, the results of this study falsify the suggestion in Flemming (2002, 2004) that phoneme-level contrast is preserved.

4.2. Experiment II In the first experiment, we demonstrated counterevidence against the phoneme contrast preservation hypothesis. Now the working hypothesis that remained to be tested is the word contrast preservation of Padgett (2003a,b). Is the word level the lowest level at which contrasts are preserved? Experiment II investigates a level higher than a phoneme but lower than a morpheme in lexical syllable. It uses the same design and procedure as in Experiment I, except for different reading materials. I hypothesize that lexical-syllable contrast is preserved.

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4.2.1. Material There is a special level in Mandarin and Southern Min: the lexical syllable. Both languages have some mono-morphemes which are composed of multiple syllables. (4)

ka-fei 咖啡 ‘coffee’ ka-li 咖哩 ‘curry’ luo-ji 邏輯 ‘lo ic’ ning-meng 檸檬 ‘lemon’

Each single syllable in these mono-morphemes neither expresses a semantic meaning nor serves a syntactic function. Thus, single syllables in these mono-morphemes are not a morphemes by themselves.2 The lexical syllable is the single syllable of the multisyllabic mono-morphemes. In Experiment II, lexical syllables are used as the reading material, as they are a level higher than the phoneme and lower than the morpheme. Table 4 shows the reading tokens: Reading Token Mandarin

/kha55/

Southern Min

/ka55/

Corresponding Form

咖 咖

/khã55/ non-existing /kã55/

監

Table 4: Reading tokens in Experiment II Note that the Southern Min token /ka55/ has a nasalized correspondent /kã55/. 4.2.2. Prediction of the lexical-syllable-contrast preservation hypothesis The Southern in to en / a / is a le ical syllable, and it has a nasalized corres ondent / 55/. Nasality spreading will cancel the contrast at the lexical syllable level in this case. If contrast is preserved at the lexical syllable, then the degree of nasalization of the Southern Min token /ka55/ would be less than that of the Mandarin token /kha55/. 4.2.3. Result and discussion The Southern Min token is less nasalized than the Mandarin ones for all the participants.

2

In Mandarin and Southern Min, each syllable corresponds to a written character. Thus, though the lexical syllables are not morphemes, they have a corresponding character in the writing system.

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Participant1 Participant2 Participant3 Participant4

Mandarin /kha55/ “咖” 15.38% 100% 100% 100%

Southern Min /ka55/ “咖” 13.63% 0% 0% 76%

Table 5: Percent of nasalization of vowels in Experiment II Given the results, it is suggested that there is a preservation effect that blocks the nasality spreading in this case. In section 2, I argued that we should look for the lowest level at which contrasts are preserved. This is the lowest level. Thus, it is concluded that contrasts at the lexical-syllable level are preserved.

5. Conclusion Contrast preservation has been proposed as a formal property of the grammar, and different approaches to contrast preservation assume contrasts are preserved at different levels; however, these assumptions have lacked satisfying arguments to support them. This paper explores the interaction of nasality spreading and contrast preservation in Mandarin and Southern Min, using acoustic analysis. In the experiments, by comparing the degrees of nasality spreading in Mandarin and Southern Min within the same speaker, it is shown that neutralization on the phoneme level is not banned, and it is the neutralization of the lexical syllable that is banned. Given this, it is concluded that contrast preservations occur at the lexical-syllable level, which is higher than the phoneme but lower than the morpheme.

References Bradley, Travis G. (2001): The phonetics and phonology of rhotic duration contrast and neutralization. Doctoral dissertation, Pennsylvania State University. Chen, Marilyn Y. (1997): Acoustic correlates of English and French nasalized vowels, in: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102(4), 1250–2370. Chen, Marilyn Y. (2000): Acoustic analysis of simple vowels preceding a nasal in Standard Chinese, in: Journal of Phonetics 28, 43–67. Flemming, Edward (1995 [2002]): Auditory representations in phonology. Doctoral dissertation, UCLA [published in 2002 by Routledge, New York]. Flemming, Edward (2004): Contrast and perceptual distinctiveness, in: Hayes, Bruce; Kirchner, Robert & Steriade, Donca (eds.), Phonetically-based phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 232–276. Łubowicz, Anna (2003): Contrast preservation in phonological mappings. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Amherst, MA: GLSA.

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Padgett, Jaye (2003a): Contrast and post-velar fronting in Russian, in: Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21(1), 39–87. Padgett, Jaye (2003b): The emergence of contrastive palatalization in Russian, in: Holt, Eric D. (ed.), Optimality theory and language change. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Press, 307–335. Sanders, Nathan (2003): Opacity and sound change in the Polish lexicon. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Appendix: reading material Experiment I Mandarin (1) 喀米爾的喀 (/kha51/)。 ‘ ‘ a’ as in ‘kazmir’ ’ (2) 這隻小豬叫喀年(/kha51．nian35/)。 ‘This i let’s name is ‘ a-nian’.’ Southern Min (3) 敲電話e0敲 (/kha21/)。 ‘ ‘ a’ as in ‘ma in a hone call’’ (4) 這le2人上愛佇咧年底e0時陣敲電話，逐家人攏叫伊敲年 (/kha21．ni24/)。 ‘This erson lo es to ma e hone calls at the end of e ery year, so eo le call him ‘ a-nee’.’

Experiment II Mandarin (1) 咖啡的咖 (/kha55/)。 ‘ ‘ a’ as in ‘coffee’ ’ (2) 這隻小貓叫咖年 (/kha55．nian35/) 好了。 ‘Let’s name the itten as ‘ a-nian’.’ Southern Min (3) 咖哩e0咖。 ‘ ‘ a’ as in ‘curry’ ’ (4) 這le2人上愛佇咧年底e0時陣食咖哩飯，逐家人攏叫伊咖年(/ka55．ni24/)。 ‘This erson lo es to eat curry at the end of e ery year, so eo le call him ‘ a-nee’.’

CONNIE K. SO (SYDNEY/AUSTRALIA)

Cross-language categorization of monosyllabic foreign tones: effects of phonological and phonetic properties of native language∗

Abstract This study examined how native language affected the categorization of foreign tones in terms of the categories of their prosodic systems. Three typologically different languages (Fox 2000; Yip 2002) – Hong Kong Cantonese (a syllable-timed tone language), Japanese (a mora-timed pitch-accented language), and English (a stress timed language) – were selected as the tested languages, and Mandarin was the target language. Native speakers of the three languages were naïve to Mandarin at the time of the study. Their categorization patterns of the four Mandarin tones were collected for analysis. The results indicated that listeners from the three different language backgrounds were able to categorize Mandarin tones in terms of their prosodic categories, and that both phonological and phonetic properties of native languages affected the perceptual categorizations of Mandarin tones. The findings support the new assumption of PAM for suprasegmentals (So & Best 2008, 2010b) that non-native prosodic categories (e.g., lexical tones) will be assimilated to the categories of listeners’ native prosodic system (e.g., tone, pitch accent, and intonation).

1. Introduction Studies have demonstrated that linguistic experience gained from one’s native language exerts influence on their perception of foreign tones (Lee et al. 1996; So 2006; So & Best 2010a; Wayland & Guion 2004); however, how they perceive the foreign tones is still not well understood. Do they perceive non-native tones according to the prosodic categories of their native systems (e.g., tone, pitch accent, and intonation)? To contribute to our knowledge of the issue in the current literature, the present study examined adults’ foreign tone categorizations by native speakers of three typologically different languages, Hong Kong Cantonese (a tone language), Japanese (a pitch accented language), and Australian English (a stress accented/ an intonational language).1 ∗ 1

This study was supported by the Australian Research Council (ARC). The author would like to thank Arman Abrahamyan and Hiroko Umeno for their assistance with data collection. In this study, the English intonational system was focused upon, because it involves clear pitch contours, which can be found at both the phrasal level and the sentential level. On the other hand, although English has lexical stress, stressed versus unstressed syllables are typically produced with

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1.1. Background Listeners’ native language plays a significant role in their perception of a foreign language. Studies have shown that properties of one’s native language exert a significant impact on the perception of foreign sound segments (Polka 1991; Werker & Tees 1984). Their perception of non-native segments is typically constrained by the phonological and phonetic properties of listeners’ native language. An example of a native phonological constraint is that Japanese speakers have difficulty in discriminating and categorizing English /r/ and /l/, as these phonemes are not contrastive in the Japanese phonological system (Brown 2000; Hume & Johnson 2003; Miyawaki et al. 1975). A case of native phonetic constraints was seen when American English listeners categorized the Zulu aspirated voiceless velar stop [kh] and ejective [k’]. They perceived both as the voiceless stop [kh], but the non-native sound [k’] was perceived as a deviant English /k/. In other words, they did perceive the non-contrastive gradient difference but did not hear it as any English phonological contrast. It is because English has the voiceless stop [kh] but no ejectives (Best et al. 2001). While studies generally suggested that listeners have difficulty distinguishing non-native segments that do not exist and contrast in their native language, English adults quite easily discriminated Zulu clicks, which are not contrastive in English (Best et al. 2001). The authors suggested that the clicks were nonspeech, rather than phonological elements in their native language. Similarly, studies on the perception of non-native lexical tones have shown that linguistic experience gained from listeners’ native languages guides their perception of nonnative tones substantially (Gandour 1983; Gandour & Harshman 1978; Hallé et al. 2004; Leather 1983; Lee et al. 1996; Wayland & Guion 2004). For example, some researchers have found that non-native speakers perceive Mandarin tonal categories (Tone 1 [55]high level, Tone 2 [35]- mid rising, Tone 3 [214]- falling rising, and Tone 4 [51]- high falling) differently from native speakers, who can much better identify subtle differences between the tones (Hallé et al. 2004; Leather 1983; Lee et al. 1996). For studies investigating the perception of tonal features (or dimensions) by listeners from different language backgrounds, Gandour (1983, 1984) found that native English listeners tended to focus on pitch height even though English is a non-tone language, while listeners from Chinese languages (e.g., Cantonese and Mandarin) focused on both pitch height and pitch direction when perceiving the tones. Researchers have also found that native speakers of another tone language tend to outperform those of a non-tone language on the same nonnative tone contrasts. For example, Cantonese speakers discriminated Mandarin tones better than did English speakers (Lee et al. 1996). Similarly, Mandarin speakers discriminated two Thai tones (mid vs. low) better than did English speakers before the listener groups received training on the Thai tones (Wayland & Guion 2004). vowel quality and length differences (Beckman 1986) that are more consistent and salient than F0 (pitch) differences (i.e., pitch contours are not reliably found).

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In contrast, recent studies have demonstrated that listeners’ tonal experience gained from their native language does not necessarily facilitate their perception and/or learning of non-native tones. Three typological-different language groups were tested to investigate how linguistic experience with tones might affect listeners’ perception and/or learning of Mandarin lexical tones (So 2006; So & Best 2010a). It was found that native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese, Japanese, and Canadian English had more perceptual difficulty in perceiving three phonetically similar pairs of Mandarin Tones (Tones 1–4, Tones 2–3, and Tones 1–2) (Note: not much difficult for the Cantonese speakers) than the other three phonetically dissimilar pairs, (Tones 1–3, Tones 2–4, and Tones 3–4). Further, Hong Kong Cantonese speakers tended to make more perceptual errors in perceiving the Tone 1–4 and Tone 2–3 pairs than did Japanese and English speakers, suggesting that both the phonological and phonetic properties of the Cantonese tone system affect their perception of Mandarin tone. The high level [55] and the high falling tones [53] occur but are not contrastive in Cantonese (both are allotones of Cantonese Tone 1; see Bauer & Benedict 1997; Yip 2002). Therefore, it is likely that Cantonese listeners who have not learned Mandarin may perceive Mandarin Tone 1[55] and Tone 4[51] as variants of their Cantonese Tone1. Because the phonetic properties (e.g., pitch contours) of Mandarin Tone 2[35] and Tone 3[214] are substantially similar, as both involve subtle rising pitch patterns, Cantonese speakers are likely to perceive the two Mandarin tones as variants of Cantonese rising tones, such as Tone 2 [25] (Note: some characterize this Cantonese tone as [35]). The authors further suggested that the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best 1995) for suprasegmentals seemed feasible because the results were consistent with the PAM predictions, and that listeners might assimilate non-native tones to their native prosodic systems. For example, for Cantonese listeners, the case for Mandarin Tones 1-4 perceived as Cantonese Tone 1 could be interpreted as the Single-Category (SC) assimilation pair. Mandarin Tone 2 and Tone 3 can be considered as a Category Goodness (CG) assimilation pair, and Mandarin Tone 1 and Tone 2 can be considered as a Two Category (TC) assimilation pair. (Note: see So 2006; So & Best 2010a for the examples of Japanese and English listeners for details).

1.2. The present study Since studies have shown that listeners may assimilate non-native tones to the categories of their native prosodic systems, such as tone, pitch-accent, and intonation (So 2006; So & Best 2010a), in ways that appear consistent with the assumptions of PAM (Best 1995), this raises an important question as to how adults perceive non-native lexical tones. Do they perceive foreign tones according to the categories of their native prosodic systems?

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Connie K. So

Recent studies have demonstrated that native speakers of non-tone languages, English and French, perceived non-native tones in citation and/or sentential form, in terms of their intonational categories (So & Best 2008; 2010b). In general, Mandarin Tone 1 (high level) is perceived as Flat Pitch, Tone 2 (mid-rising) as Question, Tone 3 (fallingrising) as Uncertainty (Some English listeners perceived it as Question), and Tone 4 (high falling) as Statement. The findings supported the new assumption of PAM for suprasegmentals that non-native tonal categories (e.g., lexical tones) will be assimilated to the categories of listeners’ native prosodic system. The results also suggested that these listeners assimilated the phonetic properties of Mandarin tones (e.g., pitch patterns) to those of English intonational categories, when both substantially share similar phonetic features. However, how do native speakers of tone languages perceive foreign tones? Do they perceive the foreign tones according to their existing prosodic categories of their native languages? To answer the above questions, this study examined the perception of Mandarin tones by native speakers of three typologically different languages – Hong Kong Cantonese (a tone language), Japanese (a pitch accented language), and English (a stress accented/an intonational language) (Beckman 1986; Fox 2000; Yip 2002). The new assumption of PAM for suprasegmentals (So & Best 2008) was tested. Therefore, this study examined how native speakers of three tone and non-tone language groups perceived Mandarin tones (in citation form) according to the categories of their native prosodic systems. They are the tone system of Cantonese, the pitch accent system of Japanese, and the intonational system of English, since prosodic features generally include “length, accent and stress, tone, intonation, and potentially a few others” (Fox 2000: 1). Based on the findings of previous studies (So 2006; So & Best 2010a), it was assumed that categorizations of Mandarin tones would be affected by the phonetic and/or the phonological properties of listeners’ prosodic categories. Accordingly, for the Cantonese group, it was predicted that they would perceive Mandarin Tone 1 [55] as their Cantonese Tone 1[55], Tone 2 [35] as the Cantonese Tone 2 [25], Tone 3[214] as the Cantonese Tone 2 again, because the tone involves a subtle rising pitch pattern, and Tone 4 [51] as their Cantonese Tone 1, which has two allotones – the high level [55] and the high falling [53]. For the Japanese group, it was predicted that they would perceive Mandarin Tone 1 [55] as their level pitch accent, HH, Tone 2 [35] as their LH, Tone 3 [214] as the LH as well, because it involves a subtle rising pitch pattern, and Tone 4 [51] as their falling pitch accent, HL. Finally, for the Australian English group, it was predicted that they would perceive Tone 1 as Flat Pitch (a level pitch), Tone 2 as Question (a rising pitch), Tone 3 as Uncertainty. (Note: this term was used as an option of choices for listeners’ categorizations, because creakiness in speech is an important perceptual cue to signal “hesitation” in speech, e.g., Carlson et al. 2006, and all the Tone 3 stimuli in this study involved creakiness), and Tone 4 as Statement (a falling pitch).

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2. Method 2.1. Participants Ninety participants were recruited in this study: thirty Hong Kong Cantonese speakers2 (mean age: 22.2 years), thirty Japanese speakers (mean age: 27.2 years), and thirty Australian English speakers (mean age: 19.2 years). They were all either undergraduate students at the University of Western Sydney, who received course credits after they completed the experiment, or residents living in Sydney at the time of the experiment who received AUD $40 for their participation. They had neither learned Mandarin nor received formal musical training, as previous studies have shown that listeners with musical training outperformed those without such training in both production and perception tasks with non-native tones (Alexander et al. 2005; Gottfried & Riester 2000). Before they performed the experiment, they all passed a pure-tone hearing screening (250-8000 Hz at 25 dB HL).

2.2. Stimuli The stimuli for this study were produced by three native Mandarin speakers (mean age: 24 years). They were asked to produce the four Mandarin tones on the syllable /fu/ in citation form. The syllable /fu/ was selected because its pronunciation is close to the one for the English word, fool [ful], and to the one for the Japanese word, fuu [huu] with three possible pitch accents (HH, LH, and HL), and the Cantonese root-word [fu] that can carry each of the six Cantonese tones. Five tokens of each target word (/fu/ with each of the four tones) were produced by each speaker. Among them, three samples per tone-word per speaker were verified perceptually by another three native Mandarin speakers (mean age: 27.7 years) to ensure the selected stimuli were intelligible to native Mandarin speakers. All of the perceptual stimuli were correctly identified by the native speakers.

2.3. Procedure Participants were asked to categorize randomized individual presentations of 72 trials of the stimuli (3 speakers x 4 tones x 3 tokens per tone x 2 repetitions) into their native prosodic categories. All the stimuli were presented individually via a notebook computer. On each trial, after listening to a given stimulus, listeners were asked to give an answer from a list of native words in their language labeled on buttons on the screen of their notebook (that corresponded to the prosodic categories). For the Cantonese group, 2

It is important to note that these Hong Kong Cantonese speakers had moved to Australia only a few years earlier (at age 15 years old or older) rather than in childhood.

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six buttons labeled with six Cantonese characters, which corresponded to the six lexical tones of Cantonese on the /fu/ words, were given as answer options. For the Japanese group, their answer options were three buttons labeled with the three Japanese kanji words (involving the word fuu), which associated with the phonotactically permissible pitch accents of HH, LH, and HL. For the English group, their answer options were four buttons labeled with the four English intonational categories -- Flat pitch (a level pitch without movement), Question (a rising pitch contour), Uncertainty (which involves creakiness, signaling hesitation, and a rising pitch movement) and Statement (a falling contour). In addition to their native prosodic categories, an extra button labeled as Unknown were also provided for each listener group. Listeners were instructed to select the Unknown button only when they could not categorize a tone into any of their native prosodic categories.

3. Results 3.1. Tonal categorization of Native Hong Kong Cantonese (NC) speakers NC participants’ assimilation percentage (%) of the Cantonese Tone Categories (CTCategories: CT1[55], CT2[25], CT3[33], CT4[21], CT5[23], and CT6[22]) for each Mandarin tone was presented in Figure 1. Individual t-tests were carried out to test each CT-Category mean for each target tone, against chance of 14.3%. The results confirmed the means of the following CT-Categories for their target tones were all significantly above the chance level (14.3%): CT1[55] [t(29) = 31.241, p < 0.001] for Mandarin Tone 1, CT2[25], [t(29) = 11.09, p < 0.001], and CT5[23] [t(27) = 3.718, p < 0.001] for Mandarin Tone 2, CT1[55] [t(27) = 7.366, p < 0.001], CT4[21] [t(26) = 3.592, p tʰ is general in Muong. In Muong, the loss of presyllables does not leave any traces. “The irregular evolution of presyllables is the main difficulty encountered in the study of phonetic correspondences across Sino-Tibetan languages, as well as in the reconstruction of morphology” (Jacques 2006: 6; my translation).

2.2. Modification of medial consonants Cognate in conservative language Thavung kpuːl¹ Pong ktaj² ksaŋ¹ Thavung Kha-Phong psuːɲ³ Sách kcə̀ːŋ² Thavung cku⁴

Muong poːl¹ taj² tʰaŋ¹ tʰuːɲ³ cɨəŋ² ku⁴

Vietnamese vôi [A1 voj] dày [A2 zăj] răng [A1 răŋ] rốn [B1 ron] giường [A2 ʒɯɤŋ] gấu [B1 ɣɤ̆w]

Translation ‘lime’ (N) ‘thick’ (Adj) ‘tooth’ (N) ‘navel’ (N) ‘bed’ (N) ‘bear’ (N)

Table 1: Some cognates between Vietnamese, Muong and conservative Viet-Muong languages, illustrating the loss of presyllables without compensation in Muong and the spirantization of medial consonants in Vietnamese (after Michel Ferlus, seminar presentation at Université Paris 3, 1996) The presence or absence of a presyllable may lead to diverging evolutionary paths for the initial consonant of the main syllable, as illustrated in Table 1. Comparison between the closely related Austroasiatic languages Nyaheun and Laven shows that voiced stops that used to be in medial position became devoiced in Nyaheun: the word for ‘trough, manger’ is /tbɔːŋ/ in Laven, /pɔːŋ/ in Nyaheun (Ferlus 1971b). A more complex devel-

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opment took place in Vietnamese: medial consonants became spirantized; later, when presyllables disappeared, this led to a considerable increase in the inventory of initial consonants (Ferlus 1982).

2.3. Development of consonantal clusters > geminated consonants > tense/lax contrasts among consonants A third evolutionary possibility on the path to monosyllabism consists in the creation of consonantal clusters, the consonant of the presyllable clustering together with the initial consonant of the main syllable. Using the abbreviations introduced in section 1.1, where the structure of sesquisyllables was described as Cp (V) – Ci V (Cf)/(T), the new clusters consist of Cp plus Ci. These cumbersome consonantal clusters further evolve into geminated consonants. This stage is illustrated by the Nyaheun word for ‘chin’, /mmaːk/, whose geminated initial is in correspondence with a /km/ in Laven: /kmaːk/ (Ferlus 1971b). At the stage where presyllables have disappeared, through one of the three processes described above, monosyllabicization is completed. However, the resulting monosyllables are of such a degree of segmental complexity that more changes follow, as consonantal contrasts transphonologize into suprasegmental contrasts. These changes, which result in the present-day physiognomy of languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese or Thai, are set out in the next section.

3. The consonantal depletion of monosyllables and the development of registers and tones The development of phonation-type registers and of lexical tones can be considered as an indirect consequence of monosyllabicization. Consonant-replete monosyllables undergo a gradual simplification; lexical contrasts are maintained through the development of suprasegmental properties.

3.1. An outline of the simplification of rhymes The typical order in which segmental simplification takes place within the syllable rhyme is the following (after Haudricourt 1991, with some added explanations suggested by M. Ferlus, p.c.): • •

final /s/, /l/ and /r/ merge with other final consonants: for instance, there occurs a merger of /s/ and /h/, without compensation; final /ʔ/ is lost, followed by final /h/;

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final palatals /c/ and /ɲ/ merge with final consonants of other points of articulation. This leaves only three points of articulation for finals: labial, apical and velar; and two modes of articulation: stop and nasal (/p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/); the length contrast among vowels is lost; final stops /p/, /t/, /k/ are lost; final nasals /m/, /n/, /ŋ/ are lost, leaving contrastive nasal vowels; the nasal vowels merge with oral vowels.2

This overall evolutionary pattern is an ideal type: in practice, individual languages may follow somewhat divergent paths, due in particular to contact with neighbouring languages. For instance, final /s/ merged with /t/ in Pearic languages of Cambodia, instead of following the more common evolutionary path, namely a merger with /h/. The second of the processes in the above list leads to the creation of lexical tones: the loss of final /ʔ/, followed by that of final /h/, generates, by phonological compensation (transphonologization), a system with three tones, one corresponding to each type of laryngeal plus one corresponding to syllables which were open in the first place (Haudricourt 1954a, b). An indirect hint about the chronology of events is provided by Middle Chinese: the names given to the three tones of Middle Chinese by contemporary Chinese literati at the beginning of the 6th century CE are “level tone” – from earlier voiced finals –, “rising tone” – from earlier final /ʔ/ and glottalized sonorants –, and “departing tone” – from earlier final /h/ (Baxter 1992: 303, Sagart 1999: 93). It is clear that the denominations ‘level’ and ‘rising’ refer to the melody. On the other hand, ‘departing’, in Chinese qù 去 ‘to go away, to depart’, like its congeneric words qū 祛 ‘to drive away, to disperse’ and qū 呿 ‘to breathe with open mouth’, suggest the idea of expulsion rather than that of melody. Our interpretation is that the description ‘departing tone’ describes the final spirant /h/; this implies that the process of tonogenesis by loss of the finals was not yet completed at the beginning of the 6th century (Ferlus 2009: 193). Had the authors of this description wanted to describe a falling tone, they would probably have avoided the word ‘under, (go) down’ (下; present-day Mandarin Chinese: xià): although it would be a semantically good partner to ‘rising’, it does not itself constitute an example of the intended tonal category and is thus not mnemonically suitable. However, they could have described the tone as ‘falling, descending’ (降; presentday Mandarin Chinese: jiàng), which belonged in the tonal category at issue (G. Jacques, p.c.). The fact that they did not do so confirms Ferlus’s interpretation.

2

This process can occasionally leave traces on initial consonants, witness the Naxi language as spoken in the hamlet of A Ser, where former *hy and *hỹ have become /ɕy/ and /hy/, respectively, whereas all other syllabic contrasts involving nasal vowels were lost without compensation (Michaud 2006).

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Interestingly, Haudricourt did not include in this ordered list the mergers among series of initial consonants, which played a paramount role in the development of tones and phonation-type registers. Indeed, in a general (panchronic) model, there is no reason to place mergers among initial consonants at any special step in the above sequence of events. Mergers between two series of initial consonants can take place at any stage, from stages preceding monosyllabicization – hence the possibility for a sesquisyllable to have a tone on its main syllable, as mentioned in section 1.1 – to late stages, when the syllable rhymes have already simplified to a considerable extent. (A case in point is Chinese, which underwent twice a merger among series of initials, at an interval of about 1,000 years: see Ferlus 2009.) For this reason, these mergers are dealt with in the following section.

3.2. Evolutionary paths for contrasts among initials In numerous Far Eastern and Southeast Asian languages, an earlier contrast between two series of initial consonants transphonologized into tones; this development is summarized by Haudricourt (1972). However, the creation of new tonal contrasts is only one out of several possible evolutionary paths when earlier contrasts among initials evolve: while these contrasts can turn into tonal contrasts, they can also become vowel contrasts. A unified account can now be proposed for this major panchronic phenomenon: registrogenesis,3 and its developments (tonal split or vocalic split). The source of registrogenesis is a contrast between two sets of initial consonants. It can be a contrast in mode of articulation: unvoiced /p/, /t/, /k/ or aspirated /pʰ/, /tʰ/, /kʰ/ contrasting with voiced /b/, /d/, /g/; or glottalised /ʔm/ /ʔn/ /ʔŋ/ contrasting with plain /m/, /n/, /ŋ/. An important addition to the model has recently been proposed on the basis of reconstructions of Old Chinese: a contrast between complex (or geminated) and simple consonants could also trigger registrogenesis (Ferlus 2009). The first stage of registrogenesis is the development of a tense vs. lax contrast between the two sets of syllables, with whispery/lax phonation for the syllables of the ‘low’ series (those that had voiced initials; or, if the original contrast was one of simple vs. geminated consonants, simple consonants) as opposed to modal phonation for the syllables of the ‘high’ series. The contrast between modal and whispery/lax phonation is relatively unstable, and tends to evolve into other types of contrasts – though transitional stages can occasionally last for centuries. The synchronic diversity of phonetic correlates of a modal-vs.-whispery/breathy phonation-type contrast reveals its evolutionary potential. Observations can be made on languages which currently possess a register contrast. A register system, in its phono3

Note that the term register refers to phonation-type register, as first described for Cambodian by Henderson (1952). This is a very different notion from the phonological concept of register as a feature of tone; a discussion of the latter notion is proposed in Clements et al. (2011).

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logical sense, is understood, after Henderson’s description (1952), as a prosodic system in which there exists a phonological contrast between phonation types. E. Henderson, describing the phenomenon for a conservative Khmer dialect, speaks of “a normal or head voice quality” as opposed to “a deep, rather breathy or sepulchral voice pronounced with lowering of the larynx” (Henderson 1952: 151). In the Mon language, the vowels of the low series are likewise characterized by a bundle of phonetic features: whispery voice; general laxness of the speech organs; pitch lowering; and a tendency towards the raising of the vowel onset. The term register “describes a cluster of laryngeal and supralaryngeal activities”, “one property of which may be dominant and the rest secondary” (Abramson et al. 2004: 147). If the pitch differences become dominant, the contrast becomes tonal; if the vowel quality differences become dominant, the contrast becomes vocalic (as is the case in Standard Khmer). The Souei language (Austroasiatic) has a register system, classically originating in a consonantal mutation; in the variety studied by Ferlus (1971a), this register system is evolving towards a two-way split of the vowel system, as shown in Table 2. High series (proto-voiceless initials) i ɨ u e ə o ɛ a ɔ

Low series (proto-voiced initials) i̤ ɨ̤ ṳ i ̤e̤ ɨ ̤ə̤ ṳo̤ e̤ɛ ̤ ə̤a̤ o̤ɔ ̤

Table 2: Contrasts between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ series in Souei, after Ferlus (1979: 4) (Recall that the diacritic / ̤/ indicates breathy voice)

Vowels in the low (breathy) series undergo diphthongization, beginning with a lessened aperture. In Souei, vowels in the high series remain unchanged; in other languages, vowels in the high series tend to begin with an increased aperture. The reverse is never observed: breathy register never leads to an increased aperture. The final stage of this vocalic change is a two-way split of the vowel system and a complete disappearance of the other cues to register (pitch differences and phonationtype differences). This stage is observed in Standard Khmer, which is generally described as having five levels of vowel aperture as well as prediphthongization, and no phonation-type contrast (Lewitz 1968, Huffman 1976). This raises the issue of the factors that determine whether the phonation-type contrast evolves into tonal contrasts or into vowel contrasts. An important factor is whether the language already has tones or not. If not, phonation-type differences eventually tend to stabilize into vowel differences. Such is the case of Khmer. In Mon, where phonation type is still considered to be the primary distinctive cue, differences in vowel quality are already very salient (Christian Bauer, p.c.). On the other hand, if a language already has tones at the time when the merger of series of initials takes place – or if it is under the influence of a neighbouring language that has tones –, it tends to develop more tones. The phonation-type contrast, which already involved some pitch differences among its phonetic correlates, gives way to tonal contrasts, resulting in a split of the tonal system.

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These two evolutionary paths are strikingly illustrated by the different responses given by Chinese to two distinct waves of registrogenesis, the first time at the stage of Old Chinese, the second time at the stage of Late Middle Chinese. Similar causes yielded different effects, because of differences in the language’s phonological structure. Old Chinese did not have tones; when registrogenesis occurred in Old Chinese, from the merger of complex and simple initials, it led to a vocalic split (according to the reconstruction proposed by Ferlus 2009: 196). On the other hand, Late Middle Chinese already had three lexical tones (following tonogenesis by laryngeal finals: see section 3.1); when registrogenesis occurred at that stage (from a merger of voiced and unvoiced initials), the language underwent a two-way tonal split (Ferlus 2009: 195 and references therein).4 Thus, “tonogenesis by the merging of initial series can be seen as a particular case of registrogenesis” (Ferlus 2009: 194). The general theory of registrogenesis as a panchronic process can be considered as a major achievement of historical phonology.

4. Extreme cases of segmental depletion: coarticulation within CV syllables, and the development of syllabic consonants Section 2 presented the process of monosyllabicization strictly speaking, which results in complex monosyllables that are especially rich in consonants. Section 3 presented processes of consonantal depletion, with an emphasis on the evolutions leading to registrogenesis and tonogenesis. These are by now well-understood phenomena: in light of the abundant and converging evidence available, a general (panchronic) model can confidently be presented. Later evolutions have been relatively less studied, and remain less well understood. The present section, which discusses evolutions observed at advanced stages of segmental depletion, is therefore exploratory in nature. A full-fledged synthesis concerning the evolution of ‘extra-light’ monosyllabic structure and monophonemic syllables remains a task for the future.

4

In the case of Chinese, the hypothesis that a phonation-type-contrast stage must have preceded the tonal stage was already formulated some thirty years ago: “…the split into upper and lower registers was conditioned primarily by the voiced aspiration, giving rise to breathy vowels, rather than simple voice” (Pulleyblank 1978: 173; emphasis added). This hypothesis is now commonly accepted among sinologists. Tamang (Bodic branch of Sino-Tibetan) likewise underwent a two-way tonal split following the merger of voiced and unvoiced initials; to this day, tones 3 and 4, corresponding to syllables that had voiced initials before this two-way split, retain hints of whispery voice (Mazaudon 1977; Mazaudon & Michaud 2008).

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4.1. From feature shuffling to coarticulation in monosyllables The transfer of a distinctive feature from one phoneme to another within a monosyllable is attested in Southeast Asian languages by synchronic alternations as well as by diachronic evolutions. For instance, the Vietnamese rhymes /oŋ/ and /ɔŋ/ (written as ông and ong) are realized as [ɤŋᵐ] and [ʌŋᵐ], respectively: lip rounding, originally a feature of the vowel, is realized as final rounding on the coda (Thompson 1965: 12, Henderson 1985: 21). This is referred to as “feature shuffling” (Henderson 1985: 21). In syllables that are already very simple in structure, tending towards a CV (consonant+vowel) segmental structure, there is little room for feature shuffling. Instead, the consonant and vowel paired together in CV sequences become strongly coarticulated; their features tend to be realized all across the syllable. Numerous examples are found in the Yi (Lolo) branch of Sino-Tibetan languages: while the impetus for monosyllabicization can safely be hypothesized to have come from Old Chinese, which influenced – directly or indirectly – languages of the SinoTibetan, Tai-Kadai, Hmông-Miên and Austroasiatic families, segmental depletion has reached a more extreme development in Yi than within Chinese itself (Haudricourt 1991). The tendency towards coarticulation in CV monosyllables tends to create compact units that become less and less tractable to a straightforward analysis into two distinct phonemes. For instance, in Western Naxi (typologically close to Yi/Lolo languages), the vowel [ɔ] only appears after retroflex consonants: thus, there are syllables that are pronounced [ɭɔ] (e.g. ‘bone’) and syllables pronounced [lo] (e.g. ‘work, toil’), but no [ɭo] or [lɔ]. Indeed, the only context in which retroflex consonants appear is in front of [ɔ] (Michaud 2006). The phonemic solution adopted consists in analyzing [ɔ] as an allophone of /o/, and granting phonemic status to retroflex initials; however, in such extreme cases of neutralization, a potential for coalescence is clearly present. A look at dialectal diversity reveals that this potential is realized in Yongning Na (classified as “Eastern Naxi” by He Jiren & Jiang Zhuyi 1985): the cognate of Western Naxi ‘bone’ /ɭo/ in Yongning Na is /ɻ/,̩̃ i.e. a syllable consisting of one single phoneme, a nasalized syllabic retroflex approximant (Michaud 2008). Unlike CV sequences, this syllable does not require any movement of the articulators in the course of its production: there is one single articulatory target for the entire syllable. Syllabic nasals can also be interpreted in this light. In various Loloish languages some or all of the nasals occur as syllabics. In most such cases the diachronic source is syllables with a nasal initial and a high vowel; sometimes one dialect has nasal syllabics where others have nasals plus a high vowel. This could be called rhyme-gobbling (Bradley 1989: 150; see also Björverud 1998: 8). An intermediate stage is illustrated by Yongning Na, where the syllable /mv̩/ is phonetically realized as [m̩ ] except in careful (hyperarticulated) speech.

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4.2. Quasi-monophonemic syllables: the example of vowel apicalization “Apical vowels” are the most widespread example of quasi-monophonemic syllables. They are syllable rhymes that are homorganic with a preceding apical sibilant (fricative or affricate consonant). For instance, in Western Naxi, the word for ‘wine’ can be approximated phonetically as [ ʐ ̩ ], ‘meat’ as [ ʂʐ ̩ ]. The vowels that are susceptible to apicalization are high vowels, be they front vowels or back vowels; apical vowels may be allophones of different high vowels in different languages. In Western Naxi, they are allophones of /ɯ/, conditioned by initial apical sibilants (He Jiren & Jiang Zhuyi 1985: 9); in Western Naxi, they are allophones of /i/, in the same context. Phonetically, no difference was observed in the realizations in these two languages; for instance, the syllable [ ʂʐ ̩ ] is interpreted phonemically as /ʂi/ in Chinese, as /ʂɯ/ in Naxi. In this sense, apicalization is a process close to “rhyme-gobbling” by initial nasals (presented in the previous paragraph). Specialists of Chinese, a language that has apical vowels, have proposed that the rhymes in these syllables should be recognized as vowels in their own right, distinct from the initial, and represented by special symbols. The full set of symbols used by Karlgren (1915–1926) consists of a plain apical vowel [ ɿ ], a retroflex apical vowel [ ʅ ], a rounded plain apical vowel [ ʮ ], and a rounded retroflex apical vowel [ʯ] (see Pullum & Ladusaw 1986, Zee 2008). Western Naxi ‘wine’ would then be represented as [ ʐʅ ], ‘meat’ as [ ʂʅ ]. These four symbols have not yet been taken up in the International Phonetic Alphabet, precisely because they refer to articulations for which consonantal symbols exist: the first two correspond to [ z ] and [ ʐ ], respectively; for the latter two, a diacritic can be added to indicate lip rounding: [ z̹ ] and [ ʐ ̹ ]. One of the reasons why apicalization is common in monosyllabic CV units is because palatalization – an especially common phenomenon cross-linguistically – tends to feed into apicalization (Baron 1974). The degree of complexity that can be attained as a result of these developments has sometimes been underestimated: for instance, it has been stated that “/ʮ/ and /v̩/ can combine phonetically with /ts/, /l/ as /tsv̩/, /lv̩/, /tsʮ/, /lʮ/, but there is no contrast /tsʮ≠tsv̩/ or /lʮ≠lv̩/ in any one language” (Baron 1974: 3). In fact, the Laze language (Sino-Tibetan; personal field notes) does contrast /tsv̩/, /tsy/ and /tsi/, corresponding phonetically to [tsv̩], [tsʮ] and [tsɿ], respectively.

5. Concluding remarks 5.1. The re-creation of disyllables by compounding Monosyllabicization and the ensuing simplification of syllable structure result in homophony of numerous words that were previously distinct: the new contrasts that arise – tones, new vowel contrasts, or new series of initial consonants – compensate only in

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part for the loss of earlier contrasts. Disyllables then tend to develop anew, by the combination of two monosyllables one of which may come to serve as a type of affix. Like the process of reduction of sesquisyllables to monosyllables (section 2), the creation of disyllables affects the vocabulary gradually. The newly created disyllables are at first no more than an occasional association of two monosyllables; as their association becomes more frequent, the speakers’ awareness of their compound status decreases, up to the point where the disyllable is no longer perceived as a combination of two identifiable components. In Yongning Na, ‘egg’ is /ᴸæ.ʁv̩/, clearly created by the association of /ᴸᴹæ/ ‘chicken’ to an earlier monosyllable /ʁv̩/ meaning ‘egg’, for which there are cognates in Western Naxi and Laze, two closely related languages. However, the disyllable is now fully lexical, and refers to any type of egg, not simply chicken eggs: ‘cane egg’ is /ᴹbæ.miᴸæ.ʁv̩/ (/ᴹbæ.mi/ ‘cane’). The words for ‘calf’, ‘mare’ and ‘stallion’ in Yongning Na illustrate different stages along the path towards full lexicalization. (About the notation of tones in the following examples, see section 4 of Michaud 2008.) ‘Calf’, /#ᴴʐwæ.zo/, literally means ‘baby horse’: it is made up of ‘horse’, /#ᴴʐwæ/, plus the word for ‘son’, /#ᴴzo/; the latter is clearly on its way towards becoming a mere suffix, but at present its grammaticalization is still at an early stage. In the word for ‘mare’, /ᴸʐwæ.mi/, the female suffix /mi/ does not bear such a straightforward relationship to a given monosyllabic noun, though this suffix is clearly related to the classifier /ᴸmi/, used for some animals, which itself is probably related to the /mi/ element in /ᴸmi.zɯ/ ‘woman’ and /ᴹə.mi/ ‘mother’. The association of the two elements making up the word ‘mare’ must be of some historical depth, since the tone pattern of the disyllable is not as expected on the basis of synchronic rules. Synchronically, the female suffix /mi/ appears to be toneless, and the tonal pattern of the resulting disyllable is obtained by association of the tone of the root with the entire disyllable (see Michaud 2008: 192); in the case of ‘mare’, one would expect a #ᴴ tone, not a ᴸ tone. Lastly, ‘stallion’, /ᴹᴸʐwæ.sɯ/, is yet further advanced towards independent existence as a disyllabic unit: while its first syllable can still be identified as the root for ‘horse’, its second syllable is neither an identifiable monosyllabic noun or adjective, nor a productive affix.

5.2. An open question: why sesquisyllables were widespread in East Asia (prior to monosyllabicization) The above analyses brought out evolutionary similarities across three East and Southeast Asian language families – Sino-Tibetan, Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai –, from a sesquisyllabic state to a monosyllabic state. Monosyllabicization is thought to have begun in Old Chinese, and to have spread across East and Southeast Asia through the influence of Chinese. It is thus an areal phenomenon in East and Southeast Asia; this echoes observations made about the “areality of monosyllabicity” in the languages of

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Europe (Stolz 2007). The spreading of this phenomenon over a large part of the East Asian mainland was made possible by the typological similarity in phonological structure across these language families prior to monosyllabicization, viz. the existence of sesquisyllables. Monosyllabicization mostly affected languages that already had a sesquisyllabic word structure, i.e. a structure which is intermediate between a fullfledged disyllable and a monosyllable. Polysyllabic languages neighbouring on Chinese (e.g. Altaic languages) remained unaffected. This raises the diachronic issue of why the sesquisyllabic type was widespread in East Asia (prior to monosyllabicization). SinoTibetan, Austroasiatic and Tai-Kadai being distinct language families,5 how come languages of these families had strong similarities in syllable structure at an earlier stage of their history (roughly speaking, some 2,000 years ago)? In the present state of our knowledge, only speculations can be offered about these developments, which predate the earliest linguistic records.

References Abramson, Arthur S.; Thongkum, Therapan L. & Nye, Patrick W. (2004): Voice register in Suai (Kuai): An analysis of perceptual and acoustic data, in: Phonetica 61, 147–171. Baron, Stephen P. (1974): On the tip of many tongues: Apical vowels across Sino-Tibetan. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Language and Linguistic Studies. Georgia State University, Atlanta, October 18–19, 1974. Baxter, William H. (1992): A handbook of Old Chinese phonology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Baxter, William H. & Sagart, Laurent (in preparation): Baxter-Sagart Old Chinese reconstructions. Preliminary version available from http://sitemaker.umich.edu/wbaxter/home (accessed March 27, 2011). Björverud, Susanna (1998): A grammar of Lalo. Lund: Lund University. Bradley, David (1989): Nasals and nasality in Loloish, in: Bradley, David; Henderson, Eugénie J.A. & Mazaudon, Martine (eds.), Prosodic analysis and Asian linguistics: to honour R.K. Sprigg. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics C-104, 143–155. Clements, Nick; Michaud, Alexis & Patin, Cédric (2011): Do we need tone features?, in: Goldsmith, John; Hume, Elizabeth & Wetzels, Leo (eds.), Tones and features. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 3–24. Ferlus, Michel (1971a): La langue souei: mutations consonantiques et bipartition du système vocalique, in: Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 66, 378–388. Ferlus, Michel (1971b): Simplification des groupes consonantiques dans deux dialectes austroasiens du Sud-Laos, in: Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 66, 389–403. Ferlus, Michel (1979): Formation des registres et mutations consonantiques dans les langues monkhmer, in: Mon-Khmer Studies 8, 1–76.

5

The existence of apparent cognates across language family boundaries have led to several attempts at different groupings, but these examples are most likely to be due to substratum effects; the classification adopted here classically recognizes Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, Austroasiatic and Austronesian as distinct language families.

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Ferlus, Michel (1982): Spirantisation des obstruantes médiales et formation du système consonantique du vietnamien, in: Cahiers de Linguistique – Asie Orientale 11, 83–106. Ferlus, Michel (1997): Compte rendu d’exposé: Evolution vers le monosyllabisme dans quelques langues de l’Asie du Sud-Est, in: Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 92, XVII–XVIII. Ferlus, Michel (2009): What were the four divisions of Middle Chinese?, in: Diachronica 26, 184–213. Hagège, Claude & Haudricourt, André-Georges (1978): La phonologie panchronique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Haudricourt, André-Georges (1954a): Comment reconstruire le chinois archaïque, in: Word 10, 351–364. Haudricourt, André-Georges (1954b): De l’origine des tons en vietnamien, in: Journal Asiatique 242, 69–82. Haudricourt, André-Georges (1970): Les arguments géographiques, écologiques et sémantiques pour l’origine des Thaï, Readings on Asian topics: Papers read at the inauguration of the Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph 1. Lund: Studentlitteratur, 27–34. Haudricourt, André-Georges (1972): Two-way and three-way splitting of tonal systems in some Far Eastern languages (Translated by Christopher Court), in: Harris, Jimmy G. & Noss, Richard B. (eds.), Tai phonetics and phonology. Bangkok: Central Institute of English Language, Mahidol University, 58–86. Haudricourt, André-Georges (1991): Compte-rendu d’exposé: La monosyllabisation et l’apparentement des langues du Sud-Est asiatique, in: Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris 86, XX–XXI. He Jiren & Jiang Zhuyi (1985): Naxiyu Jianzhi (A presentation of the Naxi language). Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe. Henderson, Eugénie J.A. (1952): The main features of Cambodian pronunciation, in: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 14, 149–174. Henderson, Eugénie J.A. (1985): Feature shuffling in Southeast Asian languages, in: Ratanakul, Suriya; Thomas, David & Suwilai, Premsrirat (eds.), Southeast Asian Linguistic Studies presented to André-G. Haudricourt. Bangkok: Mahidol University, 1–22. Huffman, Franklin E. (1976): The register problem in fifteen Mon-Khmer languages, in: Jenner, Philip N.; Thompson, Laurence C. & Starosta, Stanley (eds.), Austroasiatic studies. Oceanic linguistics special publication no 13. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 575–589. Jacques, Guillaume (2006): La morphologie du sino-tibétain. Proceedings of Journée d’étude “La linguistique comparative en France aujourd’hui”, 4 mars 2006, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Paris. Jacques, Guillaume (2008): Research about the Rgyalrong Language (Jiarongyu Yanjiu). Beijing: Minzu Chubanshe. (Author name in Chinese: Xiang Bolin) Karlgren, Bernhard (1915–1926): Etudes sur la phonologie chinoise, in: Archives d’études orientales 15. Lewitz, Saveros (1968): Lectures cambodgiennes. Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve. Matisoff, James A. (1973): Tonogenesis in Southeast Asia, in: Hyman, Larry M. (ed.) Consonant types and tones. Southern California Occasional Papers in Linguistics 1, 71–96. Mazaudon, Martine (1977): Tibeto-Burman tonogenetics, in: Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 3, 1– 123. Mazaudon, Martine & Michailovsky, Boyd (2007): La phonologie panchronique aujourd’hui: quelques repères, in: Fernandez-Vest, Jocelyne (ed.), Combats pour les langues du monde: hommage à Claude Hagège. Paris: L’Harmattan, 351–362.

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Mazaudon, Martine & Michaud, Alexis (2008): Tonal contrasts and initial consonants: a case study of Tamang, a ‘missing link’ in tonogenesis, in: Phonetica 65, 231–256. Michaud, Alexis (2006): Three extreme cases of neutralisation: nasality, retroflexion and lip-rounding in Naxi, in: Cahiers de Linguistique – Asie Orientale 35, 23–55. Michaud, Alexis (2008): Phonemic and tonal analysis of Yongning Na, in: Cahiers de Linguistique – Asie Orientale 37, 159–196. Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1978): The nature of the Middle Chinese tones and their development to Early Mandarin, in: Journal of Chinese Linguistics 6, 173–203. Pullum, Geoffrey K. & Ladusaw, William A. (1986): Phonetic symbol guide. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. Sagart, Laurent (1999): Tibeto-Burman tonology in an areal context, in: Kaji, Shigeki (ed.), Proceedings of the symposium “Cross-linguistic studies of tonal phenomena: Tonogenesis, Japanese accentology, and other topics”. Tokyo: Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 91–104. Solnit, David B. (1988): The position of Lakkia within Kadai, in: Edmondson, Jerold A. & Solnit, David B. (eds.), Comparative Kadai: Linguistic studies beyond Tai. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington, 219–238. Stolz, Thomas (2007): Being monosyllabic in Europe: an areal-typological project in statu nascendi, in: Ammann, Andreas (ed.), Linguistics festival: May 2006, Bremen. Bochum: Brockmeyer, 97–134. Thompson, Laurence C. (1965): A Vietnamese reference grammar. Washington: University of Washington Press. Zee, Eric (2008): Phonetic characteristics of the apical sounds in Chinese. Proceedings of the 8th Phonetics Conference of China, Beijing, April 18th-20th 2008 (full-paper proceedings published on CD-ROM, without page numbers).

SABINE ZERBIAN (POTSDAM/GERMANY)

Morpho-phonological and morphological minimality in Tswana monosyllabic stems (Southern Bantu)

Abstract Bantu languages are agglutinative languages that have been claimed to show a minimality condition necessitating that words or prosodic stems are at least bisyllabic. The paper presents the linguistic behavior of monosyllabic stems in the grammar of Tswana, a Southern Bantu language. For various morpho-phonological domains in which monosyllabic stems are apparently not tolerated it describes the strategies that the language uses to fulfill the minimality requirement. Although a theoretical account has been provided for some of the cases (as the paper will outline), it will become clear from the exposition that a unified account for all these related phenomena is not self-evident and that both morpho-phonological and morphological minimality need to be referred to in an analysis.

1. Introduction 1.1. The structure of Tswana Tswana is a member of the Sotho-Tswana languages and is spoken in Botswana and South Africa by over 4 million speakers. Most Bantu languages are tone languages which have two surface level tones, high and low. They are agglutinative languages which are famous for their grammatical noun class system and their rich verbal morphology. An example for the rich verbal morphology and the agglutinative structure is given in (1). In (1) and in the following, high tones are marked by acute accent, low tones are left unmarked. The morpheme illustrated in (1a–f) is given in bold. Although the official Tswana orthography is disjunctive, i.e. prefixes to the verb stem are written separately, the current paper adopts a conjunctive writing which reflects phonological constituency. (1) (1a) (1b)

Rich verbal morphology and agglutinative structure of Tswana Ó-já bogô$be. subject concord (SC) SC1-eat NC14-porridge ‘S/he eats porridge.’ object concord (OC) Ó-a-bó-já. SC1-PRES-OC14-eat ‘S/he eats it.’

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(1c)

causative (CA)

(1d)

tense (TMA)

(1e)

passive (PASS)

(1f)

aspect (ASP)

Ó-j-és-á

le-séá

SC1-eat-CA-IFS NC5-baby

bo-gôb$ e.

NC14-porridge

‘S/he makes the baby eat porridge.’ Ó-tlá-mo-bó-j-és-a. SC1-TMA-OC1-OC14-eat-CAUS-IFS ‘S/he will make it eat it.’ Bo-gô$bé bó-a-j-w-á. NC14-porridge SC14-PRES-eat-PASS-IFS ‘The porridge is being eaten.’ bó-sa-j-w-á. Bo-gô$bé NC14-porridge SC14-ASP-eat-PASS-IFS ‘The porridge is still being eaten.’

1.2. Monosyllabic stems Tswana, just like other Bantu languages, shows a limited number of monosyllabic stems, some of which have been reconstructed for Proto-Bantu. Although their number is limited, some of them are of high frequency in the language (for an exhaustive list see the appendix). These stems trigger particular segmental rules if they occur in any of the following contexts given in (2):1 (2) (2a) (2b) (2c) (2d) (2e) (2f) (2g)

Grammatical contexts in which monosyllabic stems trigger segmental rules Imperative Positive Participial Tense Reduplication Passive Nouns in class 9 Adjectives in class 9 Base of verbalizer -f-

The current article presents each of these contexts in more detail and describes the alternations that can be observed with respect to monosyllabic stems, with the goal of a unified approach for the phenomena. Before doing so, however, it will first give more information on the concept of minimality and how it has been dealt with in Southern Bantu languages.

1

Monosyllabic stems also seem to trigger idiosyncrasies in the suprasegmental domain, such as the blocking of high tone shift onto the object concord when occurring with monosyllabic stems, or the blocking of high tone spread onto the noun class prefix of monosyllabic noun stems. However, due to space limitations and the fact that data pertaining to the suprasegmental domain are scarce I will have to leave this a topic for further research.

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2. Minimality in Bantu languages Words in Central Bantu languages (thus Narrow Bantu languages which fall outside Northwest Bantu) have been shown to be minimally disyllabic (Brandon 1975, Myers 1987, Batibo & Rottland 1992, Downing 1999, 2001 a.o.), i.e. that they have to consist of at least two syllables. The Northwest Bantu languages show a maximality condition on stems instead (Hyman 2008). Such a constraint on size has been referred to as “minimality restriction”, “minimality requirement”, or “minimality condition”. To give a well-known example as illustration (see also Floricic & Molinu, this volume): In Bantu languages, the verb takes an obligatory subject concord marker. The imperative is the only verb form that surfaces as the bare stem in the singular. In Zulu, a stabilizer syllable is regularly inserted stem-initially if the imperative is formed from a monosyllabic verb stem, as shown in (3). (3)

Zulu -thanda ‘love’ -dla ‘eat’

Thanda! Yi-dla!

Imperatives constitute (phonological) words. Thus, it has been generalized that the minimality restriction applies to (phonological) words in these languages. The minimality requirement in Central Bantu languages such as Zulu has initially been motivated phonologically (e.g. Batibo & Rottland 1992, Downing 1999, 2001, Myers 1987). The argument went that a (phonological) word consists of at least one stress foot and a stress foot must contain at least two syllables or morae. The minimality condition projects upwards from smaller to bigger prosodic constituents, as defined by the Prosodic Hierarchy (Nespor & Vogel 1987). Thus, if a foot has to be minimally bisyllabic then the phonological word has to be minimally bisyllabic as well. There are several problems with this approach, as Downing (2005, 2006) has discussed in detail. One of the points of criticism is first the status of stress (and thus of foot whose definition is based on stress) in the Bantu tone languages. Being tone languages, stress can at most be assumed on the phrasal level. The second is the prediction that arises from it: if minimality is related to feet then this predicts that stress languages (which have feet) show a tendency to have monosyllables. This is not the case as also evidenced by some of the papers in this volume. Downing (2006) subsequently developed an approach in which minimality is motivated by morphology instead. In order to follow the morphologically-motivated approach to minimality in Bantu languages, a closer look at the rich agglutinative structure in the verb word is necessary. The morphological structure commonly assumed for the verb word in Bantu is given in Figure 1.

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Verb word INFL (SC, TMA)

Macrostem (V1Stem) Compound IStem (V0Stem)

OC

REDStem

I(nflected) Stem

Derivational stem Root CVC

Derivational Suffixes VC

Inflectional Final Suffix

V

Figure 1: Bantu verb structure (Schema adopted from Downing 1999, 2001, obligatory morphemes are bolded) The only obligatory morphemes are the root and the inflectional final suffix (IFS). These are the two morphemes that feature in the imperative. In all other verb forms, a subject concord is obligatory. It appears prefixed to the so-called Macrostem whose structure is given above and which we will return to in the following discussion. Dresher & van der Hulst (1998) have postulated a morpheme-syllable correlation, according to which each morpheme should correspond to a syllable. Downing (2005, 2006) claims that the morpheme-syllable correlation is robust in the verbal morphology of Bantu languages as mirrored by the phonological shape of roots (CVC) and verbal suffixes (V(C)). By definition, stems consisting of roots and affixes would thus automatically be at least bisyllabic (CV.C+V…). Downing (2001) furthermore shows that depending on the language there exist differing minimality requirements for different morpho-phonological constituents (“ungeneralizable minimality”). E.g. there can be a minimality requirement for the Macrostem, or for the reduplicant. We will turn to concrete examples below. Thus, because the INFL-component can take different morpho-phonological constituents as its complement depending on the verbal construction, and because only some stems have minimality restrictions, not all verbal constructions necessitate bisyllabicity. One amendment of Downing’s proposal is needed in the current analysis. Downing states that the inflected stem should be at least bisyllabic as it consists of at least two morphemes, namely the root and the IFS. However, it needs to be noted that this argumentation makes an obvious wrong prediction for the Principal Present Tense, which consists of a subject marker and the stem, as illustrated in (4), repeated from (1a).

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Ó-já bogô$be. SC1-eat NC14-porridge ‘S/he eats porridge.’

According to Downing’s proposal, the inflectional stem -ja, consisting of root and IFS, should not surface as a monosyllabic stem in (4) as it violates the minimality restriction. However, it has never been suggested in the literature on Bantu languages that such a restriction holds for monosyllabic forms in the Present Tense. In the current analysis, root + IFS are thus considered one morpheme which consequently does not underlie a morphologically defined minimality restriction. The objectives of the current paper are to illustrate minimality phenomena which are triggered by monosyllabic stems in Tswana by both giving more information on the constructions in question as well as on the resulting segmental processes occurring. An analysis of the findings is sketched within Downing’s (2005, 2006) framework, mirroring her analysis for Ndebele and Swati. However, it will become clear that Tswana needs both morpho-phonologically and morphologically defined minimality. Furthermore, the current paper wants to extend the analysis to parallel phenomena in the nominal domain. By doing so, the paper delineates areas for further research and data gathering.

3. Minimality phenomena in Sotho-Tswana 3.1. Imperatives in Tswana As mentioned in (3), imperatives are the only verb forms in Bantu languages in which stems occur without the otherwise obligatory subject concord. As such they are very interesting for considerations of minimality (see also paper by Floricic & Molinu, this volume). In contrast to many other Bantu languages, the bare verb stem can be realized in the imperative in at least some varieties in Tswana, (5b). (5) (5a) (5b) (5c)

Tswana (Cole 1955, cf. Chebanne et al. 1997) ‘see!’ -bốna ‘see’ bố.na#! -tla ‘come’ tlá! ‘come!’ -tla ‘come’ e.tla#!, tla.á! ʻcomeʼ (e.g. Northern Sotho: Lombard 1976: 66)

Given the occurrence of the “sub-minimal” imperative forms in Tswana (which otherwise abounds minimality phenomena in its grammar as will become clear in the following), an active minimality restriction on the verb word cannot be postulated for these varieties of Tswana. Those speakers who obligatorily do have vowel insertion in the imperative, (cf. 5c), do show a minimality restriction on the verb word.

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Although it is clear that the distribution of monosyllabic and disyllabic imperatives needs to be investigated further, a preliminary analysis will be sketched out. For the monosyllabic imperatives nothing further needs to be said. They are derived according to the formation of imperatives, i.e. the bare verb stem. Remember from the previous section that in contrast to Downing (2005) I do not assume a morphologically determined minimality restriction on the stem in Tswana, i.e. root + IFS count as one morpheme in the analysis pursued here. For bisyllabic imperatives two ways of formulating the minimality restriction suggest themselves: A purely morphologically defined minimality restriction based on the morpheme-syllable correlation necessitates bisyllabicity because of the two morphemes (root and imperative) involved. The imperative morpheme consists of a tone only (a high tone that associates with the second stem syllable, or in monosyllabic verbs with the only syllable; Khoali 1992) and is segmentally empty. Alternatively, a morphophonologically defined minimality restriction would argue that a specific morphophonological constituent, here the word, needs to be minimally bisyllabic, hence the insertion of an additional (semantically empty) syllable with monosyllabic stems.

3.2. Retention of the nasal class 9 prefix with monosyllabic noun stems Another common and well-documented minimality effect occurs in the nominal domain. Monosyllabic noun stems are always complemented by a class prefix, (6a). The nominal prefix of class 9 is a syllabic nasal (N) which induces fortition (also referred to as strengthening, Dickens 1984) on stem-initial consonants. The prefix is regularly dropped when occurring with polysyllabic stems (6b). With monosyllabic stems, however, it surfaces as a syllabic nasal. The syllabicity of the nasal is shown by the fact that it carries its own (low) tone. (6) (6a) (6b) (6c)

Tswana mo-sú → mo.sú N-bódi → pó.dí N-kú → n!.kú

type of acacia (Acacia tortilis) ‘goat’ ‘sheep’

It is interesting to note that the minimality condition in the nominal domain, which results in the retention of the nasal class prefix, seems to appear across all varieties of Sotho-Tswana even in those that do not show a minimality restriction on imperatives (cf. 3.1). The retention of the nasal prefix as a syllabic nasal with monosyllabic noun stems in class 9 can be captured by either a minimality restriction on the size of a morphophonological constituent, namely on words as in section 3.1 (see also Coetzee 2001), or on purely morphological grounds, namely that the noun in Tswana consists of two morphemes, the prefix and the nominal stem and hence needs to be minimally bisyllabic.

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Next to these two rather well-described cases of minimality effects we find related phenomena in other areas throughout the grammar of Tswana as will be discussed in the following sections.

3.3. Nasal prefix retention with monosyllabic “adjectival” stems The equivalents of English adjectives occur in a variety of different morphosyntactic constructions in Tswana. One small class of stems, which we will call “adjectives” here (because they are neither numerals nor associatives nor is their formation synchronically and transparently related to relative clauses; exhaustively listed in the appendix) are formed as in (7) in Tswana: (7)

demonstrative prefix – noun class prefix – “adjectival” stem

“Adjectival” stems which occur in class 9 have fortition as the sole reflex of the noun class prefix in stems with more than one syllable, as shown in (8a). In these cases, the nasal noun class prefix N is deleted. With monosyllabic stems, however, the class 9 prefix N is retained, again as a syllabic nasal that carries a tone, as shown in (8b). (8) (8a) (8b)

Tswana (cf. Cole 1955: 139) tsela ế-N-khútswané DEMPX-NC-short way ‘a short way’ But: N-tšwá ế-N-pé NP-dog DEMPX-NC-evil ‘a vicious dog’

→ tsela ê"khútswané → n!.tšwá ê".m!.pé

Why would the nasal be retained in the cases of monosyllabic “adjectival” stems but not in di- or polysyllabic stems? Again, minimality suggests itself as an explanation. Thus, in the construction of adjectives, the complement to the demonstrative prefix (= noun class prefix + adj stem) obviously needs to be minimally bisyllabic. However, the minimality restriction on (phonological) word size suggested in 3.1 and 3.2 cannot account for the retention of the agreement prefix. The reason is that it is not the whole (phonological) word that needs to be bisyllabic. After all, the demonstrative prefix and the “adjectival” stem would fulfill the bisyllabicity requirement even in the case of (8b). The question is which constituent the minimality condition applies to in the case of “adjective” formation. A purely morphological approach to minimality states that each morpheme should correspond to a syllable and that morphologically complex stems should thus be at least minimally bisyllabic. In such an approach the retention of the noun class prefix as an agreement marker with monosyllabic adjective stems can readily be accounted for. Formulating an account which limits the size of a morpho-phonological constituent to

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two syllables is more challenging, especially given the lack of detailed studies on the morpho-syntactic structure in the manifold nominal modifiers in Bantu.

3.4. Reduplication with monosyllabic verb stems Reduplication of verbs is a highly productive word formation process in Bantu languages in order to express repeated or continuous action. Across Bantu languages, reduplicants often show a minimality (and maximality) requirement in having to be minimally and maximally bisyllabic (see Downing 2005 for an overview). In reduplication in Tswana, a vowel is inserted in the reduplicant but only with monosyllabic verb stems. This is shown in (9). Two adjacent identical vowels are considered as constituting two separate syllables because Tswana does not have a phonemic vowel length contrast (cf. Creissels 1999). Again, the fact that the two adjacent vowels can carry different tones is taken as evidence for their syllabicity. (9) (9a) (9b) (9c) (9d)

Tswana (Cole in press: §229 for the tones) -jáa-ja ‘eat continuously’ -nwáa-nwa ‘drink continuously/ indiscriminately’ -waa-wa ‘fall about frequently’ -šwáa-šwa ‘die in large numbers/unexpectedly’

The insertion of an additional vowel lends itself to an analysis within the framework that posits minimality restrictions on the size of morpho-phonological constituents. The reduplicant (=REDStem in Figure 1) needs to be minimally bisyllabic in Tswana (as in many other Bantu languages), thus the “stabilizing” extra vowel with monosyllabic stems. Note that a morphological account to minimality does not account for the bisyllabicity of the reduplicant stem. The reduplicant can be considered one morpheme, thus there is no necessity for bisyllabicity on purely morphological grounds. Minimality in reduplication constitutes an example for the need of minimality defined over constituent size.

3.5. Passive formation with monosyllabic verb stems Passive formation is another highly productive process in the Bantu languages in which the passive morpheme is added as a suffix to the verb root, thereby constituting the derivational stem (cf. Figure 1). Monosyllabic verb stems in Tswana take the passive

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suffix -iw- instead of the -w- observed in longer stems (Cole 1955: 195, see also Kotzé & Zerbian 2008).2 Examples are given in (10). (10) (10a) (10b) (10c)

Tswana (Cole 1955: 195) -fá ‘give’ f-íw-a -já ‘eat’ j-éw-a -tla ‘come’ ts-iw-a, tl-iw-a

The obligatory use of -iw- with monosyllabic stems has been attributed to minimality requirements, according to which the IStem (root+extension+IFS) must be minimally bisyllabic (Downing 2001: 49). Positing a minimality requirement on constituent size of deeply embedded constituents allows for testable predictions, as any minimality requirement holding at a lower level should automatically manifest itself at a higher level as well. Thus, a language that has a minimality requirement on the IStem constituent is predicted to also show segmental insertion processes triggered by minimality in other tenses, e.g. in the Principal Present Tense, as all tenses have the IStem constituent in their morphological structure. As shown in (4) this is not the case. Only the morphologically defined approach to minimality can account for the insertion of the -iw- passive allomorph with monosyllabic stems. Again, the stem and the passive are two morphemes. Complex, and thus branching morphological constituents should at least be bisyllabic, thus verb forms of the passives should at least be bisyllabic.

3.6. Participial tense of monosyllabic verb stems It is common in the verbal morphology of Bantu languages to distinguish between finite verbs in main clauses and in dependent clauses. Finite verbs in dependent clauses often show a different class of subject concords and/or different tonal patterns in Tswana (Cole 1955, Chebanne et al. 1997). Downing (2001) reports for the Bantu language Ndebele (which is a neighbor of Tswana) that the main clause/dependent clause distinction in this language also involves minimality restrictions. The finite verb forms in dependent clauses are commonly referred to as participial tense. The participial discussed here is also sometimes referred to as the participial present tense. However, the finite verb forms in the dependent clauses actually do not express time reference per se. They receive their tense interpretation from the tense in the main clause (hence dependent verb forms). The participial “tense” discussed here expresses simultaneity with the action or situation described in the main clause, hence the translation with ‘while’ in the examples. 2

The passive allomorph -iw- is also used with disyllabic verbs that show certain phonological features, most notably those stems ending in a sibilant (Cole 1955: 193). This is probably for different reasons.

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In the participial tense in Ndebele (but not in the Present Tense in main clauses) a dummy morpheme ‘si’ is inserted with monosyllabic verb stems only, as exemplified in (11a) versus (11b). (11) Participial tense in Ndebele (Downing 2001: 43) (11a) é-qá:nsa ‘…she is climbing…’ (11b) bé-si:-dla ‘…they are eating…’ A comparable phenomenon can be observed in Tswana, in which an additional vowel is inserted only before a monosyllabic verb stem in the participial tense, as exemplified in (12a–d), where the asterisk denotes an ungrammatical form.3 (12) (12a) (12b) (12c) (12d)

Participial tense in Tswana (Cole in press: §331; Chebanne et al. 1997: 186) …á-rêká ‘…while he is buying’ …áa-já ‘…while he is eating’ *…á-já …kéé-tlá ‘…while I am coming’ *…ké-tlá …lóó-wá ‘…while you are falling’ *…ló-wá

Interestingly, both in Ndebele and at least for some varieties in Tswana the presence of an object marker lifts the minimality requirement, as shown in (13a) for Ndebele and (13b, c) for Tswana (Downing 2001, Chebanne et al. 1997: 187f).4 (13) Participial Tense with object marker in Ndebele, (13a), and Tswana, (13b, c) (13a) ngi-kú:-pha SC1SG-OC2SG-give ‘… I am giving you…’ ló-mo-já (13b) Ke-ló-bô$nye SC1SG-OC2PL-see.T SC2PL-OC3-eat ‘I saw you (PL) while you (PL) ate some’ (13c) Ke-go-bô$nye ó-bo-já5 SC1SG-OC2SG-see.T SC2SG-OC14-eat ‘I saw you (SG) while you (SG) ate some’ Again, there seems to be dialectal variation in Tswana. Cole (in press: §332) reports the object marker as lengthened in the Positive Participial Tense of monosyllabic verb 3

4

5

Chebanne et al. (1997: 185) report this additional vowel only for high-toned monosyllabic verb stems. It is a question for further research if indeed there is a relation of the minimality restriction and underlying tone and if so how this connection can be accounted for. Chebanne et al. (1997) observe for Tswana that high-toned object markers are optionally lengthened in the participial tense, as in ke-bá-bô$nye bá-oó-nwá ‘I saw them while they drank it’. Again, as for now it is totally unclear in how far minimality requirements are sensitive to tonal categories in Tswana or across Bantu in more general. The low-high falling tone on the object marker that Chebanne et al. cite in this example is also rather unusual. Neither Chebanne et al. (1997) nor Cole (in press) give examples of low-toned monosyllabic verb stems with an object marker.

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stems (see also footnote 5). The consistent lengthening of the object marker in the examples in Cole could, however, also be due to another factor: As mentioned above, vowel length is not contrastive in Tswana. The penultimate syllable of a phrase is predictably lengthened. If a monosyllabic verb stem appears at the end of the sentence, the predictable penultimate lengthening will occur on the syllable preceding the stem, which is in the cases of (13) the object marker. Thus, in this case, lengthening would be due to segmental rules that apply at the phrase-level and not due to minimality requirements. In order to tell the two apart, data from a context would be needed in which e.g. an object follows the verb, thus preventing the verb from appearing in phrase final position. Unfortunately, however, this data is not available in Cole (in press). Given the inconsistencies of the Tswana data, no analysis can yet be proposed. However, for the Ndebele data an analysis has been suggested in the literature. It will be reviewed before we look at the predictions that such an analysis would make for Tswana. Downing (2001: 43) has argued that in Ndebele, the special participial subject marker in INFL (see Figure 1) is lexically specified to take the Macrostem as its complement. The Macrostem consists of the compound stem plus, crucially, the object marker. She further argues that the Macrostem needs to be minimally bisyllabic in Ndebele in line with the morpheme-syllable correlation stated in section 2. The Macrostem is indeed bisyllabic and thus fulfills the minimality requirement if a monosyllabic verb combines with an object marker. In the absence of an object marker, however, a monosyllabic verb stem that is projected up to the Macrostem level is sub-minimal. Hence, a dummy morpheme is inserted. From the data available it looks as if the formation of the participial tense in Tswana is similar to Ndebele, a situation that might be due to their linguistic proximity. Then in Tswana too, the participial tense might take the Macrostem as its non-INFL complement, and the Macrostem might have to be bisyllabic. This is a hypothesis that future research will have to test. However, some conceptual problems with a minimality restriction on the Macrostem constituent shall be pointed out here. In principle, they repeat what has already been mentioned in section 3.5 with respect to the passive. An assumption in Prosodic Phonology is that all structural layers are always present even if empty. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the same can be assumed for morphological structure. In the case at hand this means that structurally, the layer of the Macrostem is always present in verb-internal morphological structure even without an object marker. If there was a minimality restriction on the size of the Macrostem, this should be evident in all verb forms, as all verb forms contain the Macrostem. Other tenses, such as the principal present tense (“principal” because it occurs in the main clause) and the negative form of the participial tense would eventually also take the Macrostem as their complement. If there was an active minimality restriction on the macrostem in Tswana, we would thus expect to also find minimality restrictions in these tenses. This is, however, not the case, as illustrated in (14) and (15). The examples in

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(14) show monosyllabic verb stems in the Present Principal Tense. They occur without the additional vowel that we observe in the participial tense in (12). The same observation applies to the participial negative in (15). Note that the negative marker -sa- would be part of INFL and not the Macrostem so that the Macrostem in the examples in (15) is still monosyllabic. (14) Present Principal Tense (Tswana) (14a) o-já di-jó SC2SG-eat NC10-food ‘You eat food’ m!-phô$ (14b) re-fá m!-mê$ SC1PL-give NC1-mother NC9-gift ‘We give the mother a gift.’ (15)

Negative Present Participial Tense (Cole & Mokaila 1962: 48, Chebanne et al. 1997: 189) (15a) …ré-sa-y-é SC1PL-NEG-go-IFS ‘…while we do not go’ (15b) …ló-sa-nw-é SC2PL-NEG-drink-IFS ‘…while you do not drink’ Thus, a minimality constraint on constituent size cannot account for the data without overgeneralising. The morphological approach to minimality, on the other hand, which states that morphologically complex stems should be minimally bisyllabic can capture the data. The basic assumption is that the inflected stem in the participial tense consists of two morphemes. A similar assumption was necessary if one wanted to account for bisyllabic imperatives within this framework, as outlined in section 3.1. Remember that root + IFS are considered one morpheme in the current paper, due to the lack of the minimality restriction in the principal present tense. Similarly to the case of the imperative there is evidence for the participial tense being represented by a tonal morpheme. It can be observed that in the participial tense interesting tonal modifications occur with verb stems of all lengths. These tonal modifications lower the stem-initial high tone of high-toned verbs. With low-toned verb stems, a rule of tone assimilation which otherwise spreads a high tone from a high-toned subject marker to a verbstem initial low-toned syllable is blocked (cf. Chebanne et al. 1997). It has been suggested in the literature that the lowering of a verb stem initial high syllable and the blocking of high tone spread observed in the participial tense is due to a previous, low-toned infix whose segmental content has disappeared but whose tone has remained (Chebanne et al. 1997: 50, 185 suggesting an empty syllable). This floating tone lowers the stem initial syllable of a high-toned verb (16a). However, if an object

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concord co-occurs, this otherwise high-toned object concord will take on the low tone (16b, c), suggesting that this historic infix appeared preceding the macrostem of which the object concord is part. (16) (16a) (16b) (16c)

Tswana á-kwalá á-mo-kwála á-lo-kwála

‘…while he is writing’ ‘…while he is writing him’ ‘…while he is writing it’

These tonal processes due to an earlier infix provide evidence for a morpheme associated with the participial tense. Thus, the root + participial would constitute a complex, and thus branching morphological structure which needs to be minimally bisyllabic.

3.7. Derivation with the verbalizer F from monosyllabic nominal stems In Bantu languages, and more specifically in Tswana, verbs can be derived from substantival bases by affixing a verbalizing infix. The non-verbal bases may be nominal, qualificative, adverbial, ideophonic or interjective stems. The bases tend to undergo some modification when verbalizers are affixed, for instance, monosyllabic adjectival stems usually assume an initial syllabic nasal. Monosyllabic noun stems often retain their prefixes. This is illustrated in (17). (17) Verbalizer -f- in Tswana (Cole, class notes) (17a) le-swé ‘filth, dirt’ -leswa-f-ala ‘become dirty’ (17b) mo-tho ‘person’ -motho-f-ala ‘become personified’ (17c) -šwá ‘new’ -n!.tšhwa-f-ala ‘become renovated’ (17d) -su ‘black’ -n!.tshu-f-ala ‘become black’ The insertion of additional material, such as the syllabic nasal in (17c, d) and the retention of the class prefix in (17a,b) seem to relate to minimality. There seems to be a minimality (and maximality) requirement on the bases in verb derivation. If one would like to postulate a minimality restriction on constituent size, it would be unclear to which morpho-phonological constituent this constraint referred to. Similarly, in a morphologically-defined approach to minimality it is unclear which two morphemes are involved (root +?). For now, the obvious case of minimality in the derivation on verbs remains unclear and a topic for further research.

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4. Discussion and conclusion What attracts the interest of the morphophonologist is that in Tswana segmental material is inserted or retained in connection with monosyllabic stems in a number of unrelated morphological contexts. In the nominal domain, noun class prefixes are retained, whereas in the verbal domain additional vowels are inserted, thereby often doubling the vowel quality of the respective subject concord marker. Some of the phenomena, mainly imperative and participial formation as well as nasal noun class prefix retention with nouns of class 9, have also been reported for other Bantu languages (see Downing 2001 and references therein). An investigation of the pervasion of the grammar of a language to the extent shown here for Tswana is unknown to me. Nevertheless, there is no reason to believe that Tswana is unique among the Bantu languages in this respect. The above-mentioned processes of segmental insertion and retention have in common that they are all triggered by monosyllabic stems. Thus, it is only too natural to generalize across the phenomena in a unified account. The framework that has been suggested and applied in the literature is minimality. Minimality has been phonologically motivated as a minimal size requirement on certain morpho-phonological constituents. Another suggestion has been to ground it in morphology and require that morphologically complex structures be at least bisyllabic in a tendency to have each morpheme represented by at least one syllable. The grounding of minimality in either phonology or morphology has been critically discussed elsewhere (Downing 2006) as alluded to in section 2. The discussion of the Tswana data has shown that both approaches can be necessary in a language in order to account for the array of phenomena observed. Figure 2 presents an overview of those morpho-phonological contexts which show sensitivity towards minimality considerations in Tswana. All contexts have been exemplified in the paper. They are presented in two groups which correspond to the two differently grounded concepts of minimality. I will summarize this distinction in the following. The upper group shows a morpho-phonologically defined minimality restriction that actively requires certain morpho-phonological constituents to be at least bisyllabic. This strong constraint only applies to the constituent reduplicant in reduplication (cf. section 3.4). A minimality constraint on the size of the word could also account for vowel insertion in imperatives and nasal retention in monosyllabic noun stems. However, these processes can equally well be accounted for by a purely morphological minimality restriction and the evidence thus remains inconclusive for these latter cases. In the case of the reduplicant, however, no alternative account seems possible.

Minimality in Tswana monosyllabic stems

morphophonological minimality

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reduplicant passive

minimality

participial tenses morphological minimality

imperative nouns adjectives? verbalizer -f- ?

Figure 2: Minimality in Tswana The second group shows minimality phenomena that can and must be accounted for on purely morphological grounds. This group comprises passive formation, formation of the participial tenses, imperatives, noun stems, adjectives and verbalization on -f-. At least in the first two constructions we see that delineating the morphophonological constituent for which a minimality requirement should be postulated poses a real problem. A minimality requirement on the inflected stem for the passive or on the Macrostem for the participial tense would manifest itself in all verb forms, as the inflected stem, just like the macrostem, is part of each and every verb. On the other hand, both verb forms are clearly derived morphological constructions which are therefore subject to the morpheme-syllable correlation formulated by Dresher & van der Hulst (1998). I have tentatively grouped adjective formation and verbalisation using -f- in this group as well. However, their morpho-syntactic structure has not yet been investigated and it thus remains somewhat unspecified how they fit in this group. Nevertheless, they could plausibly be derived from a morphological minimality requirement. It will need to be kept in mind, though, that in some cases crucial data is still missing to resolve issues in the analysis. At the same time, it is only with a framework that the data necessary for elicitation can be delineated.

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Abbreviations ASP CA DEMPX IFS NC OC PASS PRES SC TMA

aspect causative demonstrative prefix inflectional final suffix noun class prefix (followed by class number) object concord (followed by class number or person) passive present tense infix -asubject concord (followed by class number or person) tense, mood, aspect marker

References Batibo, Herman M. & Rottland, Franz (1992): The minimality condition in Swahili word forms, in: Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere 29, 89–110. Brandon, F.R. (1975): A constraint on deletion in Swahili, in: Herbert, Robert K. (ed.), Proceedings of the sixth conference on African linguistics. (Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 20). Columbus, Ohio: Department of linguistics, 241–259. Chebanne, Andrew M.; Creissels, Denis & Nkhwa, H.W. (1997): Tonal morphology of the Setswana verb. Munich: Lincom Europe. Coetzee, Andries W. (2001): Nasal-only syllables in Tswana, in: Horwood, Graham & Kim, Se-kyung (eds.), RuLing Papers 2: Working Papers of Rutgers University. New Brunswick: Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University, 1–20. Cole, Desmond T. (in press): Setswana & English illustrated dictionary. Cole, Desmond T. (1955): Introduction to Tswana grammar. Cape Town: Longman. Cole, Desmond T. & Mokaila, Dingaan Mpho (1962): A course in Tswana. Washington: Georgetown University. Creissels, Denis (1999): Bimoraic syllables in a language without length contrast and without consonants in coda position: the case of Siswati, in: Blanchon, Jean Alain & Creissels, Denis (eds.), Issues in Bantu tonology. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 153–196. Dickens, Patrick (1984): The history of so-called strengthening in Tswana, in: Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 6, 97–125. Downing, Laura J. (1999): Prosodic stem ≠ prosodic word in Bantu, in: Hall, Tracy Alan & Kleinhenz, Ursula (eds.), Studies on the phonological word. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 73–98. Downing, Laura J. (2001): Ungeneralizable minimality in Ndebele, in: Studies in African Linguistics 30, 33–58. Downing, Laura J. (2005): Morphology conditions minimality in Bantu languages, in: Bostoen, Koen & Maniacky, Jacky (eds.), Studies in African comparative linguistics, with special focus on Bantu and Mande. Tervuren: Royal Museum for Central Africa, 259–280. Downing, Laura J. (2006): Canonical forms in prosodic morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dresher, B. Elan & van der Hulst, Harry (1998): Head-dependent asymmetries in phonology: complexity and visibility, in: Phonology 15, 317–352. Floricic, Franck & Molinu, Lucia (this volume): Romance monosyllabic imperatives and markedness.

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Hyman, Larry M. (2008): Directional asymmetries in the morphology and phonology of words, with special reference to Bantu, in: Linguistics 46(2), 309–350. Kgasa, Morulaganyi L.A. & Tsonope Joseph (1995): Thanodi ya Setswana. Gaborone: Longman Botswana. Khoali, Benjamin T. (1992): A Sesotho tonal grammar. Unpublished PhD thesis. Illinois: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kotzé, Albert E. & Zerbian, Sabine (2008): On the trigger for palatalization in the Sotho-languages, in: Journal of African Languages and Linguistics 29(1), 67–95. Lombard, Daan P. (1976): Aspekte van Toon in Noord-Sotho. PhD-thesis, University of South Africa, Pretoria. Myers, Scott P. (1987): Tone and the structure of words in Shona. PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Nespor, Marina & Vogel, Irene (1987): Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Snyman, J.W., Shole, J.S. & Le Roux, J.C. (1990): Dikišinare ya Setswana – English – Afrikaans. Pretoria: Via Afrika.

Appendix (exhaustive lists) Verbal C-roots (resulting in a monosyllabic verb stem when adding IFS) (Kgasa & Tsonope 1995, Snyman et al. 1990) -b $ -f $ -g $ -kg $ -k $ -r -tl -y -kgw $ -sw $ -tsw -j $ -n -ny -s $ -šw $ -tšhw $ -nw $ -lw -w

‘become, be’ ‘give’ ‘draw water’ ‘pluck fruit’ emphatic auxiliary ‘say’ ‘come’ ‘go’ ‘spit out’ ‘die’ ‘come out’ ‘eat’ ‘rain’ ‘excrete’ ‘disperse (of night)’ ‘burn’ (intr.) ‘dry up (as water)’ ‘drink’ ‘fight’ ‘fall’

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Monosyllabic adjective stems (Kgasa & Tsonope 1995, Snyman et al. 1990) ~=bé ‘bad, evil’ ~=ngwé ‘another, other’ ~=ngwe ‘one’ ~=šwá ‘new, young, recent’ (cf. šá/ tšhá/ fšá) ~=kgwê$ animal colour referring to a longhorn cow whose underparts and spine is white Monosyllabic noun stems (Kgasa & Tsonope 1995, Snyman et al. 1990) n!kú ‘sheep’ n!kô$ ‘nose’ n!tšwá ‘dog’ n!tlo ‘house’ n!kgô$ ‘clay pot’(< g $) n!kwê$ ‘leopard’ (panthera pardus) n!nê ‘four’ m!phô$ ‘gift’ (< f $) n!tá ‘lous’ n!tha ‘sinew, tendon’ n!tho ‘multitude of people’ n!tshê ‘sediment of sorghum’ n!tshí ‘eyelash, eyebrow’ n!tsu bigger member of the Aquilidae (e.g. eagle) n!tšhwê$ ‘ostrich’ n!tšhwê ‘sweet reed, sugar cane’ n!twa ‘war’ (< l $) But: nnété ‘truth’

FRANCK FLORICIC (PARIS/FRANCE) & LUCIA MOLINU (TOULOUSE/FRANCE)

Romance monosyllabic imperatives and markedness

Abstract The aim of this paper is to account for the particular shape of some Romance imperatives. It has long been recognized that imperatives often equal the bare stem and their morphological make-up reflects their primitive status in language acquisition. It will be shown that in Romance some imperatives can even go farther in phonetic reduction: the verb stem can be radically amputated and the possible reasons for such a drastic reduction will be discussed. It will be argued that phonological subminimality arises even in those languages in which minimal size restrictions have been taken to be at work. The question of frequency will be addressed, and the view will be held that subminimality produces phonologically marked structures which cannot be accounted for by resorting to frequency effects: though frequency appears to be relevant, it will be argued that monosyllabic imperatives are structurally marked and that markedness stems from the speech-rooted nature of imperatives. Nam tres istae voces intra, citra, ultra, quibus certi locorum fines demonstrantur, singularibus apud veteres syllabis appellabantur in, cis, uls. VIII. Haec deinde particulae quoniam parvo exiguoque sonitu obscurius promebantur, addita est tribus omnibus eadem syllaba, et quod dicebatur cis Tiberim et uls Tiberim, dici coeptum est citra Tiberim et ultra Tiberim; item quod erat in, accedente eadem syllaba intra factum est. [For those three words intra, citra, ultra (within, this side, beyond), by which definite boundaries of places are indicated, among the early writers were expressed by monosyllables, in, cis, uls. Then, since these particles had a somewhat obscure utterance because of their brief and slight sound, the same syllable was added to all three words, and what was formerly cis Tiberim (on this side of the Tiber) and uls Tiberim (beyond the Tiber) began to be called citra Tiberim and ultra Tiberim; and in also became intra by the addition of the same syllable (Gellius, A. Cornelius, Noctes Atticae [Attic Nights]. Loeb Classical Library (Vol. II), 1927)]

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1. Introduction The aim of this work is to account for a small class of Romance verb forms, monosyllabic imperatives. Imperatives have long been neglected in the linguistic literature, where they were only dealt with as a peripheral topic in Pragmatics. In fact, imperatives are a fascinating topic, their interest lying precisely in the fact that they concern all aspects of linguistic analysis: syntax, morphology, pragmatics, and of course phonology. Given the multiplicity of the perspectives from which the analysis could be proposed, we shall concentrate on the morpho-phonological side of the question; in particular, we shall raise the question as to whether our imperatives can be said to obey some Minimality Constraints, and we shall argue that such Minimality Constraints are clearly violated by monosyllabic imperatives. And this in turn will raise the question as to whether such Minimality Constraints are active in the languages under review. The question of markedness will be discussed and it will be asked in which sense our imperatives are “marked”. We shall argue that the markedness of some of our monosyllabic imperatives does not reduce to frequency effects.

2. The imperatives One of the most important properties which imperatives share with, say, vocatives, is their speech-rooted character. As a matter of fact, both are directed towards the addressee, whether for naming purposes, or for a command. As such, imperatives are distinguished by their prosodic properties, as is clearly seen in cases where imperatives and indicatives are morphologically syncretic. In standard Italian, a sentence like mangia la pasta ‘(s)he is eating the pasta’ is a mere statement with a constative value in the prosodically neutral variant mangia la pasta, (‘(s)he is eating the pasta’) but it clearly fulfils a directive function when uttered with the appropriate intonational contour: mangia la pasta! (‘eat the pasta!’) A property which has long been pointed out is the importance of the beginning of the word. It is a well-known fact, identified by Kruszewski and Schuchardt among others, that the beginning of the word plays a crucial role in word recognition. As Kruszewski (1883/1995: 85) puts it, Perhaps both the accelerated metamorphosis of the medial sounds of a word and the instability of the final sounds can be explained primarily by the fact that the main carriers of meaning are the initial sounds; we, so to speak, resort to abbreviations in pronunciation, holding to the same principle that we do in writing: we show special care for the beginning and less for the end of a word.

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In imperatives and vocatives, the beginning of the word is even more important, given that their intonational contour marks the very nature of the speech act at stake. And this is also the reason why the endings of these categories are so often truncated. Last, it must be pointed out that the intonational contour of imperatives is correlated with their on-focus value. In languages endowed with a complex focus system, it is not unusual to find that focus marking is suspended in the imperative, the reason being that the imperative carries by itself a focus value, thus pre-empting any focus marking in the other elements of the sentence (cf. Floricic 2009 and the literature cited therein). From the morpho-phonological point of view, one of the most striking features of imperatives is their bareness and their shortness (cf. Lombard 1953: 21), and these properties iconically reflect the immediate – we should say non-mediated – relationship carried out by the 2nd person singular imperative. The relationship implied by imperatives can be defined as asymmetrical in so far as the terminus a quo of the relationship is backgrounded, while putting in the forth its terminus ad quem. In other words, imperatives like vocatives are polarized around the addressee, and the verb or the nominal stem is deprived of any inflexional information, thus offering the bare expression of the state of affairs to be conformed with, or of the individual to be identified.

2.1. Minimality effects It has long been recognized that the size of independent words should not be inferior to a given prosodic scheme. This was for example the view of Antoine Meillet in his analysis of Old Armenian aorists. When asking why Old Armenian has kept the augment in the third person singular, Meillet (1900: 16) rightly points out that: Les formes grammaticales très brèves sont souvent éliminées au profit de formations plus longues et ayant plus de corps phonétique. C’est à cette tendance qu’est due, on le sait, la conservation de l’augment en arménien ancien. La 3ème personne du singulier de l’aoriste a l’augment dans tous les cas où, sans augment, elle serait monosyllabique : beri, eber; baçi, ebaç; l’augment arménien étant toujours syllabique, les verbes qui commencent par une voyelle en sont dépourvus dans les textes les plus anciens : arbi, arb ; par la suite, les verbes à initiale vocalique ont reçu aussi l'augment syllabique, d’où ēarb. Les aoristes edi ‘je posai’ et eki ‘je vins’ ont l’augment à toutes les personnes parce que, sans cela, ils seraient monosyllabiques dans toute leur flexion ; etu ‘je donnai’ a de même l’augment à toutes les personnes, sauf la 1ère plur. tuakh. [Very short grammatical forms often are eliminated in favour of longer formations with major phonetic substance. It is a well known fact that conservation of the augment in Old Armenian is due to this very tendency. The third person singular in the aorist takes the augment in those cases where otherwise it would be monosyllabic: beri, eber;

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baçi, ebaç; given that the Armenian augment always is syllabic, verbs with an initial vowel are augmentless in the oldest texts: arbi, arb; subsequently, verbs with an initial vowel have received the syllabic augment, hence ēarb. Aorists edi ‘I put, placed’ and eki ‘I came’ take the augment in all the persons because otherwise they would be monosyllabic in the whole paradigm; etu ‘I gave’ takes as well the augment in all the persons, except the first plural tuakh].. We shall not discuss in this paper the views of Robert Gauthiot1, who devoted a whole chapter of his dissertation to the properties of monosyllables, nor shall we discuss the views of Jacob Wackernagel, who devoted his pioneering work Wortumfang und Wortform to the crosslinguistic tendency to avoid “Einsilbigkeit”. The point to be stressed is that the shape of the minimal prosodic unit can vary from language to language, but everywhere in the world one finds examples of languages in which such a prosodic constraint is at work. Minimal word restrictions have been reported in various phonological processes, among which we can mention the formation of hypocoristics, morphological truncation, clippings, etc. Much less attention has been devoted to vocatives and imperatives, and when they have been called into question, they have usually been claimed to obey Minimality Constraints. In many African languages, the imperative is one of the most naked forms. The data in (1a) are from Ndebele, a Bantu language spoken in Zimbabwe, and they show that the second person imperative equals the infinitive, minus the infinitive marker úkú (cf. Downing 2000: 25). With monosyllabic roots, however, Hyman et al. (2008) point out that the “stem cannot occur in its bare form in the imperative, but rather acquires an augmentative syllable yi-” (cf. (1b)): The same pattern can be observed in Siswati, another Bantu language mainly spoken in Swaziland. Herman (1996: 39) holds that “There is no word in Siswati that is shorter than two syllables long (with a word in the phonological sense being something which can stand by itself)”. And imperatives show that such a constraint is at work: with polysyllabic roots, the imperative is the bare stem, just like in Ndebele: (1) (1a)

1

2

The minimal word in Ndebele (Downing 2000: 25; Hyman 2008)2 Infinitive Imperative Gloss Multisyllabic C-initial úkú=do:nsa do:nsa ‘to pull’ úkú=bhukú:tsha bhukú:tsha ‘to swim’

“L’intérêt particulier des monosyllabes se manifeste encore par ailleurs. Leur brièveté les a entraînés à d’autres modifications variées dans la forme mais qui toutes relèvent de la même tendance générale en vertu de laquelle les langues évitent d’employer comme mots normaux, autonomes, à valeur pleine, des éléments trop courts” (Gauthiot 1913: 66). [The particular interest of monosyllables offers other manifestations. Their shortness has led them to other various modifications whose justification lies in the general tendency according to which languages tend to avoid too short elements as independent and semantically full words]. Data and glosses are taken from the authors.

Romance monosyllabic imperatives and markedness

úkú=khi:pha úkú=búthéle:la úkú:=lwa úku:=phá úkú:=fa uku-dl-a uku-z-a uku-m-a

khi:pha buthelé:la yí:-lwa yi:-phá yi:-fa yi-dl-a yi-z-a yi-m-a

(1b)

Monosyllabic

(2)

The minimal word in Siswati (Herman 1996: 39) Infinitive Imperative Multisyllabic ku-bon-a bon-a ku-b̯ al-a b̯ al-a ku-lim-a lim-a ku-bal-a bal-a Monosyllabic ku-y-a y-a-ni ku-kh-a kh-a-ni h ku-ts -a tsh-a-ni ku-lʒ -a lʒ-a-ni

(2a)

(2b)

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‘to put out’ ‘to heap up’ ‘to fight’ ‘to give’ ‘to die’ ‘to eat’ ‘to come’ ‘to stand’ Gloss ‘to see’ ‘to write’ ‘to plow’ ‘to count’ ‘to go’ ‘to pick’ ‘to say’ ‘to eat’

The examples in (2a) show that here too the imperative equals the infinitive, minus the infinitive marker ku- (cf. bon-a ‘see!’; b̯ al-a ‘write!’, etc.). With monosyllabic roots, a minimality violation follows, which is repaired by inserting an enclitic syllable – ni –, hence y-a-ni ‘go!’; kh-a-ni ‘pick!’; tsh-a-ni ‘say!’, etc. We shall not discuss in detail the data from Swahili reported in (3), because they show the same restrictions as those mentioned in Ndebele and Siswati. The common point between Swahili and Ndebele is that the imperative is formed deleting the infinitive marker -ku, but the strategy employed in order to avoid minimality is different: in the case of Swahili, the infinitive marker is preserved in those cases where the root would result subminimal (cf. (3b) ku-l-a ‘eat!’; ku-nyw-a ‘drink!’, etc.): (3) (3a)

(3b)

The minimal word in Swahili (Park 1998) Infinitive Imperative Multisyllabic ku-som-a som-a ku-fany-a fany-a ku-kat-a kat-a ku-sahau sahau Monosyllabic ku-l-a ku-l-a ku-nyw-a ku-nyw-a ku-j-a njoo kw-end-a nend-a

Gloss ‘to read’ ‘to do’ ‘to cut’ ‘to forget’ ‘to eat’ ‘to drink’ ‘to come’ ‘to go’

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The crucial point, however, to which we shall come back later, is that the Minimality restrictions don’t apply so blindly. As a matter of fact, if the Minimality constraint holds for most monosyllabic roots, some verb forms may well be subminimal. In the Swahili dialect of Kimakunduchi, Bertoncini (1999) points out that violations of Minimality constraints can be found, and she mentions among others monosyllabic imperative forms like lya! ‘eat!’ (cf. Kraska-Szlenk 2009: 281): Some dialects do not respect the minimality constraint as rigorously as Standard Swahili, as seen in the following Kimakunduchi data: the monosyllabic adjective in nguo pya ‘new clothes’ for Standard Swahili nguo m͎pya, or the monosyllabic imperative lya ‘eat-sg.’ for Standard kula (Bertoncini 1999). We came across the same kind of violations in Tswana, where Denis Creissels pointed out to us (p.c.) such forms as tlá! ‘come!’, which is attested along with the augmented form etlá!. (see as well Zerbian, this volume). To close this all too brief panorama, let us mention the case of Old Armenian where, as we said, the third person singular in the aorist is endowed with an augment which prevents monosyllabicity. On the contrary, the Old Armenian imperative does not surface with the augment, but rather as a bare monosyllabic stem, thus showing a violation of the ban against monosyllabic words. As recalled by Meillet (1905–1906: 359), Seule, la deuxième personne du singulier de l’impératif, qui est par excellence la forme brève des verbes dans la plupart des langues, est restée monosyllabique (en arménien) dans ce dernier verbe (i.e. lal ‘pleurer’) : lac ̣ ‘pleure’. [The second person singular of the imperative, which is par excellence in most languages the shortest verb form, is the only one which remained monosyllabic (in Armenian) in this verb (i.e. lal ‘to cry’): lac ̣ ‘cry’]. (4)

Old Armenian monosyllabic imperatives dir ‘lay!’ lac ̣ ‘cry!’ lic ̣ ‘fill!’ bac ̣ ‘open!’ kac ̣ ‘stay!’

What we shall see in the remainder of this study is that for those Romance languages where Minimality constraints have been recognized, second person singular imperatives may violate such constraints.

2.2. The Sardinian imperatives Let us start with a rather clear case, that of Logudorese Sardinian. The fact that a Minimality requirement is at work in this language can be seen in the examples in (5), where an epenthetic syllable has been inserted in those cases which otherwise would be subminimal (cf. Floricic & Molinu 2003: 351):

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Sardinian Repair strategies (Molinu 1999) kie ['ki:ɛ] < ki (‘who’) tie ['ti:ɛ] < ti (‘you’) mie ['mi:ɛ] < mi (‘me’) dae ['da:ɛ] < da (‘give!’)

It is clear from the examples in (5) that the Sardinian Minimal Word is a syllabic trochee. As far as Sardinian imperatives are concerned, when they are polysyllabic, they naturally meet the minimal size requirement and thus, as shown by examples such as kanta! ‘sing!’; bénde! ‘sell!’; drommi! ‘sleep!’, and fáge! ‘do!’ in (6), they do not violate any Minimality restrictions. (6)

Sardinian polysyllabic imperatives (Budduso’ Logudorese (Molinu 1988–1989) Imperative Indicative present cantare (‘to sing’) kanta kantas (2SG), kantat (3SG) béndere (‘to sell’) bénde béndes (2SG), béndet (3SG) drommire (‘to sleep’) drommi drommis (2SG), drommit (3SG) fágere (‘to do’) fáge fáges (2SG), fáget (3SG)

However, a number of imperative forms can be found which do violate the bisyllabic pattern. These imperative forms, which are listed in (7), are all truncated versions of an already existing bisyllabic imperative: (7)

Sardinian monosyllabic imperatives (Budduso’ Logudorese, Molinu 1988–89; Floricic & Molinu 2003) Imperative Indicative present mi' ['mi] (< mira ['mi:ra] ‘look!’) miras (2SG), mirat (3SG) te' ['tɛ] (< tene (['tɛ:ne]) ‘hold!’) tenes (2SG), tenet (3SG) ba' ['ba] (< bae ['ba:ɛ]) ‘go!’) andas (2SG), andat (3SG) to' ['tɔ] (< tocca ['tɔk:a]) ‘take!’) toccas (2SG), toccat (3SG) na' ['na] (< nara ['nara]) ‘tell!’) naras (2SG), narat (3SG) le' ['lɛ] (< lea ['lɛa]) ‘take!’) leas (2SG), leat (3SG)

The feature shared by all the imperative forms in (7) is their subminimality: whilst the basic imperative is a syllabic trochee, the derived truncated form is monosyllabic and monomoraic, thus showing a phonologically deviant pattern. Thus, the Sardinian data crucially raise at least two questions: a) is there anything like a “minimal word constraint” in Sardinian? b) if such a constraint really is at work, what is the reason for the Minimality violations reported in (7)? c) must “Minimality” apply to surface forms, or should it apply to phonological representations?

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We shall return to these questions later. Let us first present the more controversial situation of Italian and Catalan.

2.3. Imperatives and Minimality in Catalan and Italian In Italian, the Minimal Word has been argued to be a syllabic trochee by Thornton (1996) and (2007), whereas in Catalan it has been taken to be a moraic trochee by Cabré i Monet (1994). And both argued for such a Minimality requirement on the basis of such phenomena as the formation of hypocoristics. 2.3.1. The case of Catalan As shown by examples such as bisyllabic Fina from Josefina (cf. (8a)), Tilde from Clotilde (cf. 8e)) or Mei from Remei (cf. (8h)), Catalan hypocoristics select a trochee, be it a bisyllabic trochee, or a moraic trochee, as argued by Cabré i Monet (1994). (8) (8a) (8b) (8c) (8d) (8e) (8f) (8g) (8h) (8i)

The hypocoristics in Catalan Josefina > Fina, Fineta Enriqueta > Queta Josepona > Pona, Poneta Manolita > Lita Clotilde > Tilde Magdalena> Lena Rossita > Sita Remei > Mei Bartomeu > Tomeu [tumɛ́w]

The process generating the kind of hypocoristics mentioned in (8) can be represented as in (9): (9)

F µ

F µ

ma.no. [li. ta] > lita

µ re.[me

µ i]

Of course it is not the aim of this paper to discuss whether or not the basic pattern of Catalan hypocoristic formation is a moraic trochee or something else. If we take into account the Catalan monosyllabic imperatives in (10), it can be argued that the moraic trochee indeed is a recurrent prosodic pattern among imperatives, as argued for by Cabré i Monet (1993): as a matter of fact, they generally show up with the scheme CVC or CVGlide. Not only is the moraic trochee the basic pattern of Catalan phonology; this

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pattern also is deemed to be responsible for the allomorphic variant of some second person singular imperatives, as argued by Cabré i Monet (1993: 81) who observes: Cal ressaltar també que les formes imperatives de 2ps dels verbs anar, fer, venir, no prenen les corresponents de la 3psPI com caldria esperar, perquè questes formes no s’ajusten a les condicions del mot mínim de la llengua: va/vés, fa/fes, ve/vine. [It must be pointed out as well that the (2SG) Imperative forms of anar ‘to go’, fer ‘to do’, venir ‘to come’ don’t match with the 3rd psPI as we should expect, because these forms do not obey the conditions on the Minimal Word of the language: va/vés, fa/fes, ve/vine] (10)

Catalan monosyllabic imperatives (Moll 1929–1932) Infinitive Imperative anar ‘to go’ bé/bés/vés fer ‘to do’ fés/fɛ́s/fé veure ‘to see’ bɛ́/béw/bɛ́s/vɛ́w/və́w tenir/tindre ‘to hold’ té/tɛ́/tén/tín metre ‘to put’ mɛ́t/mét/mə́t tèmer ‘to be afraid’ tɛ́m/tém/tə́m fondre ‘to melt’ fón perdre ‘to loose’ pɛ́rt/pɛ́ls dur ‘to carry’ dú/dúw/dús/dúʃ dire ‘to say’ dís/díw venir ‘to come’ (bəní, bíndre) bén/vén/bín/vine viure ‘to live’ bíw/víw

Let us first point out that the verbs mentioned in (10) may have as well polysyllabic variants in some dialects. Second, if we take a closer look at the data from Catalan considering the historical source of the monosyllabic imperatives, we may ask ourselves whether their formation really obeys some Miminality Constraint. The verbs anar ‘to go’, fer ‘to do’, dir ‘to say’ and veure ‘to see’ have as second person singular imperative the forms vès, fès, dis, and vés. Is there, however, any phonological reason for having a CVC imperative in this case? The reason seems to be a morphological rather than a phonological one. Like many other Ibero-Romance varieties, the regularity concerning the formation of Catalan imperatives is that the second person singular imperative equals the third person singular present indicative: this is shown in Catalan, Aragonese, Asturian, Galician and Gascon among others. Thus the Catalan imperative of anar ‘to go’, fer ‘to do’, dir ‘to say’ and veure ‘to see’ should be va, fa, di and veu. If their second person singular imperative is vès, fès, dis, and vés, with a heavy syllable closed by [s], it is because the second person singular marker [s] has extended its scope from the p2 indicative to the imperative, as suggested by Moll (2006), Pérez Saldanya (1998) and others. In other words, given that the most frequent second person indicative forms

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are endowed with the person marker [s], this marker has been overgeneralized to imperatives where it is not etymologically justified. In a dialect like that of Algher (n°148 in Moll’s list), such an overgeneralization gives rise to the imperative pɛls ‘loose!’, where phonologically the syllable is super-heavy. This generalization does not apply to all verbs, however, given that we can find verb forms like te ‘hold!’, which lacks any person marker and appears to be subminimal. As pointed out by Fouché (1924: 125): Dans le sens de ‘voici’ on emploie té (< tene). Mais si cet impératif conserve sa valeur verbale, il prend l’n devant une voyelle, tandis qu’il le prend ou non devant une consonne ; cf. tén ú ‘tiens-le’ ; tém bé ou té ƀé ‘tiens bien’ [In the sense of ‘here it is’, we use té (< tene). But if this imperative keeps its verbal value, [n] is preserved before a vowel, while it can be dropped or not before a consonant ; cf. tén ú ‘hold it’ ; tém bé ou té ƀé ‘hold good’]. It seems thus reasonable, following the observations of Fouché, to hypothesize that some kind of transcategorial shift is at least partly responsible for the particular phonological shape of this imperative form. To sum up, the Catalan monosyllabic imperatives generally show up with a heavy syllable – CVC, CVG(lide) or CVCC – but one can find subminimal surface forms that seem to violate the bimoraic shape. 2.3.2. Minimality in Italian The same kind of Minimality violation can be found in Italian. As was mentioned above, Minimality effects have been reported in Italian, and such Minimality effects have been argued to show up as well in Hypocoristic formations: (11) (11a) (11b) (11c) (11d) (11e) (11f) (11g) (11h) (11i)

The hypocoristics in Italian (Thornton 1996 and 2007) Alessandro > Ale Adriana/a > Adri Antonella > Anto Isabella > Isa Edoardo > Edo ['ɛdo] Patrizia > Patri Fabrizio > Fabri Teodoro > Teo Federica > Fede

The data in (11), which are drawn from Thornton (2007), consistently show that the hypocoristic derived from the full proper name is a left-headed bisyllabic word: We thus have Ale from Alessandro; Adri from Adriana; Anto from Antonella; Isa from Isabella, etc.

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When claiming that the minimal prosodic word in Italian is a Trochee, Thornton thus constrains herself to nominal expressions, leaving aside many strata of the Italian lexicon. Needless to say, there is no reason to limit the Minimality requirement to, say, the nominal, adjectival or adverbial classes. Incidentally, we should note with Bafile (1997: 450) that (...) in Italiano non vige un requisito assoluto di minimalità del piede e quindi (...) della parola, e che le parole monosillabiche non debbano essere considerate marginali rispetto al fondo lessicale [Italian does not show any absolute requirement on foot and Word Minimality, and monosyllabic words should not be considered as marginal with respect to the lexical stock (...)]. In any case, the data in (12a) show that Italian does have monosyllabic imperatives whose syllable can be either light or heavy. (12a) Italian monosyllabic imperatives (Huber-Sauter 1951: 65ff.; Floricic & Molinu 2003, Mańczak 2004, Maiden 2007, etc.) Imperative Indicative present tenere ‘to hold’ /’keep’ te’, tie’ (< tieni) tieni (2SG), tiene (3SG) togliere ‘to take away’ to’ (< togli) togli (2SG), toglie (3SG) guardare ‘to look at’ gua’ (< guarda) guardi (2SG), guarda (3SG) vedere ‘to see’ ve’ (< vedi) vedi (2SG), vede (3SG) aspettare ‘to wait’ spe’ (< aspetta) aspetti (2SG), aspetta (3SG) dare ‘to give’ da’, dai dai (2SG), dà (3SG) fare ‘to do’ fa’, fai fai (2SG), fà (3SG) stare ‘to stay’ sta’, stai stai (2SG), stà (3SG) andare ‘to go’ va’, vai vai (2SG), va (3SG) trarre ‘to pull’ trai trai (2SG), trae (3SG) dire ‘to say’ di’ dici (2SG), dice (3SG) From the data in (12a), it appears that the Italian monosyllabic imperatives are generally the truncated variant of the second person singular indicative (cf. te’ / tie’ from tieni, to’ from togli, ve’ from vedi, etc.). In the case of gua’ (< guarda), and spe’ (< aspetta), of course, the full imperative form is syncretic with third person present indicative. When two allomorphs are available, enclitics can attach to the monosyllabic root, while such an option is not available for the imperatives derived from polysyllabic roots. The enclitic forms in (12b) dammi ‘give me!’, fammi ‘make me!’, vammi ‘go for me!’, stammi ‘stay me!’, dimmi ‘tell me!’ are all grammatical, while forms like *tiello, *tollo, *vello, or guallo in (12c) are excluded: (12b) Clitic attachment to monosyllabic roots: i. dai > dammi ‘give me!’ ii. fai > fammi ‘make me!’ iii. vai > vammi ‘go for me!’

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iv. stai > stammi ‘stay for me!’ v. di’ > dimmi ‘tell me!’ (12c) Clitic attachment to polysyllabic roots vi. te’/tie’ > ??tello/tiello (cf. tienilo ‘keep it’) vii. to’ > ??tollo (cf. toglilo ‘take it off’) viii. ve’ > ??vello (cf. vedilo ‘see it / him’) xix. spe’ > ??spello (cf. aspettalo ‘wait for him/it’) xx. gua’ > ??guallo (cf. guardalo ‘look at him/it’) The reason why clitic attachment is not possible with the monosyllabic imperatives derived from polysyllabic roots is that they have lost any valency property along with their phonetic reduction. The crucial question is then: how can we explain such a drastic reduction of the phonetic substance of the word? And how can we explain the subsequent subminimality observed in languages like Sardinian? Are we dealing with some kind of frequency-induced reduction, or is there any other parameter to call into question? From a formal point of view, one may want to account for the phonological shape of imperatives in (12a) holding that at least some of them involve some Catalectic constituent (cf. Kiparsky 1991, Jacobs 1994, Kager 1995, etc.). In that case their apparent subminimality would just be a surface phenomenon and imperatives like ve’ (< vedi ‘see!’) and fa (< fai ‘do!’) should be given the representations in (12d): (12d) i.

ii. F σ

F σ

σ

µ v

e

µ f

µ

a

In the case of ve’ in (12d-i), the catalectic element would be a syllable, while it would be a mora in the case of (12d-ii). The relevance of the catalectic mora in (12d-ii) would also be strengthened by the variation found in imperatives like fai/fa’ (‘do!’), vai/va’ (‘go!’), etc.3 From our point of view, however, truncation must be accounted for at the 3

It could be claimed, with Nannucci (1843: 529ff., 552), that the Imperative of dare, stare, fare, andare, etc. regularly equals the present Indicative 3rd (SG) (cf. ama [< amare]), and that da, sta, fa, va thus are ‘primitive’ Imperative forms which surface as a bare stem. This also is the view hold by D’Ovidio (1880: 220–221), who points out that they are the regular outcome of the corresponding Latin Imperatives, while dai, stai, fai, vai are borrowed from the (2nd SG) present Indicative. It must be recalled, first, that various verb forms entered the monosyllabic verb class

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phonological level, and there is no reason to hold that imperatives in (12) are phonologically wellformed. As mentioned above when discussing Catalan imperatives, we shall argue that these truncated imperatives are of course very frequent forms, but in addition they have shifted towards the category of Interjections: this shift is at least partly responsible for their phonetic reduction. It must be recalled that the frequency argument has already been put forth by Mańczak (2004), who states that Si les changements phonétiques irréguliers dus à la fréquence se produisent à l’intérieur d’un paradigme flexionnel ou d’une famille de mots, les réductions ont lieu plus souvent dans les formes les plus fréquentes que dans les formes plus rares. [If phonetically irregular changes due to frequency occur inside a flexional paradigm or in a words family, these reductions more often affect the most frequent forms than the rarer ones.] (See as well Mańczak 1982) And Mańczak (1980: 68) precisely takes our monosyllabic imperatives to be an example of this frequency-induced phonetic reduction: “In the same vein, the (Latin) imperative ending -e disappeared in the forms fac, dīc, dūc, which are very often used”. Needless to say, it is the great merit of Witold Mańczak to have repeatedly argued, since the fifties, that frequency is a fundamental force in historical phonetics and morphological change. It is now recognized not as an epiphenomenon, but as a deep constraint on linguistic change: frequent forms are more easily stored in memory and their cognitive salience makes them more resistant to analogical levelling. Rather, frequent forms may form the starting point of paradigmatic restructuring. From this point of view, the works of Witold Mańczak deserve a special mention for their systematicity and their typological relevance. As regards truncated imperatives, it can be recalled that he importance of Überhäufigkeit had already been put forth by Schuchardt (1889)4 and Curtius (1886) as an explicandum of their reduction.

4

and levelled according to its general pattern. This is the case of va (< vade), which probably underwent the attraction of the above mentioned imperatives. Second, assuming that da, sta, fa, etc. are ‘primitive’ and dai, stai, fai, etc. somewhat ‘secondary’ (cf. D’Ovidio 1872: 67 and 1886: 86; Schuchardt 1874: 18; Huber-Sauter 1951: 19 fn.16) leads to the conclusion that Imperatives [da], [sta], [fa], [va] are the phonetic merger of different evolutionary pathways. “Wir haben hier quantitative Veränderungen welche ausserhalb der ‘Lautgesetze’ liegen, und ihre Ursache ist in der Überhäufigkeit des gebrauches zu suchen; wie ich schon anderswo gesagt habe, kann man sich in solchen Fällen nicht auf Tonlosigkeit der Wörter beziehen, da diese selbst erst eine Folge der Überhäufigkeit ist, da ferner die sonst in unbetonten Silben herrschenden ‘Lautgesetze’ nicht beobachtet erscheinen und da endlich auch betonte Wörter bei Überhäufigkeit verkürzt werden (vgl. Imperative wie tosk. gua > guarda, span. to > toma)” (Schuchardt 1889: 529, footnote 1) [We have here quantitative changes which are beyond ‘phonetic laws’, and their cause can be found in high frequency of use; as I have already said elsewhere, one cannot refer in such cases to the stresslessness of the words, because this itself is only a consequence of high frequency, and because the ‘phonetic laws’ are not obeyed either in unstressed syllables, and finally because stressed words are also shortened due to high frequency (cf. imperatives like tosc. gua > guarda, span. to > toma].

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The point to be stressed, however, is that following Mańczak, third person singular should count among the shortest verb forms. Instead, what the Italian and Sardinian evidence indicate is that our truncated imperatives are shorter than the corresponding third person singular verb forms. It thus follows that the shortness of our truncated imperatives cannot be said to be due to frequency. At most, frequency can be said to be a general property of some of the verbs referred to earlier. But the reason why our monosyllabic imperatives may be subminimal is that put forth by the great French dialectologist Georges Millardet, who observes that: Historiquement l’impératif est, dans la conjugaison, une interjection verbale aussi brève que possible, réduite le plus souvent au radical inaltéré, avec ou sans voyelle thématique, gr. ἔξ-ει, lat. ex-ī, vid-ē, gr. φέρε, lat. age. (...) l’emploi des impératifs en qualité d’interjections entraîne pour ces formes verbales une certaine usure phonétique. Le même fait peut être constaté dans d’autres langues : ital. tę, vie, guar’ ; port. chete (Mistero, 113) = chegate, guarte, calte, tirte, porte (Millardet 1923: 441, 449). [Historically, the Imperative is, in conjugation, a verbal interjection as short as possible, most often reduced to the bare stem, with or without a theme vowel gr. ἔξ-ει, lat. ex-ī, vid-ē, gr. φέρε, lat. age. (...) The use of Imperatives as interjections leads them to some phonetic decay. The same fact can be observed in other languages: ital. tę, vie, guar’; port. chete (Mistero, 113) = chegate, guarte, calte, tirte, porte]. And the same observation can be found in the works of Meillet (1922) and Hofmann (1926). Of course, as pointed out by Meillet and Curtius, it cannot be excluded that the theme vowel is missing in those monosyllabic imperatives whose frequency rate is very high. However, given the general Ibero-Romance correlation between 3SG of the present indicative and 2SG of the imperative, and given the frequency of third persons, we should expect that the third person forms show up with a phonetic shape which is at least as reduced as that of the imperative. If reduced imperatives violate the phonological restrictions on Minimality, it is because they shifted towards the periphery of the language system, where the restrictions of the phonological system are less active. It is a crucial aspect of the analysis to recognize that lexicon and grammar are not a uniform and iso-functional system where the elements all have the same value, the same place and the same weight. Cumulative centers may be found, as well as ‘free electrons’ that escape the gravitational force of the system. Imperatives and Vocatives may have this status of ‘free electrons’ immune to the attraction of the center, hence a growing amount of phonological and morphological ‘irregularities’. As was pointed out by Uspensky & Zhivov (1977: 9) in their seminal work on Center and Periphery, If we consider the periphery of langue (not parole) we can establish a general tendency expressed in the existence of anomalous structures in classes of peripheral elements, i.e., here the regularities inherent to the center of language do not hold.”

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But of course, peripherality is not a matter of binarism and we should not expect a given pattern to be this or that: we are of course dealing with a continuum, and a given element or a given pattern may occupy different zones in such a continuum.5 This is the case of our imperatives: at the same time inside and outside the core of the verb system. 2.3.3. The case of Aragonese and Asturian Aragonese and Asturian imperatives will not be discussed at length because they show on the whole the same correlation between P3 of the present indicative and P2 of the imperative. This correlation is not so absolute, however, given that some imperative forms are shorter than the corresponding third person (SG) present indicative: (13)

Aragonese imperatives (Habla del Valle de Ansó) Imperative Indicative present dá ‘to give’ (p.181) da das (2SG), da (3SG) tené ‘to hold’ (p.184) tien tienes (2SG), tiene (3SG) decí ‘to say’ (p.186) di dices (2SG), dice (3SG) fé ‘to do’ (p.187) fes fas (2SG), fa (3SG) í ‘to go’ (p.188) ves vas (2SG.), va (3SG)

As pointed out by Benítez Marco (2001: 170), De hecho, el fenómeno [i.e. deletion of the theme vowel] sólo se atestigua en el verbo tené (tien), mientras que son regulares sale y viene, que presentan en castellano formas apocopadas. [In fact, this phenomenon (i.e. deletion of the theme vowel) only occurs with the verb tené (tien), while sale y viene are regular, which appear as apocopated in Castillan]. The imperative of the verb decí ‘to say’ however shows that the abbreviation process can lead to further reduction; as a matter of fact, the imperative di ‘say’ violates the integrity of the verb root, thus showing an irregular morphological pattern reminiscent of that found in other Romance languages. As for the verbs fé ‘to do’ and í ‘to go’, they illustrate the same hypercharacterization as that mentioned in Catalan: the final consonant of imperatives fes and ves is not etymological, nor does it require any phonologically-grounded explanation.6 In the Asturian dialect spoken in Parres, it can 5

6

Cf. Daneš (1966: 14): “[…] there does not exist any clear line separating C and P, but a continuous transitional zone. While there certainly exist phenomena situated “in the very centre” or “in the obvious periphery”, one cannot overlook the existence of items which can only be denoted as “more central” (or, respectively, “more peripheral”) than others. In short, the central and the peripheral character are qualities revealed by different items of the language system in different degrees (and in view of the fact that the transitions appear to be continuous it would hardly make sense to establish any exactly defined degrees of peripheral character)”. If the adjunction of final -s does not rely on any phonological restriction, on the other hand its deletion with enclitics obeys such restrictions (cf. Benítez Marco 2001: 168). In other words the

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be pointed out that the imperative ve ‘go!’ of the verb dir does not surface with any morphological exponent, nor does the imperative fay ‘do!’ of the verb facer: (14)

Asturian (Vallina Alonso 1985: 172–173) Imperative Indicative present tener ‘to have’ ten tienes/ties (2SG), tien (3SG) facer ‘to do’ fay, fa faces, faes (2SG), fay, fa (3SG) dicer, dicir ‘to say’ di dices (2SG), diz (3SG) poner ‘to put’ pon pones (2SG), pon (3SG) trayer/trer ‘to bring tray trayes (2SG), tray (3SG) tre tres (2SG), tra (3SG) trai traes (2SG), trae (3SG) ver ‘to see’ ve ves (2SG), ve (3SG) dir ‘to go’ ve vas (2SG), va (3SG) venir ‘to come’ ven vienes (2SG), vien (3SG) dar ‘to give’ da das (2SG), da (3SG) ller ‘to read’ lle lles (2SG), lle (3SG)

While most of the imperatives mentioned above seem to be syncretic with third person singular indicative forms, such a correlation is less general in Asturian than in Aragonese or Catalan. Putting aside the case of verb forms like di ‘say!’ from dicer, dicir, whose phonetic reduction has already been discussed, and the case of monophtongized imperatives ten! ‘hold’ and ven! ‘come’, imperatives of the -er class surface with final -i in the imperative, while the third person singular (present indicative) shows up with final -e in Parres (cf. imp. corri ‘run!’ (~ cuerre (3SG)); cueyi ‘catch!’ (~ cueye (3SG)); viendi ‘sell!’ (~ viende (3SG)), etc. (Vallina Alonso 1985: 146, 171, 174). In the dialect of Lena, the contrast between the imperative (2SG) and the indicative has as exponent the metaphony of the stressed vowel, hence the pairs bibe ‘drink!’ (2SG) ~ bebe (3SG); prinde ‘take!’ (2SG) ~ prende (3SG); vinde ‘sell!’ (2SG) ~ vende (3SG), etc. (cf. Neira 1962: 387).7 2.3.4. Imperatives and Minimality in Portuguese For lack of space, the question of Portuguese imperatives will be adressed only briefly. The hypocoristics in (15) indicate that Brazilian Portuguese phonology is not governed

7

enclisis of pronominal markers implies the selection of the bare allomorph. The same pattern can be observed in Alguerese, where Bosch i Rodoreda (2002: 172) mentions verbal forms like fes-la [fela], fes-me [feme], etc. The question of the nature and origin of metaphony in this verb class still is object of debate. It has been argued that final -i of imperatives in -ire verb class has been extended to the verb class in -er, where we should not expect metaphony. Needless to say, this question would require an indepth discussion which cannot be addressed in this paper.

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by a minimal size restriction. As a matter of fact, these data drawn from Grau Sempere (2006) show that in Brazilian Portuguese, hypocoristics may have the shape of a trochee, be it syllabic or moraic. With paroxitone bases, we thus have nouns like vál.du (< os.vál.du), lí.pe (< fe.lí.pe), nã".du (< fer.nã".du) and pów.du (< le.o.pów.du); with oxitone bases, we can register nouns like kéw (< ra.kéw); néw (< i.ri.néw); géw (< mi.géw) and már (ma.ri.már): (15) (15a) (15b) (15c) (15d)

Portuguese hypocoristics I (Grau Sempere 2006: 123): Portuguese Paroxitone base Oxitone base Base Trunc. Base Trunc. os.vál.du vál.du (15e) ra.kéw kéw fe.lí.pe lí.pe (15f) i.ri.néw néw fer.nã́.du nã́.du (15g) mi.géw géw le.o.pów.du pów.du (15h) ma.ri.már már

This is not the only option, however, and the data in (16) show that Brazilian Portuguese may well form monosyllabic and monomoraic hypocoristics: (16) (16a) (16b) (16c) (16d) (16e) (16f)

Portuguese hypocoristics II (Grau Sempere 2006: 125): Portuguese Paroxitone base Oxitone base Base Trunc. Base Trunc. dré aj.váw.ni ní (16g) ã".dré áw.ba bá (16h) bar.na.bé bé á.na ná (16i) ʒe.sé sé a.ná.ʤi ʤí (16j) ʒa.kó kó ar.náw.du dú (16k) ʒo.sa.fá fá aw.dér.li lí (16l) ʒo.sé sé

In examples (16a–f), the hypocoristic selects the final syllable of a paroxytone base, regardless of its syllable weight. In examples (16g–l), on the other hand, it is the stressed syllable of the oxytone base which is selected as hypocoristic, but forms like “a” (< Aleksandre), “e” (< Eduardu) or “i” (< Inasio) reported by Grau Sempere seem to show that the Portuguese hypocoristics can select as well the initial vowel of the noun, albeit unstressed.8 Grau Sempere (2006: 133) thus concludes that “Brazilian 8

It is not sure whether all the monosyllabic forms reported by Grau Sempere are equally acceptable. Some Brazilian Portuguese speakers seem to reject such hypocoristics as [ˈa] for Aleksandre, thus raising the question of the real status of these forms. Gonçalves (2005) rejects such monosyllabic hypocoristics as Bé (< Barnabé), Mé (< Salomé), or Dé (< André), as well as trisyllabic forms like Nélope (< Penélope), Mérico (< Américo) or Rípedes (< Eurípedes), but Thami da Silva (2008) mentions such truncated nouns as Mé (< Américo), Tá (< Itamar) Sí (< Simone) Fê (< Fernanda) or Sú (< Sueli) that seem to contradict Gonçalves’ assumption. Interestingly, Thami da Silva (2008: 88 fnt. 16 and 108) points out that the final vowel of such forms can be lengthened, and that such lengthening should be viewed as an effect of their Vocatival use (cf. on this point Floricic 2010a).

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Portuguese is the only Ibero-Romance dialect that accepts monomoraic monosyllabic Type R truncated words”. Turning now to imperatives, the examples in (17) show that the correlation P3 of the present indicative and P2 of the imperative holds as well for Portuguese. Furthermore, the monosyllabic imperatives in (17) show that CVC and CV imperatives are both attested, thus arguing for the absence of a minimal size restriction in Portuguese. (17)

Portuguese imperatives Imperative fazer ‘to do’ faz trazer ‘to carry’ traz, traze dizer ‘to say’ diz dar ‘to give’ dá olhar ‘to look’ olha/olh/o (cf. French ard! [aʀd] < regarde! [ʀəgaʀd]) deixar ‘to let’ deixa/xá ir ‘to go’ vai/va vir ‘to come’ vem rir ‘to laugh’ ri ler ‘to read’ lê ver ‘to see’ vê

Indicative present fázes (2SG), faz (3SG) trazes (2SG), traz (3SG) dizes (2SG), diz (3SG) dás (2SG), dá (3SG) olhas (2SG), olha (3SG) deixas (2SG), deixa (3SG) vais (2SG), vai (3SG) vens (2SG), vem (3SG) ris (2SG), ri (3SG) lês (2SG), lê (3SG) vês (2SG), vê (3SG)

Some of the imperatives in (17) – that is, faz, diz, traz, vai, tem and vem could of course be said to match the minimal moraic trochee requirement of Brazilian Portuguese argued for by Carlos Alexandre Gonçalves (2005). It is clear, however, that not all the monosyllabic imperatives obey this requirement. For example dá, va, lê, vê, crê, etc. all are monosyllabic and monomoraic. We can even find imperatives like olh ‘look!’ alongside with olha. In this case, it will be noted that the imperative can lose the thematic vowel, and the amputation of the verb form can even lead to the variant [ɔ], which really is what Gilliéron (1915), Millardet (1923) and others called “un mutilé phonétique”: not only does it show a drastic reduction of the verb root, but it also illustrates the semantic shift referred to earlier: in other words, the reduced forms olh/o have shifted towards the status of discourse marker and they lost any verbhood.9 The 9

“Como foi dito no 8.8, há verbos que costumam ser utilizados pelo falante para marcar troca de turnos numa conversação ou para introduzir um novo assunto. Partimos da hipótese de que verbos como olhar, deixar e esperar, em princípio usados como marcadores do discurso, estariam adquirindo status de forma cristalizada e, portanto, favorecendo mais o imperativo associado ao indicativo. O que motivou o controle desta variável foi o fato de observarmos que as formas gramaticalizadas de esperar, deixar e olhar já se apresentarem gramaticalizadas em formas diretamente associadas ao imperativo no indicativo: peraí, xá (xá comigo), óia” (Teixeira de Jesus 2006: 114) [As mentioned in 8.8, there are verbs that are often used by the speaker to mark turn

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same observation holds for the imperative form xá (< deixa), which is obtained by aphaeresis, a deletion process which applies on the symetrical side of the word.10 This form mainly appears in the expression xá comigo ‘it’s up to me’, where it is somewhat petrified. 2.3.5. Imperatives in Gascon We shall close this brief overview with a sketch of monosyllabic imperatives in an Occitan variety – Gascon – which is close enough to Catalan to exempt us from giving a detailed presentation of the data. We shall not say anything either on the syntax of this variety, though it should be pointed that Gascon normally uses preverbal particles (termed ‘énonciatifs’ in the linguistic literature on this topic) as predicative markers. These markers, however, do not surface with imperatives, nor do they generally surface with negation (for a discussion see Floricic 2009). The data in (18) interestingly show that Gascon patterns with Ibero-Romance as far as imperative morphology is concerned: (18) Gascon (Massourre 2001: 150ff.) Imperative a'na ‘to go’ 'bɛ(n) 'be ‘to come’ 'be, 'ben, 'bene 'da ‘to give’ 'da 'prene ‘to take’ 'pren 'hɛ ‘to do’ 'hɛ sen'ti ‘to feel’ sen'teʃ/'sen 'te ‘to hold’ 'beβe ‘to drink’ sa'βe ‘to know’ dru'mi ‘to sleep’

'te 'bew 'sap 'drum

Indicative present 'bas (2SG), 'ba (3SG) 'bes (2SG), 'be (3SG) 'das (2SG), 'da (3SG) 'prenes (2SG), 'pren (3SG) 'hɛs (2SG), 'hɛ (3SG) sen'teʃes/'sentes (2SG), sen'teʃ/'sen (3SG) 'tes (2SG), 'te (3SG) 'beβes (2SG), 'bew (3SG) 'saβes (2SG), 'sap (3SG) 'drumes (2SG), 'drum (3SG)

Not only does Gascon imperative morphology pattern with that of Ibero-Romance; it shows as well the same syncretisms and the same idiosyncrasies as that mentioned in Aragonese and Catalan. The verb 'be ‘come!’ ( /1*/ pronoun 1PL ‘we’ (Childs 1995: 104) whose nucleus is filled by the velar nasal which hosts the low tone. For a yet incomplete list of languages with obligatorily filled syllable heads, cf. Plank (1986: 59) who mentions 38 languages from different parts of the world. In this list, Vietnamese is included whereas we consider Vietnamese a language which has V-monosyllables. In case of doubt, we normally opt for caution, i.e. we usually exclude all those examples from this pilot-study which are ambiguous as to the presence/absence of filled syllable heads and/or codas. Whether or not these excluded cases can be re-integrated into our database of V-monosyllables is a question we intent to answer in a separate study.

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One particularly intriguing problem is the status of the initial glottal stop (Ladefoged & Maddieson 2007: 73–77).13 Depending on the phonological theory, the philological traditions and other more practical issues, the treatment of the pre-vocalic glottal stop differs widely not only in cross-linguistic perspective, but also for the description of individual languages. If the glottal stop is considered a full-blown consonant and accordingly is assigned phoneme status, the syllable has a filled head. As representative of the CV-type, the resulting monosyllable is irrelevant for our research project. If, however, the initial glottal stop is understood as an inherent property of the vowel which is activated exclusively under certain conditions, there is simply – phonologically speaking - no head which means that we are facing an instance of a V-monosyllable. For German, for instance, phonologists disagree on the status of the glottal stop. The majority opts against counting the glottal stop among the phonemes (e.g. Ternes 1999: 104) whereas a minority considers the glottal stop a phoneme (e.g. Maas 1999: 225). We prefer the former solution such that words like Ei [lab 7] /ab i/ ‘egg’ and Au [lab u] /ab u/ ‘meadow’ count as V-monosyllables. The reasons which impel us to cancel the glottal stop from the phoneme chart of German can also be applied to other seemingly controversial cases.14 To cut a long story short, we expose our criteria in the guise of the following list:15 • • • •

the glottal stop is not a phoneme if its distribution is restricted such that it is admissible exclusively in pre-vocalic position while it disallows any further consonants to occupy slots of the supposed head constituent, it separates sequences of heterosyllabic vowels obligatorily, it accompanies vowels in word-initial position obligatorily without ever occurring in other positions (e.g. in the coda).

In languages like Totonac (Reid 1991. 2)16, Seneca (Chafe 1963: 7)17, Navaho (Sapir & Hoijer 1967: 6)18 and Khasi (Rabel 1961: 15)19 the glottal stop is compulsory on other13 14 15 16

Other problems we still have to solve are posed by the obligatory onglide of word-initial mid-high vowels in a variety of languages such as Armenian and Romanian. To give just one example: we follow Basbøll (2005) who interprets the Danish stød as a prosodic feature of the syllable and thus denies it the status of segmental phoneme. The criteria are provisional pragmatic solutions of a rather intricate problem which we intend to solve satisfactorily in a follow-up study. Apart from stating that “[t]odas las palabras en totonaco empiezan con consonante o con cierre glotal” (“all words in Totonac start with a consonant or with the glottal stop”), Reid (1991: 2) specifies that if a word starts with a combination of glottal stop + vowel, the vowel must also be followed by a second glottal stop. Morphonologically, the initial glottal stop is preserved if a prefix ending in a vowel is added. This can be seen as an instance of separation of a heterosyllabic sequence of vowels by the glottal stop. On the other hand, the glottal stop occurs frequently in coda position as a member of the slope, i.e. in pre-consonantal position. Moreover, the glottal stop is also employed to encode certain grammatical categories.

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wise word-initial vowels. However, in all of these languages, its distribution is not confined to this one position. Languages in which similar distribution patterns of the glottal stop apply are considered devoid of V-monosyllables such that North America and Mesoamerica are relatively sparsely represented in our documentation of the phenomenon under scrutiny. Superficially, Nama behaves the same as it does not tolerate naked vowels wordinitially. Accordingly, many words – including monosyllables – attest an initial glottal stop. Böhm (1985: 75) argues that the glottal stop is an inherent feature of the vowel in initial position.20 Where the glottal stop co-occurs with a click (whose distribution is restricted to the syllable head), it can be considered an inherent feature of the click (Hagman 1977: 9–10).21 Being barred from post-vocalic positions, the glottal stop is restricted distributionally such that one might be inclined to dispute its phoneme status. In this way, vuJ [l@bg] /ub g/ ‘to live’ could be analyzed as a V-monosyllable with a complex nucleus, namely a diphthong which has the feature [+nasal]. The segment in the V-position can thus be either simple or complex or even supercomplex, i.e. it can have a weight of more than one mora. Some examples of simple, complex and super-complex V-monosyllables are given in Table 2.22 Further indirect illustration of complexity is provided along the way in the remainder of this paper.

17

18 19

20 21 22

Chafe (1963: 7) claims that “[n]o word spoken in isolation begins with a vowel, and words that may seem to begin with one have an initial A.” The glottal stop also occurs in the coda (also in combination with other coda consonants). It does not automatically occupy the position between two heterosyllabic vowels. In the case of Navaho, the glottal stop does not function as an obligatory filler of the hiatus between heterosyllabic vowels either (Sapir & Hoijer 1967: 5). Rabel (1961: 15) states that Khasi syllables always come with a filled head, one of the fillers being the glottal stop. Since /l/ is attested in combination with consonantal segments in the head and also in coda position (Rabel 1961: 2–3), it must be considered a full-blown phoneme. Note that Böhm (1985: 75) who is largely dependent on older sources applies the very same argument also to the initial glottal fricative [h]. Hagman (1977: 11) argues that “the ‘syllable’ is useless as a generally applicable level of structure.” The few indications he provides nevertheless are indicative of compulsory initial consonants. The table is organized along the following lines: from left to right and from top to bottom, the complexity of the nucleus of the V-monosyllables increases. For practical reasons, we have separated oral vowels from nasal vowels. This does not mean a simple nasal vowel is more complex than a super-complex oral diphthong. In case of homonymy or polysemy, we only mention one of the functions/meanings associated with the V-monosyllable. Small caps identify word-class and/or function of the element under scrutiny. Boldface is used for the properties which make the words examples of complexity.

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Oral

Simple Spanish y /i/ CONJUNCTION ‘and’

Complex Hungarian g /ø:/ PRONOUN 3SG – long quantity Icelandic á /ab u/ PREPOSITION ‘on’ – diphthong

American English or /ɔt/ CONJUNCTION – r-colouring Vietnamese H /əA`j PREPOSITION ‘in’ – tone-induced glottalization Nasal

French on /õ/ INDEF‘one’ – nasal

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Super-complex

Estonian õu /əb’:/ NOUN ‘yard’ – long quantity + diphthong23 Apache íí /i:0/ NOUN ‘garment’ – long quantity + high tone Kisi ǴG> INTERROGATIVE ‘what?’ – rising-falling tone distributed over two morae

Vietnamese áo /ab uAa/ NOUN ‘dress’ – diphthong + tone-induced glottalization

Mokilese eh /ɛ:„ / ‘yes’

INITE PRONOUN

Portuguese hão /ã@/ MODAL/ AUXILIARY VERB 3PL haver – diphthong + nasal Vietnamese H /əA`j PREPOSITION ‘in’ – tone-induced glottalization

Vietnamese áo /ab uAa/ NOUN ‘dress’ – diphthong + tone-induced glottalization

Table 2: Examples of V-monosyllables of various complexity The more complex the combination of properties, the less probable it becomes that Vmonosyllables are attested frequently.24 This decrease in probability of empirical hits reflects the growing degree of markedness of the units under scrutiny. To sum up our above argumentation, we put forward the bipartite definition in (2) which is meant to capture our research object in as simple words as possible. 23 24

According to Erelt (2003: 22), this diphthong is admissible in syllables of both the 2nd and the 3rd degree of quantity. The gaps in the matrix may be caused by our still insufficient control of the range of Vmonosyllables in the languages of the world. Hajek (2005: 46), for instance, shows that phonemic long nasal vowel are attested in a variety of languages. Nevertheless, we have not found evidence of V-monosyllables with a long nasal vowel as nucleus.

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(2) Definition (2.1) Monosyllable A semantically filled string of segments with word status which contains only one syllable peak (~ nucleus) and no syllable contacts (i.e. there are no adjacent syllables which belong to the same word-unit). (2.2) V-monosyllable A monosyllable whose string of segments is restricted to one unit which belongs to the class of vowels with no specific limitations as to the phonological complexity thereof. Wherever necessary we narrow down the scope of the above definition by adding more specific criteria along the way.

3. Qualities of V-monosyllables Observable facts of human languages deserve to be evaluated for the benefit of linguistic theories if they happen to be at variance with postulated laws, constraints or preferences. As to V-monosyllables specifically and monosyllables in general, their recurrence in many languages world-wide seems to violate the concept of the natural word as outlined by Dressler (1987). The natural word is conceived of as an ideally disyllabic unit (which preferentially hosts only non-syllabic bound morphology).25 This concept does not imply that monosyllabic or more extended polysyllabic word units are nonexistent. However, it calls for a well-founded explanation of the deviations from the supposedly more natural disyllabicity. The pronounced preference for disyllabic stems in the majority of the autochthonous languages of Australia (Dixon 1980), for instance, fulfills the requirements of the natural word while it reduces the probability of monosyllables to occur at all.26 However, elsewhere constraints of this kind do not seem to hold as strictly as in the Australian case.27 Structural phenomena of human languages gain in importance if they can be shown to yield recurrent cross-linguistic patterns. For V-monosyllables, a suitable data-base has yet to be created. On the basis of the evidence we have gathered so far, it is nevertheless possible to formulate a number of hypotheses which suggest that the association of monosyllables with certain functions is not absolutely random. To avoid misunderstandings, how25 26

27

For a critical reading of the notion of natural word, cf. Stolz (1991). If monosyllables are permitted in Australian languages, another constraint applies rather often which blocks the creation of V-monosyllables. Words cannot normally start with a vowel. Jaminjung (Schultze-Berndt 2000: 41) is an example of this constraint on word-initial vowels which dominates throughout Australia. For the Central Sudanic language Ngiti, for instance, it is claimed (Kutsch Lojenga 1993: 58) that all nouns are at least disyllabic whereas other word-classes are more tolerant as to smaller units. Nevertheless, there is no evidence of V-monosyllables in the language.

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ever, we emphasize strongly that our exploration of the grammar of V-monosyllables has no leanings whatsoever towards phonetic iconicity or phonosymbolism. What we can provide in this section is a necessarily incomplete survey of those functions/meanings for which V-monosyllables are employed strikingly often in our sample languages. We divide our presentation of the facts into three sub-sections. Sub-section 4.1 focuses on V-monosyllables being used as function words. Fully referential (or autosemantic) V-monosyllables are the topic of sub-section 4.2. V-monosyllables as members of the paradigm of a lexeme which itself is not an instance of the class of Vmonosyllables are treated in sub-section 4.3 whereas in sub-section 4.4, we briefly discuss monosyllables as portemanteau morphemes. Since our cross-linguistic inventory of Vmonosyllables is still in its infancy, the data surveys do not strive to be comprehensive. To keep the presentation within reasonable bounds, we make do with a small selection of pertinent examples. Owing to the present composition of our sample, examples drawn from European languages are over-represented. For obvious reasons, we cannot do justice here to the full array of V-monosyllables attested in some of those languages which the linguists of the 19th century termed monosyllabic languages. Instead, our exemplification covers more data from those languages which are not usually expected to give preference to monosyllables. The data stem from the usual sources, that is descriptive grammars and dictionaries plus the occasional linguistic study of particular phenomena attested in a given language. If our sources accept the V-monosyllable explicitly as a word qua lexeme and free morpheme, we include it in our data-base. At the same time we leave aside all those elements which are marked as bound morphemes or bound stems/roots. From the exemplification below we exclude all those cases for which the classification as Vmonosyllables remains doubtful. If given V-monosyllables can be identified as borrowings from a different source language, we include these only parsimoniously in our documentation.28 Note, however, that the borrowability of V-monosyllables is another issue which needs to be looked into in the not too distant future. Furthermore, we do not account for interjections as they can be considered extragrammatical items whose relation to the lexicon proper is far from clear.29 Names of the letters of the (Latinate) alphabet, toponyms and proper nouns do not form part of this documentation either. Before we check the examples, we extend the above definition in (2) by the following stipulation. If a word or a word-form allows for several allomorphic realizations and at least one of them consists of only a vowel, we are dealing with a V-monosyllable, unless this allomorphic realization is permissible only in allegro speech. 28

29

In a sizable group of languages of the former Soviet Union and the officially Spanish-speaking world, V-monosyllables which function as conjunctions have been borrowed from the prestige language Russian and Spanish, respectively. Thus, for instance, Russian a ‘but’ is used with the same meaning and function in Mari (Eastern) and Spanish o ‘or’ is used in Rapanui as disjunctive conjunction. This decision has the disadvantage that we have to discount vocative markers too which are very often V-monosyllables. Unfortunately, it is often doubtful whether or not they belong to the class of interjections.

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3.1. V-monosyllables as function words There are several domains in which V-monosyllables are used particularly often as function words by our sample languages. We select five of these domains to illustrate how V-monosyllables are employed.30 Wherever we make statements about the areal aspects of V-monosyllables, it is tacitly understood that Australia usually does not provide evidence of V-monosyllabic function words. Very commonly, V-monosyllables function as adpositions. The data in (3) cover only a small section of the rich phenomenology of adpositionally employed V-monosyllables. What strikes the eye most is the rather small share of postpositions in the list below. (3)

Adposition: Apalai a ‘to, by, about’ [postposition]; Armenian i ‘to, at’; Assiniboine n (~ nš) ‘with’ [postposition]; Boruca í (~ íj /ix0/) ‘towards, in direction of’; Breton a ‘of’, e ‘in’; Bulgarian y /U/ ‘at’; Catalan a ‘at, on’; Danish i ‘in(to)’; Drehu e ‘at, on, towards’; Duala ó ‘in, on’; Faeroese og /o:/ ‘and’; French à ‘at’, en /+\/ ‘in’; Icelandic á /ab u/ ‘on’; Irish i ‘in(to)’, ó ‘from’; Italian a (~ ad) ‘at, on’; í ‘in’; Kabyle i ‘for, to’; Kilivila o ‘in, into’; Kurdish u ‘and’; Lingala o ‘in, at, on’; Lithuanian \ ‘in’; Mende a ‘with’; Nukuoro e ‘by’, i ‘to’; Portuguese a /-/ ‘to’, em /-b \ i/ ‘in’; Saramaccan u (~ fu) ‘of, for’; Scots-Gaelic a ‘at, about’, o ‘from’; Slovak o ‘against, to, on’, u ‘at’; Spanish a ‘to’; Swedish i ‘in(to)’; Tamashek è ~ ì ‘to, for’; Welsh i ‘to, for’, o ‘from’, â (~ ag) ‘with’; Yabêm è ‘until’

The adpositional function of V-monosyllables is reported for languages from several macro-regions on the globe, most prominently in Europe, Africa and Oceania. The geographical distribution of V-monosyllables with the function of conjunctions goes beyond that of V-monosyllables in adpositional function. The list in (4) comprises examples from languages spoken in Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas. (4)

30

Conjunction: Albanian e (~ [e]dhe) ‘and’, o ‘or’; Angolar i ‘and’, ô /o/ ‘or’, o /ɔ/ (~ ola, olo) ‘when’; Armenian u ‘and’; Bashkir ə /ə/ ‘and’; Brahui o ‘and’; Bukiyip o ‘or’; Bulgarian a ‘and’, i ‘and’; Catalan i ‘and’, o ‘or’; Chocho l ‘or’; French et /e/ ‘and’, ou /u/ ‘or’; Greek é /i/ ‘or’; Italian e /e/ (~ ed) ‘and’, o /ɔ/ (~ od) ‘or’; Kâte â /ɔ/ ‘and’; Ket 1u ‘whether, if’; Kilivila e ‘and’; Kurdish (Kurmancî) û ‘and’; Kyrgyz y /y/ ‘and’; Limba o ‘and, both’; Lithuanian o ‘and, but’; Maltese u

In this and the subsequent lists of functions with which V-monosyllables are attested, the languages come in alphabetical order. After the glossonym, the V-monosyllables are given according to the conventions used by our sources. Where we consider the orthographic representation not to be selfexplanatory, we also add a phonological transcription. If necessary, a grammatical gloss is added which is followed by an English translation. If the V-monosyllable is only one of several allomorphs with the same function, the co-allomorphs are identified. They are preceded by ~ alone if they are V-monosyllables as well. If they fail to qualify as V-monosyllables, they are bracketed.

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‘and’; Mende GG /ɔ:/ ‘or’; Oriya o ~ au /ab u/ ‘and’; Palauan e ‘and then’; Pashto aw /ab u/ ‘and’; Portuguese e /i/ ‘and’, ou /o/ ‘or’; Romani i ‘and’; Saramaccan e ‘if’; Scots-Gaelic o ‘because’; Slovak a ‘and, but’, i ‘and’; Somali oo /o:/ ‘and, but’; Spanish y /i/ ~ e ‘and’, o ~ u ‘or’; Tatar ə /ə/ ‘and’; Welsh a (~ ac) ‘and’ There is a pronounced tendency to employ V-monosyllables as coordinating conjunctions, i.e. as translation equivalents of English and, although the disjunctive function is also well established in the functional domain of V-monosyllables. In (5), we list instances of V-monosyllables which fulfill the task of determiners. Under the heading determiner, we subsume all kinds of articles – both definite and indefinite – and demonstratives. (5)

Determiner: Albanian e CONNECTING ARTICLE GEN.F, i CONNECTING ARTICLE NOM.M; Azeri o ‘this’; Brahui T /e:/ (~ Td) ‘that’, o (~ od) ‘this/that’; Chamorro i FOCUS ARTICLE ‘the’; Dogon " ‘this’; English a /ə/ (~ an) INDEF.SG; French un /œ\ / INDEF.M ‘a(n)’; Frisian 'e (~ de) /ə/ DEF.U ‘the’; Greek o DEF.SG.M, ē /i/ DEF.SG.F ‘the’; Guarani ã ‘these, those’; Hungarian a (~ az) DEF ‘the’; Italian i DEF.PL.M ‘the’; Ixil u DEF ‘the’; Kannada l ‘that’, ī ‘this’; Kâte i ‘that’; Korean i ‘this’; Kurdish (Zazakî) u M ‘that’, i M.OBLIQUE ‘that’, a F ‘that’, i ‘those’; Kurukh ī /i:/ (~ īs, īd) ‘this’, l /a:/ (~ ls, ld) ‘that’; Lenakel aa (~ aan) ‘this’, u (~ un) ‘that’; Malagasy i PERSONAL ARTICLE ‘the’; Oriya e ~ ei /eb i/ ~ ie /ib e/ ‘this’; Ossetic a ‘this’; Portuguese a /-/ DEF.SG.F, o /u/ DEF.SG.M ‘the’, um /@/ INDEF.SG.M ‘a(n)’; Punjabi é ‘this’, ó ‘that’; Purépecha i ‘this’; Romani e DEF.F.OBLIQUE ‘the’, i DEF.F ‘the’, o DEF.M ‘the’; Romanian o DEF.SG.F ‘the’; Shoshone (Tümpisa) a ‘that’, i ‘this’; Sinhala uu /u:/ ‘he, it [+animal]’; Telugu aa ‘that’, ii ‘this’; Uzbek u ‘that’; Welsh y (~ [y]r) /u/ DEF ‘the’; Yiddish a INDEF ‘a(n)’; Zyryan e ‘these’

Without being exhaustive in terms of data coverage, (5) is suggestive of a sufficiently wide geolinguistic distribution of V-monosyllables as determiners such that neither areal nor typological nor genetic biases are discernible. Less often we find V-monosyllables associated with functions of interrogative constructions. In (6), examples of V-monosyllables which are interrogative “pronouns” fall into the same functionally defined class as the V-monosyllables which are general interrogative markers. (6)

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Interrogative: Albanian a INTERROGATIVE; Angolar ô /o/ (~ bô) ‘where’31; Boruca í INTERROGATIVE; French où /u/ ‘where’; Kannada ē ‘what, which’; Kikuyu a (~ ma) ‘who (exactly)?’, 1 ‘who(m)?’; Komi ö /ø/ INTERROGATIVE; Livonian u (~ või) INTERROGATIVE; Mende a ~ G INTERROGATIVE; Tamashek à INDEFINITE INTERROGAMaurer (1995: 237) analyzes Angolar (b)ô as an interrogative verb with the meaning ‘where is?’.

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‘whatever’, è ‘where’; Telugu ee ‘what, which’; Vietnamese ç /u/ INTERWelsh a INTERROGATIVE

ROGATIVE;

The small number of cases notwithstanding, the attestation of V-monosyllables being employed for the purpose of interrogation in languages from various phyla (IndoEuropean, Niger-Kordofanian, Uralic, Dravidian, Austroasiatic) is indicative of the relative independence of V-monosyllables from genetic constraints. This idea of the gradual autonomy of V-monosyllables from areal, genetic and typological restrictions receives further support from the evidence in (7). In this list, we assemble pronouns - personal, possessive - which consist of only one vocalic segment. (7)

Pronoun: Afrikaans u /y/ POLITE ‘you’; Angolar ê /e/ 3SG ‘s/he, it’, ô /o/ (~ bô) 2SG ‘you’; Azeri o 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Boruca i 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Brahui ī /i:/ 1SG ‘I’; Breton e POSSESSIVE 3SG ‘his, her’, i 3PL ‘they’, o POSSESSIVE 3PL ‘their’; Catalan ho /o/ 3SG.N ‘it’; Danish I 2PL ‘you’; Dutch U /y/ POLITE 2SG/PL ‘you’, Uw /yb u/ POSSESSIVE POLITE 2SG/PL ‘your’; Enets ū /u:/ 2SG ‘you’; English I /+bi/ 1SG; Faeroese eg /e/ 1SG ‘I’; French eux /ø/ (~ /øz/) 3PL ‘they’, on /õ/ INDEF ‘one’; German er /e/ 3SG.M ‘he’; Gilbertese a 3PL ‘they’, e 3SG ‘s/he, it’, i 1SG ‘I’; Hungarian g /ø:/ 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Irish é 3SG.M ‘he, him’, i 3SG.F ‘she, her’, a POSSESSIVE 3 ‘his, her, their’; Kabardinian i POSSESSIVE 3SG ‘his, her’; Kâte e 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Kurdish (Zazakî) u ~ o 3SG.M ‘he’, a 3SG.F ‘she’, i ~ ê /e/ 3PL ‘they’; Maltese hi (~ hija) /i/ 3SG.F ‘she’, hu (~ huwa) /u/ 3SG.m ‘he’; Manchu i 3SG.NOM ‘s/he, it’; Mende i 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Mokilese ih /i:/ 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Nobiin úu /u:/ 1PL ‘we’; Nobonob i 1DU ‘we two’, a 2/3DU ‘you two/they two’; Popoloca l 2SG.OBLIQUE ‘you’; Rumanch Grischun i (~ igl) 3SG.N ‘it’; Saramaccan a 3SG ‘s/he, it’, i 2SG ‘you’, u (~ únu) 1PL ‘we’; ScotsGaelic i 3SG.F ‘she’, a POSSESSIVE 3SG ‘his/her’; Shoshone (Tümpisa) ü /u/ ~ üü /u:/ 2SG ‘you’, u ~ o 3SG.OBJ ‘him, her, it’; Tetum ó /o:/ 2SG ‘you(r)’; Tinrin u 1SG ‘I’; Turkish o 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Uzbek u 3SG ‘s/he, it’; Vietnamese y /i/ 3SG ‘s/he’; Welsh ei /i/ POSSESSIVE 3SG.M/F ‘his/her’, eu /i/ POSSESSIVE 3PL ‘their’; Yoruba a 3SG.OBJ ‘him, her, it’, a (~ awa) 1PL ‘we’, i 3SG.OBJ ‘him, her, it’, o 3SG.OBJ ‘him, her, it’, u 3SG.OBJ ‘him, her, it’

Once more the distribution of V-monosyllables can be interpreted as largely unrestricted in areal and genetic terms. The above cumulative evidence and further examples of the employment of Vmonosyllables for grammatical purposes32 seem to suggest that if a language X allows 32

The range of additional examples of grammatically employed V-monosyllables is much too wide to permit full documentation. We only mention Albanian u PASSIVE MARKER; Catalan hi /i/ ‘there’; Chamorro u FUTURE/IRREALIS MARKER; French y /i/ ‘there’, en /+\/ PARTITIVE ‘thereof’; Maltese haw /ab u/ (~ hawn) ‘here’; Mansi Z /æ:/ NEGATIVE VERB MARKER; Mokilese o /õ/ ‘there’; Romanian o FUTURE MARKER; Scots-Gaelic a RELATIVE GEN/DAT; Sinhala æ (~ aa() POLITENESS MARKER; Slave á (~ yá) TOPIC MARKER, i COMPLEMENTIZER; Spanish hay /ab i/ EXISTENTIAL ‘there is’; etc.

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for V-monosyllables at all, then the probability is high that at least one of the Vmonosyllables has functions to fulfill which are characteristic of grammemes. It is tempting to explain this constellation by invoking the usual parameters of grammaticalization (Lehmann 1995) among which attrition phenomena affect those elements which undergo grammaticalization such that they lose part of their phonological substance. If an item advances on the grammaticalization cline, it usually also increases its relative text frequency. According to Zipf’s law (Zipf 1935, 1965), the frequency of use and the phonological size of the expression of a linguistic sign are in an inverse relationship such that high frequency correlates with shortness of the expression (Prün 2005) and, the other way round, low frequency corresponds to more sizable segmental chains. This observation can be dynamicized into a diachronic law: the more often an item is used, the more probable it becomes that it experiences phonetic reduction in the course of time. Since this study is mostly synchronic in nature, we cannot test the validity of this statement for all of our sample languages. As many of them lack historical documentation, it would be almost impossible to substantiate any claims about processes which may or may not have taken place in the past. For those cases in which a short Vmonosyllable co-exists with a phonologically more complex allomorph of the same element is it possible to assume a process of phonetic reduction. Similarly, diachronic statements can be made if internal and/or external reconstruction is possible. In the case of the indefinite article of English, for instance, it is generally known that the two allomorphs a and an are in complementary distribution with the latter allomorph being restricted to contexts in which its neighbor to the right starts with a vowel. However, originally, an was the general form of the indefinite article from which a is derived via generalization of pre-consonantal reduction of the final nasal of the article. Scenarios of this kind are common for many of the examples given above. Consider the Latin conjunctions et ‘and’ and aut ‘or’. Both are monosyllabic but end in a dentialveolar plosive and thus do not belong to the class of V-monosyllables. However, all descendants of these conjunctions in the modern Romance languages are Vmonosyllables: French et /e/, Portuguese e /i/, Spanish y /i/ ~ e, Catalan i, and Italian e /e/ derived historically from Latin et ‘and’. In contrast to their common etymon, however, they have lost the original coda consonant such that they have become Vmonosyllables. Similarly, the final consonant of Latin aut ‘or’ has fallen victim to reductive change of which French ou /u/, Portuguese ou /o/, Catalan o, Spanish o ~ u, and Italian o /ɔ/ give testimony. That the loss of the word-final consonants was not spontaneous can be gathered from the co-existence of the allomorphs ed ‘and’ and od ‘or’ in Italian. These allomorphs with a voiced(!) final denti-alveolar consonant are restricted to combinations with vowel-initial words. In addition, od is stylistically highly marked to pass as an anachronism. It is safe to assume that in these cases, the increase of frequency as an epiphenomenon of grammaticalization has contributed to the creation of V-monosyllables. This

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class of V-monosyllables can be labeled secondary V-monosyllables because they developed in the course of time from phonologically more complex primary word-forms. However, for some of our data, nothing forces us to assume that there have been any attrition processes which have led to the present state. To our mind, there is no law that requires that what is phonologically simple today must have been phonologically more complex in the past. Meaning: some of the above V-monosyllables have probably been always as short as they are presently. They form the class of primary V-monosyllables. Moreover, there are also numerous examples of V-monosyllables for which a high degree of grammaticalization cannot be claimed.

3.2. V-monosyllables as content words In this sub-section, we first look at two classes of expressions which occupy the grey zone between grammar and lexemes, namely yes/no expressions and numerals. In thirty-two languages, we encounter V-monosyllables as fully sentential expressions of assent (= yes) or dissent (= no). As the data in (8) suggest, V-monosyllables are much more often employed as translations equivalents of English yes (= twenty-seven languages) than as expressions corresponding to English no (= five languages). (8) Yes/no expressions (8.1) YES Angolar êê /e:/; Apalai Q ///;„ Drehu öö /Z:/; Efik i; Franco-Provençal o; English (Scots) aye /ab i/; Guugu-Yimiddhir aa /a:/; Hausa i ~ ii /i:/; Hawaiian & /o:/; Inuktitut (Nunavik) aa /a:/; Kâte o ~ ea /eb a/; Kikuyu i ~ ii /i:/ ~ JJ /g:/; Kilivila e ~ o; Kurdish (Kurmancî) ê /e/; Mokilese eh /ɛ:„ /; Nukuoro uu /u:/; Nupe q; Oromo e; Quechua a ~ i; Romani e; Saramaccan aai /ab :i/; Sesuto e; Setswana ee /e:/ ~ è; Tagalog óo /o:/, Telugu 11 /@:/; Udmurt oo /o:/; Yoruba o; Yukaghir e. (8.2) NO Kamas ē /e:/; Malagasy i; Mordvin a (~ at); Paiwan i; Popti' a. Among the majority group (8.1), there is also an Australian language – Guugu-Yimidhirr – which is exceptional if we take into account that Australian languages are largely absent from the examples given in sub-section 3.1. The turnout of V-monosyllables used as numerals is relatively small as the half-dozen or so languages in (9) suggest. (9)

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Numeral: Catalan u (~ un) ‘one’33; French un /œ\ / M ‘one’; Kabardinian i ‘eight’; Ket 1aS ~ 4 a ‘six’; Khanty i (~ ij/it) ‘one’; Korean i ‘two’, o ‘five’ (borrowed from Chinese); Portuguese um /@/ M ‘one’; Romanian o F ‘one’; Telugu oo (~ oka) ‘one’

The allomorph u is admitted only in post-nominal position where it functions as a kind of ordinal (Brumme 1997: 104–105).

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Going by relatively unsophisticated statistical assumptions about the frequency of use of yes/no expressions and numerals, we expect more examples of V-monosyllables to qualify for inclusion in (8.2) and (9) - if the correlation of high frequency and small size (in phonological terms) is as strict as Zipf’s law seems to require.34 It is especially intriguing that not all of the V-monosyllabic numerals are equivalents of English one - the numeral which is believed to be statistically best qualified for segmental shortness. Kabardinian i ‘eight’ and Ket 1aS ~ 4a ‘six’ are phonologically the smallest numerals in the two languages. Can this unexpected shortness (in contrast to phonologically more substantial numerals for one) be captured by the laws of statistics? In (10), we provide a list of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs as lexicon entries35 which come in the shape of a V-monosyllable. (10)

34 35

36 37

Lexicon entries: Achagua ai /ab i/ ‘snake’; Afrikaans aai /ab :i/ ‘to caress’, eeu /eb :y/ ‘century’, ooi /ob :i/ ‘ewe’, ui /œb i/ ‘onion’; Akatek ee /e:/ ‘tooth’, ii /i:/ ‘small bird’; Bukiyip a ~ aa /a:/ ‘then’; Catalan ou /ob u/ ‘egg’; Chocho ú (~ ūstl) ‘already’; Danish å [o:A] /o:/ ‘little river’, ø [ø:A] /ø:/ ‘island’Ž Dogon ɛ́ ‘potassium’; í ‘child’, ]J ‘right (side)’, G> ‘marshes’; Drehu e ‘to read, to count’; Duala ó ‘friend of the same age’; Dutch eeuw /e:yb u/ ‘century’36, ei /ɛbi/ ‘egg’, ooi /ob :i/ ‘oak’, ui /œb i/ ‘onion’; Enets ē /e:/ ‘mother’; English awe /ɔ:/, eye /ab i/; Estonian au /ab u/ ‘honor’, öö /ø:/ ‘night’; Finnish yö /yb œ/ ‘night’; French eau /o/ ‘water’, haut /o/ ‘high’, haie /ɛ/ ‘hedge, hurdle’, houe /u/ ‘hoe’, houx /u/ ‘holly’; Fur uu /u:/ ‘cow’37; Gilbertese a ‘sea urchin’, a ‘core of a fruit’, a ‘kind of food’, a ‘kind of wooden tool’, a ‘dandruff’, a /a:/ ‘yawn’, e ‘part of the sail’, e /e:/ ‘melody, pattern’, o ‘gill of fish’, o ‘enclosure’, u ‘perforation, skin desease’; Hawaiian l /a:/ ‘jaw, cheekbone’, ū /u:/ ‘breast’; Hebrew ee [A‡< j‡j K‡”‚Y)VEŽ s’)OY!‡Y) ó /o:/ ‘old’; Ingush i ‘sun’; Japanese ī /i:/ ‘good’, & /o:/ ‘king’, e ‘picture’, i ‘stomach’, o ‘tail’; Ixil aa /a:/ ‘sugarcane’, ee /e:/ ‘tooth’, oo /o:/ ‘aguacate’, uu /u:/ ‘collar’; Kamas l /a:/ ~ åu /+:/ ‘mountain top’; Kâte ie /ib e/ ‘then’, oa /ob a/ ‘green frog’, oâ /ob ɔ/ ‘lizard’; Kazakh i ‘tanning’; Khanty i (~ it) ‘now’; Livonian īe /i:e/ ‘night’, ou (~ ouv) /ɔbu/ ‘honor’, oi /ob :i/ ‘stove’; Mansi e ‘surely’, j /œ:/ ‘daughter’; Maori o ‘provision for a journey’; Mari (Eastern) i ‘year’, i ‘ice’, u ‘new’, ü /y/ ‘butter’; Mongolian oo /ɔ:/

Sander Lestrade (p.c.) partly confirms our assumption on the basis of a token frequency list of spoken Dutch. We acknowledge that lexicon entries are linguistic conventions which vary from philological tradition to philological tradition. The items we mention in (10) and (11) are not meant to represent different sets of necessarily more basic vs. derived categories. Many of the words listed in (10) can also occur as syntactic words in a given language. (10) and (11) could be collapsed into a common list. For expository purposes, however, we keep them apart. The existence of triphthongs in Dutch is controversial. Jakobi (1990: 45–46) argues that all diphthongs and vowels have to be analyzed as bi-phonemic sequences of vowels in Fur.

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‘powder’, yy /y:/ ‘wart’, öö /ø:/ ‘fault’; Nukuoro oo /o:/ ‘ration for a long journey’, uu /u:/ ‘milk’, uu /u:/ ‘fish-trap’; Oriya ui /ub i/ ‘ant’, 1J /@bg/ ‘special sort of rice’, ai /ab i/ ‘grandmother’38; Palauan ii /i:/ ‘cave’; Popoloca ú ‘already’; Punjabi aa /a:/ ‘to come’; Romanian ou ‘egg’; Samoan ē /e:/ ‘loud laughter’, ū /u:/ ‘reed grass’; Selkup ī /i:/ ‘son’; So u ‘belly’; Swedish ö /ø/ ‘island’, å /o:/ ‘river’; Tatar ee /e:/ ‘trail’; Tetum uu /u:/ ‘shark’; Tinrin ù /U/ ‘tree’, u /u/ ‘yam’, a /a/ ‘to laugh’, ò /ɔ/ ‘pot’, î /g/ ‘body’, ê /ɛ/„ ‘to burn’; Udmurt e ‘belt’, u ‘fracture’; Urubu-Kaapor y /u/ ‘water’; Vietnamese o /ɔ/ ‘aunt, girl’, ó /ɔa/ ‘yell’, ô /o/ ‘umbrella, box, die, black; nest’, u /u/ ‘mother; bulb; dark’, ù /u`/ ‘to win’, y /i/ ‘dress; exactly’, ë /ua/ ‘immobile’, ä /u`/ ‘to cover’, æ /u/ ‘wall’, µ /oa/ ‘dirty’, ¿ /ə/ ‘hick-up’, ¼ /ə`j K“& XSEI û /i`j K‡VSYŽ QY“ $‡OŽ “& !S‚c &)EŽ {S‚”‰ au /ab u/ ‘liver’, wy /ub i/ ‘egg’; Yabêm à ‘(his/her) foot’, i ‘fish’, o ‘liana’; Yukaghir (Kolyma) o ‘son, child’, & /o:/ ‘trousers’, øu /ø:/ ‘child’; Zyryan u (~ vo) ‘year’ As to semantic classes, we find some variation among the V-monosyllables listed in (10). Kinship terms recur relatively often. There are also several body-part terms, terms for basic items of the daily diet of human beings, animal species, plants, topographic and astronomic phenomena and entities, and calendrical expressions. In addition, there are also abstract concepts, qualitative adjectives and a variety of other concepts which cannot be subsumed under a common heading. We do not doubt that the vast majority of the lexical V-monosyllables represent (relatively) basic concepts which occur frequently in discourse and thus are likely to fall within the scope of Zipf’s law. Reductive change is documented for a sizable number of the lexical V-monosyllables. The disyllabic Latin word ovus ‘egg’ survives as a V-monosyllable with a diphthongal nucleus in Catalan and Romanian both of which attest ou /ob u/ ‘egg’. There is thus evidence of secondary Vmonosyllables. Their genesis may be explained as a frequency effect. However, this is not so obvious for at least some of the items under scrutiny (Afrikaans/Dutch ui /œb i/ ‘onion’ and English awe /ɔ:/ are cases in point). Which of the items listed in (10) are uncontroversial instances of primary monosyllables has yet to be established. In this article, we content ourselves with mentioning the issue. An answer cannot be given before we have determined the relative frequencies of the above items and similar cases for each language individually. In the absence of frequency counts for the bulk of our sample languages, we have to establish the quantitative values ourselves in the foreseeable future. One thing should be clear independently of the availability of reliable statistics, namely that both lexemes and grammemes frequently come in the shape of Vmonosyllables. Given that many of these V-monosyllables result from reductive change triggered by high frequency, the (already precarious) distinction of lexicon and grammar is further blurred as the usual frequency effects cannot be considered a monopoly of items which are in the process of grammaticalization. On the other hand, as with 38

Neukom & Patnaik (2003: 7) classify these and similar cases as monosyllables while “[d]iphthongs will be interpreted and represented as a sequence of two vowels.”

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grammemes, we are not forced to assume that every single V-monosyllable in (10) derives from a phonologically more complex chain of segments in the past.

3.3. V-monosyllables as syntactic words If words are subject to inflection in a language a member of their paradigm can be a Vmonosyllable without coinciding with the base form or citation form of the paradigm. These word-forms need a specific syntactic context to appear in (whereas those words included in [10] do not necessarily need a syntactic context). They are syntactic words. In (11), we provide a selection of examples. In this sub-section, the arrow , indicates that a given word-form is related to another word-form. The arrow does not establish a derivational dependency. (11)

V-monosyllabic syntactic words Albanian e 3SG.ACC ‘him/her’, i 3SG.DAT ‘him/her’ , ajo/ai ‘she, he’, i 3PL.ACC ‘them’, u 3SG.DAT ‘them’ , ato/ata ‘they’; Armenian ē /e/ 3SG ‘(s/he, it) is’ , em ‘to be’; Brahui e 3SG ‘(s/he, it) is’, o (~ ur) 3PL ‘(they) are’; Breton i 2SG.FUT ‘you will go’ , mont ‘to go’; (American) English are /+t/ 2SG/1-3PL , to be; Finnish ei /ɛbi/ 2SG ‘you do not’ , ellä NEGATIVE AUXILIARY; French os /o/ PL ‘bones’ , os /ɔs/ ‘bone’, œufs /ø/ PL ‘eggs’ , œuf /œf/ ‘egg’, hais /ɛ/ 1/2SG ‘(I/you) hate’, hait /ɛ/ 3SG ‘(s/he, it) hates’ , haïr ‘to hate’, es /ɛ/ 2SG ‘(you) are’, est /ɛ/ 3SG ‘(s/he, it) is’ , être ‘to be’, ai /e/ 1SG ‘(I) have’, as /a/ 2SG ‘(you) have’, a 3SG ‘(s/he, it) has’, ont /õ/ (~ /õt/) 3PL ‘(they) have’, ait /ɛ/ 3SG.SUBJUNCT ‘(s/he, it) has’, eus /y/ 1/2SG.PAST ‘(I/you) was/were’, eut /y/ 3SG.PAST ‘(s/he, it) was’, eût /y/ 3SG.IMPERF.SUBJUNCT ‘(s/he, it) was’, eu /y/ PARTICIPLE ‘had’ , avoir ‘to have’; Icelandic á /ab u/ 1/3SG ‘(I) have/(s/he, it) has’ , eiga ‘to have/own’; Italian è /ɛ/ 3SG ‘(s/he, it) is’ , essere ‘to be’, ho /o/ 1SG ‘I have’, hai /ab i/ 2SG ‘you have’, ha /a/ 3SG ‘s/he, it has’ , avere ‘to have’; Kurdish (Kurmancî) î /i/ 2SG ‘you are’, e /ɛ/ 3SG ‘s/he, it is’ , bûn ‘to be’; Portuguese é /ɛ/ 3SG ‘s/he, it is’ , ser ‘to be’; Romanian au /ab u/ 3PL ‘they have’ , a avea ‘to have’; Saame íi /i:/ 3SG.NEGATIVE ‘(s/he, it) does not’; Scots-Gaelic a GEN/DAT.M ~ NOM/DAT.F ‘(of) the’; Spanish he /e/ 1SG, ha /a/ 3SG , haber PERFECT AUXILIARY; Welsh ei /eb i/ 2SG ‘(you) go’, ai /ab i/ 3SG ‘(s/he, it) goes’, âi /ab i/ 3SG.IMPERFECT ‘(s/he, it) went’ , mynd ‘to go’, yw /ib u/ (~ ydyw, mae) 3SG ‘(s/he. it) is’ , bod ‘to be’; Yukaghir (Kolyma) l /a:/ 1SG:PAST ‘I made’ , am ‘to make’

Pronouns, determiners, nouns and verbs are represented by V-monosyllabic wordforms. What strikes the eye is the sizable proportion of verbal word-forms which are realized as V-monosyllables. This contrasts with the relatively small turnout of verbs among the lexical V-monosyllables. Typical V-monosyllabic word-forms of verbs stem from the paradigms of the copula, auxiliary verbs or motion verbs all of which are bona

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fide candidates for the status of high-frequency items. V-monosyllables occur especially often in the singular of the verb paradigms of the present tense in the indicative, i.e. they have a predilection to show up in those areas where several unmarked categories are involved. Unsurprisingly, many (though not all) Romance word-forms which reflect Latin est 3SG ‘s/he, it is’ , essere ‘to be’ – a naked-closed monosyllable with a heavy coda – have developed into full-blown V-monosyllables as e.g. French est /ɛ/, Portuguese é /ɛ/, Italian è /ɛ/. On the other hand, verbs like French haïr /a'iʀ/ ‘to hate’ are presumably far less frequent than the copula. Nevertheless, their paradigm may host V-monosyllabic word-forms as well. It is clear that the reconstructed Germanic verb *hatjan and its hypothetical borrowed form *hatīre in Gallic Latin must have given rise to the regular disyllabic word-forms in the singular of the present tense. The initial glottal fricative is reflected by the h-aspiré rules in modern French which block external sandhi. Erstwhile covered syllables became naked in this way. This happened to all Germanic loans with an initial glottal fricative i.e. the sound change was general. Other reductive processes lead to the weakening and eventual loss of the internal plosive. After the deletion of -t-, the two syllable nuclei could fuse. The new monosyllable continued to shrink because word-final consonants were doomed to disappear in accordance with the diachronic developments of French phonology. A frequency-borne interpretation is bound to fail if it is intended to apply across the board to all instances of segmental attrition. It may not be possible to explain all cases in (11) by referring to statistics alone. Nevertheless, seemingly puzzling cases like French os /o/ PL ‘bones’ , os ‘bone’, œufs /ø/ PL ‘eggs’ , œuf /œf/ ‘egg’ also fall within the scope of Zipf’s law (as invoked above). We are dealing with a potential case of local markedness (Tiersma 1982) (or markedness reversal) in the sense that the usual hierarchy of unmarked singular and marked plural is spelled out differently. Bones and eggs most often come in large numbers either because they constitute the skeleton of a body or, in the case of eggs, are bought by the dozen. Thus, it is more normal to refer to these entities in the plural. A single bone or a single egg are already exceptional as referents. As with number systems in which collective and singular are distinguished formally (Stolz 2001), the expression which refers to the group is phonologically simpler than the expression which refers to a singleton item.

3.4. V-monosyllables as portmanteaux The above findings are indicative of two interesting phenomena the first of which we touch upon only briefly. V-monosyllables instantiate polysemy and/or homophony relatively often. In accordance with the observations made by Altmann (1985), there is an inverse correlation of word-length and semantic specificity such that relative shortness of expressions correlates with a relatively high degree of semantic differentiation. In

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(10), the Gilbertese V-monosyllable a is associated with six different meanings reaching from ‘sea urchin’ to ‘yawn’ to which the pronoun a ‘they’ has to be added as a seventh possible reading. Similarly, the French V-monosyllable /ɛ/ has seven possible interpretations most of which are associated with word-forms of avoir ‘to have’ and être ‘to be’. V-monosyllables are very often well-behaved in the sense that they obey the laws of quantitative linguistics. Menzerath-Altmann’s law (Cramer 2005) claims that “[t]he longer a language construct the shorter its components (constituents)” (Altmann 1980: 1). For V-monosyllables, the language construct qua syllable with the length of exactly one segment is located near the bottom end of the size-scale of linguistic units. Under these circumstances, it can be expected that the V-monosyllable is coextensive with its constituent parts: segment = nucleus = rhyme = syllable = word. On the phonological level, this equation is trivial because it simply recapitulates the definition of the V-monosyllable in (2.2) above. However, as the examples in (11) show, V-monosyllables can be complex still albeit not on the phonological level. If V-monosyllables function as syntactic words, they can be morphologically complex because they comprise several grammatical categories. In terms of morphs, the result is always equivalent to 1 because the single vowel segment cannot be divided into further morphs. However, on the content side, this single vowel may correspond to a bundle of morphemes. The Welsh verb-form âi ‘s/he, it went’ illustrates this mismatch in Table 3. Segments Morphs Morphemes

‘go’

/a" i/ {/a" i/} IMPERFECT

SINGULAR

3RD PERSON

1 1 4

Table 3: The invisible morphological complexity of Welsh âi One unit on the segmental level corresponds with one unit on the level of morphs. This one-to-one correspondence is disturbed by the relatively high density of lexical and grammatical information conveyed by the V-monosyllable. Welsh âi is an example of a V-monosyllable which is a portmanteau morph. Items which are employed frequently in discourse are likely to carry a heavy functional load which characterizes them either as all-purpose elements or multi-tasking elements. It should be determined whether factors other than mere frequency can trigger the genesis of V-monosyllabic word-forms. On the other hand, if frequency is invoked as crucial criterion, one should not be content with assigning frequencies by rule of thumb. There is an urgent need for hard facts, i.e. for cross-linguistic quantitative data which allow us to compare potential frequency effects typologically. Section 4 is meant to outline a possible statistic study to be refined in the future.

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4. Frequency issues In this section, we continue to discuss quantities. The guiding question is whether or not there are preferences of certain languages as to the use of V-monosyllables. To answer this question, a check of the data found in a parallel literary corpus is helpful unless we want to address purely phonological issues (Stolz 2007b).39 We emphasize strongly that the statistics of V-monosyllables are still preliminary. The subsequent statements of ours are thus not to be taken for definite results. Their function is to give a first impression of where our project will lead in the future. For a start, we look at token frequencies which are complemented by some observations on type frequency below. Our corpus consists of the French original of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince and 127 translations thereof. For practical reasons, only those languages have been admitted to this study which employ a Latin-based alphabetic script. With 95 versions, Indo-European languages (including regional and nonstandard varieties) cover slightly less than 75% of the sample whereas the remaining quarter of the sample is made up of 33 languages belonging to various phyla. In geographical terms, the division of our sample in a European and a non-European part yields similar values: 98 languages, i.e. almost 77% are spoken in Europe as opposed to 30 languages, i.e. slightly over 23%, are located elsewhere on the globe. For these sample languages, we have taken stock of all V-monosyllables which occur in the first chapter of this modern literary classic. The units we count as instances of V-monosyllables are orthographic words. An orthographic word is a string of letters sandwiched between two blanks, quotes (inverted commas) or a blank and a punctuation mark. Orthographic words are counted as evidence if and only if they represent a phonologically established V-monosyllable. In the French original, the first chapter comprises 433 orthographic words of which 44 are V-monosyllables, thereby accounting for 10.16% of all orthographic words in the first chapter. The range of variation among our sample languages is enormous as Table 4 (cf. Appendix) documents. The number of words used to translate the first chapter can be as low as 250 (= Quechua Cuzqueño) or as high as 682 (= Tahitian). These two extremes reflect the typological difference of a language with a rich system of bound morphology (= agglutinating Quechua Cuzqueño) and a language which almost entirely lacks bound morphology (= isolating Tahitian). Quechua Cuzqueño is not only the language with the lowest number of words in chapter I but also one of the eighteen languages (= 14% of the sample) which avoid V-monosyllables altogether in the sample text. This zerofrequency of V-monosyllables contrasts with the Tahitian results. Tahitian boasts 181 instances of V-monosyllables which is the highest value of all languages included in 39

To avoid misunderstandings, we clarify that we count those word-forms which are Vmonosyllables phonologically independent of their orthographic rendering in a given language, i.e. French is an instance of a V-monosyllable because it represents /œ„ /.

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this test run. Moreover, these 181 V-monosyllables correspond to more than a quarter of all words in the first chapter, namely to almost 27% – which is also the highest share reported for V-monosyllables. With nine languages, non-Indo-European languages account for exactly half of the eighteen languages with zero-frequency. Since non-Indo-European languages have a share of 25% of the sample, they are by far overrepresented in the group without any textual evidence of V-monosyllables. This tendency of non-Indo-European languages to make less use of V-monosyllables is further corroborated by the genetic affiliation of the languages which occupy higher ranks on the frequency-scale. Apart from the topranking Tahitian and Aramaic on rank position 7, 30 of the first 32 positions host IndoEuropean languages. Yucatec Maya on rank 33 is the third-best among the non-IndoEuropean languages. Even in a genetically biased sample like ours, the almost complete absence of non-Indo-European languages from the upper ranks of the scale is suggestive of a linguistic motivation of this skewed distribution. If we discount Tahitian and Aramaic, no non-Indo-European language displays a share of V-monosyllables which goes beyond 8.25% whereas 31 Indo-European languages reach higher values (Neapolitan being the Indo-European #1 with 21.13%). Between Yucatec on position 33 and the next non-Indo-European language, Bambara on position 56, there are 22 ranks which are again occupied by members of the Indo-European phylum. With ten representatives, non-Indo-European languages cluster further down the scale between position 92 and 107 which cover the range of 1.17% down to 0.28%. The accumulation of non-Indo-European languages at the bottom of the frequency scale corresponds to relative low averages for the entire group. The average non-IndoEuropean language has 14 occurrences of V-monosyllables which is equivalent to 3.72% of the words of the sample text. In contrast, Indo-European languages boast an average of 26.33 words, i.e. a share of 6.08%. Indo-European languages tend to use Vmonosyllables 1.88 times as often as their non-Indo-European counterparts. Interestingly, the averages diverge slightly from the above if we look at the sample from the point of view of geography. For the languages of Europe, 25.4 V-monosyllables i.e. 6% of all words of the sample text constitute the average. The difference of these values to those reported for the Indo-European phlyum are minimal - but telling nevertheless. The group of European languages is still dominated by members of the Indo-European phylum. However, it also includes non-Indo-European languages spoken in Europe and lacks those Indo-European languages of our sample which are situated outside of Europe. These small changes in the composition of the class of languages are sufficient to bring about statistical effects which suggest that a certain degree of V-monosyllabicity is a feature of Indo-European languages whereas low turnouts of V-monosyllables are associated with non-Indo-European languages. Tahitian stands out from the rest of the sample languages also because it displays the highest number of types of V-monosyllables in chapter I of Le Petit Prince. The 19 types and 181 tokens yield a type-token ratio of 0.104. Many languages exceed the

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Tahitian ratio. However, very often, this is the effect of their rather low turnout for tokens. Sizable sets of types to speak of are less common. We mention only those languages whose number of types goes beyond nine types: Bergamese 10 types – ratio 0.137, French 12 types – ratio 0.272, Ladin (Badiota) 13 types – ratio 0.236. The handful of non-Indo-European languages other than Tahitian which have a share of n > 2% of V-monosyllables displays the following values: Bambara 2 types – ratio 0.120, Alur 2 types – ratio 0.095, Aramaic 4 types – 0.083, Maltese 1 type – 0.083, Hungarian 1 type – ratio 0.066, Kabyle 1 type – ratio 0.062. Thus, it can be stated that non-IndoEuropean languages do not only tend to have a lower token frequency of Vmonosyllables but they also usually employ a much smaller set of types. For ten out of thirty-three non-Indo-European languages, only one type of V-monosyllables is attested (Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Kabyle, Maltese, Saami [Inari], Swahili, Tetum, Uzbek, Yucatec), another six non-Indo-European languages allow for two types (Alur, Azeri, Malagasy, Saami [North], Tagalog, Vietnamese). Only a minority of the non-IndoEuropean languages display more than two types of V-monosyllables whereas 64 of 95 Indo-European languages have scores higher than 2, i.e. two thirds (~ 67%) of the IndoEuropean languages count three or more types of V-monosyllables. Going by the above type and token frequencies, a picture can be painted which would surprise the theoreticians of monosyllabicity who worked in the 19th century. According to our statistics, V-monosyllables are more likely to occur in Indo-European languages than in non-Indo-European languages. Of course, the statistics are still too coarse-grained to allow for any definitive conclusions. Nevertheless, they are suggestive of a non-random distribution of V-monosyllables across the languages of the world. We need further investigation to identify the factors which determine this uneven distribution.

5. Conclusions Almost thirty years ago, Plank (1986) reminded his fellow-linguists of a phenomenon which renowned scholars of the 19th century like Pott and Schleicher occasionally discussed (and mostly in passing only). They searched for the shortest possible/attested sentence in human languages – a topic which superficially might be considered worthwhile treating in the linguistic curiosity shop (Parkvall 2006). However, Plank (1986) demonstrates that the topic has more than it seems on offer for typologists and language theoreticians. Where his predecessors were content with referring to the Latin imperative ī ‘go!’ (, īre ‘to go’) – a bona fide V-monosyllabic sentence equivalent, Plank (1986: 56–58) provides a set of criteria which serve the definition of the “potentiell kürzester Satz” ‘potentially shortest sentence (= PSS)’ (Plank 1986: 56), namely (a) (b)

a PSS should consist of no more than one word, a PSS should consist of no more than one morpheme,

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(c) (d)

221

a PSS should consist of no more than one syllable (if possible a short syllable), a PSS should consist of no more than one segment (if possible a short one).

Plank (1986: 58) observes further that the shortest sentence should consist ideally of a short syllabic segment. Since the above Latin imperative involves a long vowel, Plank (1986: 58) admits that the existence of the logically possible PSS has not been confirmed empirically yet. To initiate the renewal of the search for the PSS, Plank (1986: 59-60) formulates a number of typological guidelines which boil down to the recommendation that one should look for the PSS among the items with the highest text-frequency in languages which allow for mono-segmental syllables (i.e. for V-monosyllables) and whose system of vowel phonemes is not too small (Plank 1986: 59). Our own study is not concerned with the PSS as such. Nevertheless, Plank’s (1986) ideas support our own project. If it makes sense linguistically to investigate the lower limits of syntax (in terms of length of surface structure) and if these lower limits coincide with the concept of V-monosyllables, it must equally make sense to explore Vmonosyllables independently of syntactic criteria in the first place. From the discussion in section 4, we know that V-monosyllables tend to show up in those areas of language which are associated with high degrees of grammaticalization. This strong affinity alone deserves to be looked into more deeply especially if one wants to come to grips with the relation which ties grammaticalization to frequency. Vmonosyllables can be shown to be attested relatively commonly with lexemes which probably also boast a high text frequency. At the present stage of our investigation, the evidence seems to speak in favor of frequency as the common denominator of Vmonosyllables in grammar and lexicon. This could lend support to Bybee’s (2006) and Haspelmath’s (2006, 2008) hypotheses according to which language structure is the product of the asymmetrical frequency effects of actual language use. The formerly rather rigid separation of grammar and lexicon thus might be further blurred as the same effects affect both areas of language. However, it still has to be determined whether statistical arguments are valid for both primary and secondary V-monosyllables. To tackle this problem, it is necessary to adduce evidence of genuine cases of primary V-monosyllables. In contrast to secondary V-monosyllables which are relatively widely attested in the languages of the world, primary V-monosyllables seem to be rare birds, in a manner of speaking (which may be an effect of the restricted time-depth of our strictly synchronic approach). Recently, linguistic rarities have been promoted to an important topic in typology and universals research (Wohlgemuth & Cysouw 2010a–b) because phenomena which are only marginally attested often challenge extant theories about the possible structural range of human languages (i.e. theories which heavily rely on the more frequently encountered properties of languages). In this sense, V-monosyllables – be they primary or secondary – are prime candidates for an in-depth study which establishes the constraints they are subject to. Along the lines of Plank’s (1986) reasoning as to the PSS, we expect that the

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study of V-monosyllables will unveil a number of linguistically interesting correlations which tell us under which conditions V-monosyllables are admissible in a given language and which restrictions are strong enough to bar the genesis of V-monosyllables. To settle these issues, factors from various areas such as phonology (segmental and suprasegmental), morphology, syntax and semantics have to be taken into account. This multiplicity of factors and their potential interaction make V-monosyllables a highly intriguing subject matter. Our excursion into the realm of quantitative linguistics in section 5 shows that statistically oriented cross-linguistic studies are not only feasible but yield linguistically interesting results. In this case, the numerical data are indicative of a bipartition of our sample languages as Indo-European languages and non-Indo-European languages display different preferences when it comes to making use of V-monosyllables. Where Indo-European languages tolerate at least moderately sizable sets of V-monosyllables, non-Indo-European languages are significantly less prone to employing V-monosyllables. Since some non-Indo-European languages (Tahitian and to a lesser degree also Aramaic) deviate from this pattern and some Indo-European languages wind up at the bottom of the frequency-scale, this simple binary typology calls for a thorough revision and methodological refinement. This includes the increase of the sample size: more languages must be accounted for and the text-basis must be enlarged considerably. The latter is important not least because V-monosyllables cannot be studied in isolation alone. Their grammar can only be written if we understand how they interact with other elements in their syntactic and textual context.

Abbreviations ACC

C DAT DEF DU F FUT GEN INDEF

accusative consonant dative definite dual feminine future genitive indefinite

Symbols σ = syllable, ω = word, , = related to

M N NOM OBJ PL SG SUBJUNCT

V

masculine, neuter nominative object case plural singular subjunctive vowel

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Appendix (a) Table 4 Language

Words

Tahitian

682

V-monosyllables absolute 181

Neapolitan

459

97

V-monosyllables relative 26,54%

Types 19

Types per token 0,104

21,13%

9

0,092

Piedmontese

352

60

17,05%

5

0,083

Corsican

456

75

16,45%

8

0,106

Bergamese

471

73

15,50%

10

0,136

Bolognese

482

69

14,32%

7

0,101

Aramaic

344

48

13,95%

4

0,083

Friulian

448

60

13,39%

7

0,116

Welsh

474

62

13,08%

8

0,129

Scottish Gaelic

568

69

12,15%

5

0,072

Occitan-Provençal

478

55

11,51%

5

0,09

Portuguese

429

49

11,42%

8

0,163

Ladin (Badiota)

491

55

11,20%

13

0,236

Bernese German (Bärndütsch) Aragonese

422

45

10,66%

5

0,111

410

43

10,49%

5

0,116

Breton

416

43

10,34%

5

0,116

French

433

44

10,16%

12

0,272

Faroese

428

43

10,05%

4

0,093

Albanian (Gheg)

400

40

10,00%

7

0,175

Irish

493

49

9,94%

7

0,142

Swabian

377

37

9,81%

4

0,108

Italian

408

40

9,80%

8

0,2

Galician

391

37

9,46%

8

0,216

Niçard

409

37

9,05%

6

0,162

Milanese

444

40

9,01%

5

0,125

Papiamentu

438

39

8,90%

4

0,102

Bavarian

478

42

8,79%

4

0,095

Albanian (Tosk)

559

49

8,77%

6

0,122

The first step towards the comparative grammar of monosyllables Language

Words

Tyrolean

227

V-monosyllables relative 8,76%

Types

388

V-monosyllables absolute 34

5

Types per token 0,147

Carinthian

493

43

8,72%

3

0,069

Eonavian

393

33

8,40%

7

0,212

Gascon

431

36

8,35%

8

0,222

Aranese

408

34

8,33%

7

0,205

Yucatec Maya

400

33

8,25%

1

0,03

Tyrolean (South)

457

36

7,88%

4

0,111

Venetian

497

39

7,85%

5

0,128

English

511

40

7,83%

2

0,05

Ladin (Gherdëina)

448

35

7,81%

7

0,2

Viennese

464

36

7,76%

4

0,111

391

30

7,67%

4

0,133

418

31

7,42%

6

0,193

Croatian

345

25

7,25%

3

0,12

RumantschGrischun Czech

444

31

6,98%

4

0,129

345

24

6,96%

2

0,083

Croatian (Burgenland) Provençal

RumantschVallader Slovak

490

34

6,94%

5

0,147

355

24

6,76%

3

0,125

Bosnian

374

25

6,68%

4

0,16

Austrian (Upper)

419

27

6,44%

2

0,074

Kashubian

378

24

6,35%

4

0,166

Catalan

438

27

6,16%

6

0,222

Spanish

408

25

6,13%

4

0,16

Alsatian

410

24

5,85%

3

0,125

RumantschSursilvan Asturian

437

25

5,72%

4

0,16

405

23

5,68%

3

0,13

Valencian

419

22

5,25%

6

0,272

Bambara

483

25

5,18%

3

0,12

Languedoc

406

21

5,17%

4

0,19

Thomas Stolz, Sonja Hauser & Heiko Stamer

228 Language

Words

V-monosyllables relative 5,15%

Types

408

V-monosyllables absolute 21

3

Types per token 0,142

Sardinian Franco-Provençal

470

24

5,11%

5

0,208

Moldavian

435

22

5,06%

6

0,272

436

22

5,05%

5

0,227

RumantschSurmiran Kurdish (Kurmancî) Hungarian

447

22

4,92%

2

0,09

319

15

4,70%

1

0,066

Romanian

426

20

4,69%

7

0,35

Alur

460

21

4,57%

2

0,095

Polish

331

15

4,53%

3

0,2

Extremaduran

436

19

4,36%

3

0,157

Kabyle

377

16

4,24%

1

0,062

Walloon

425

18

4,24%

7

0,388

Lothringian

437

18

4,12%

3

0,166

Sorbian (Upper)

341

14

4,11%

1

0,071

Saarlandian

490

18

3,67%

4

0,222

Luxemburgian

458

16

3,49%

3

0,187

Maltese

348

12

3,45%

1

0,083

Yiddish

436

15

3,44%

1

0,066

Norwegian

422

14

3,32%

2

0,142

Frisian-Frasch (Northern) Arumanian

457

15

3,28%

2

0,133

390

11

2,82%

4

0,363

Elfdalian

405

11

2,72%

2

0,181

Badish-Alemannic

426

11

2,58%

2

0,181

Romani

359

8

2,23%

2

0,25

Frisian-Fering (Northern) Kurdish (Zazaki)

457

10

2,19%

1

0,1

463

10

2,16%

5

0,5

Slovene

371

8

2,16%

1

0,125

Franconian

515

11

2,14%

2

0,181

Estonian

353

7

1,98%

1

0,142

The first step towards the comparative grammar of monosyllables Language Seychelles Creole

437

V-monosyllables absolute 8

Swedish

442

8

1,81%

1

0,125

Palatian

454

8

1,76%

2

0,25

Danish

432

7

1,62%

1

0,142

Hessian

464

7

1,51%

1

0,142

423

6

1,42%

2

0,333

341

4

1,17%

2

0,5

Morisien (Mauritian Creole) Saami (North)

Words

229

V-monosyllables relative 1,83%

Types 3

Types per token 0,375

Malagasy (Malgache) Limburgian (South)

438

5

1,14%

2

0,4

452

5

1,11%

2

0,4

Finnish

300

3

1,00%

1

0,333

Tagalog

439

4

0,91%

2

0,5

Azeri

330

3

0,91%

2

0,666

Colognian

441

4

0,91%

2

0,5

Saami (Inari)

338

3

0,89%

1

0,333

Esperanto

362

3

0,83%

2

0,666

Frisian

423

3

0,71%

1

0,333

Lithuanian

328

2

0,61%

2

1

Tetum

390

2

0,51%

1

0,5

Vietnamese

649

3

0,46%

2

0,666

Uzbek

353

1

0,28%

1

1

Latin

354

1

0,28%

1

1

Swahili

362

1

0,28%

1

1

German

424

1

0,24%

1

1

Pennsylvania German Afrikaans

482

1

0,21%

1

1

488

0

0,00%

0

0

Basque

328

0

0,00%

0

0

Berlinian

443

0

0,00%

0

0

Dutch

423

0

0,00%

0

0

Frisian (Sater)

505

0

0,00%

0

0

Thomas Stolz, Sonja Hauser & Heiko Stamer

230 Language

Words

V-monosyllables absolute

V-monosyllables relative

Types

Types per token

457

0

0,00%

0

0

548

0

0,00%

0

0

269

0

0,00%

0

0

374

0

0,00%

0

0

344

0

0,00%

0

0

Limburgian (North)

434

0

0,00%

0

0

Plautdietsch

474

0

0,00%

0

0

German (Low)Hümmling German (Low)North Guaraní Indonesian (Bahasa) Latvian

Quechua (Cuzqueño) Quechua (Kichwa)

250

0

0,00%

0

0

257

0

0,00%

0

0

Saami (Skolt)

327

0

0,00%

0

0

Toba

312

0

0,00%

0

0

Turkish

310

0

0,00%

0

0

Zulu

269

0

0,00%

0

0

Total

53663

2984

676,30%

440

26,374

Average

419,24

23,31

5,28%

3

0,206

(b)

Sample

Number Glossonym

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

1

Achagua

NO

NO

1st sample

---

2

Afrikaans

YES

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

3

Akatek

NO

NO

1st sample

---

4

Albanian

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

5

Albanian (Gheg)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

6

Albanian (Tosk)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

7

Alsatian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

8

Alur

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

9

Angolar

NO

NO

1st sample

---

10

Apache

NO

NO

1st sample

---

11

Apalai

NO

NO

1st sample

---

12

Aragonese

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

The first step towards the comparative grammar of monosyllables Number Glossonym

231

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

---

2nd sample

13

Aramaic

NO

NO

14

Aranese

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

15

Armenian

YES

NO

1st sample

---

16

Arumanian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

17

Assiniboine

NO

NO

1st sample

---

18

Asturian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

19

Austrian (Upper)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

20

Azeri

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

21

Badish-Alemannic

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

22

Bambara

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

23

Bashkir

NO

NO

1st sample

---

24

Basque

NO

YES

---

2nd sample

25

Bavarian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

26

Bergamese

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

27

Berlinian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

28

Bernese German (Bärndütsch)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

29

Bolognese

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

30

Boruca

NO

NO

1st sample

---

31

Bosnian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

32

Brahui

NO

NO

1st sample

---

33

Breton

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

34

Bukiyip

NO

NO

1st sample

---

35

Bulgarian

YES

YES

1st sample

---

36

Carinthian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

37

Catalan

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

38

Chamorro

NO

NO

1st sample

---

39

Chinese

NO

NO

1st sample

---

40

Chocho

NO

NO

1st sample

---

41

Colognian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

42

Corsican

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

43

Croatian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

44

Croatian (Burgenland)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

Thomas Stolz, Sonja Hauser & Heiko Stamer

232 Number Glossonym

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

---

2nd sample

45

Czech

YES

YES

46

Danish

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

47

Dogon

NO

NO

1st sample

---

48

Drehu

NO

NO

1st sample

---

49

Duala

NO

NO

1st sample

---

50

Dutch

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

51

Efik

NO

NO

1st sample

---

52

Elfdalian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

53

Enets

NO

NO

1st sample

---

54

English

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

55

English (American)

YES

NO

1st sample

---

56

English (Scots)

YES

YES

1st sample

---

57

Eonavian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

58

Esperanto

NO

YES

---

2nd sample

59

Estonian

NO

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

60

Extremaduran

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

61

Faroese

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

62

Finnish

NO

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

63

Franco-Provençal

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

64

Franconian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

65

French

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

66

Frisian

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

67

Frisian (Sater)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

68

Frisian-Fering (Northern)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

69

Frisian-Frasch (Northern)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

70

Friulian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

71

Fur

NO

NO

1st sample

---

72

Galician

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

73

Gascon

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

74

German

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

75

German (Low)Hümmling

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

The first step towards the comparative grammar of monosyllables Number Glossonym

233

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

76

German (Low)North

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

77

Gilbertese

NO

NO

1st sample

---

78

Greek

YES

YES

1st sample

---

79

Guaraní

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

80

Guugu-Yimiddhir

NO

NO

1st sample

---

81

Hausa

NO

NO

1st sample

---

82

Hawaiian

NO

NO

1st sample

---

83

Hebrew

NO

NO

1st sample

---

84

Hessian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

85

Hungarian

NO

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

86

Icelandic

YES

YES

1st sample

---

87

Indonesian (Bahasa)

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

88

Ingush

NO

NO

1st sample

---

89

Inuktitut (Nunavik)

NO

NO

1st sample

---

90

Irish

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

91

Italian

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

92

Ixil

NO

NO

1st sample

---

93

Jaminjung

NO

NO

1st sample

---

94

Japanese

NO

NO

1st sample

---

95

Kabardian

NO

NO

1st sample

---

96

Kabyle

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

97

Kamas

NO

NO

1st sample

---

98

Kannada

NO

NO

1st sample

---

99

Kashubian

YES

NO

---

2nd sample

100

Kâte

NO

NO

1st sample

---

101

Kazakh

NO

NO

1st sample

---

102

Ket

NO

NO

1st sample

---

103

Khanty

NO

NO

1st sample

---

104

Khasi

NO

NO

1st sample

---

105

Khmer

NO

NO

1st sample

---

106

Kikuyu

NO

NO

1st sample

---

107

Kilivila

NO

NO

1st sample

---

Thomas Stolz, Sonja Hauser & Heiko Stamer

234 Number Glossonym

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

NO

NO

1st sample

---

108

Kisi

109

Korean

NO

NO

1st sample

---

110

Kurdish

YES

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

111

Kurdish (Kurmancî)

YES

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

112

Kurdish (Zazaki)

YES

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

113

Kurukh

NO

NO

1st sample

---

114

Kyrgyz

NO

NO

1st sample

---

115

Ladin (Badiota)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

116

Ladin (Gherdëina)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

117

Languedoc

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

118

Latin

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

119

Latin (Gallic)

YES

YES

1st sample

---

120

Latvian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

121

Lenakel

NO

NO

1st sample

---

122

Limba

NO

NO

1st sample

---

123

Limburgian (North)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

124

Limburgian (South)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

125

Lingala

NO

NO

1st sample

---

126

Lithuanian

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

127

Livonian

NO

YES

1st sample

---

128

Lothringian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

129

Luxemburgian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

130

Malagasy (Malgache)

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

131

Malay

NO

NO

1st sample

---

132

Maltese

NO

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

133

Manchu

NO

NO

1st sample

---

134

Mansi

NO

NO

1st sample

---

135

Maori

NO

NO

1st sample

---

136

Mari (Eastern)

NO

NO

1st sample

---

137

Mende

NO

NO

1st sample

---

138

Milanese

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

139

Mokilese

NO

NO

1st sample

---

The first step towards the comparative grammar of monosyllables Number Glossonym

235

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

NO

YES

---

2nd sample

140

Moldavian

141

Mongolian

NO

NO

1st sample

---

142

Mordvin

NO

NO

1st sample

---

143

Morisien (Mauritian Creole)

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

144

Nama

NO

NO

1st sample

---

145

Navaho

NO

NO

1st sample

---

146

Neapolitan

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

147

Ngiti

NO

NO

1st sample

---

148

Niçard

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

149

Nobiin

NO

NO

1st sample

---

150

Nobonob

NO

NO

1st sample

---

151

Norwegian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

152

Nukuoro

NO

NO

1st sample

---

153

Nupe

NO

NO

1st sample

---

154

Occitan-Provençal

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

155

Oriya

YES

NO

1st sample

---

156

Oromo

NO

NO

1st sample

---

157

Ossetic

YES

NO

1st sample

---

158

Paiwan

NO

NO

1st sample

---

159

Palatian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

160

Palauan

NO

NO

1st sample

---

161

Papiamentu

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

162

Pashto

YES

NO

1st sample

---

163

Pennsylvania German

YES

NO

---

2nd sample

164

Piedmontese

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

165

Plautdietsch

YES

NO

---

2nd sample

166

Polish

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

167

Popoloca

NO

NO

1st sample

---

168

Popti'

NO

NO

1st sample

---

169

Portuguese

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

170

Provençal

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

171

Punjabi

YES

NO

1st sample

---

Thomas Stolz, Sonja Hauser & Heiko Stamer

236 Number Glossonym

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

172

Purépecha

NO

NO

1st sample

---

173

Quechua

NO

NO

1st sample

---

174

Quechua (Cuzqueño)

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

175

Quechua (Kichwa)

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

176

Rapanui

NO

NO

1st sample

---

177

Romani

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

178

Romanian

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

179

RumantschGrischun

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

180

RumantschSurmiran

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

181

RumantschSursilvan

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

182

Rumantsch-Vallader

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

183

Russian

YES

YES

1st sample

---

184

Saame

NO

YES

1st sample

---

185

Saami (Inari)

NO

YES

---

2nd sample

186

Saami (North)

NO

YES

---

2nd sample

187

Saami (Skolt)

NO

YES

---

2nd sample

188

Saarlandian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

189

Samoan

NO

NO

1st sample

---

190

Saramaccan

NO

NO

1st sample

---

191

Sardinian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

192

Scottish Gaelic

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

193

Selkup

NO

NO

1st sample

---

194

Seneca

NO

NO

1st sample

---

195

Sesuto

NO

NO

1st sample

---

196

Setswana

NO

NO

1st sample

---

197

Seychelles Creole

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

198

Shoshone (Tümpisa)

NO

NO

1st sample

---

199

Sinhala

YES

NO

1st sample

---

200

Slave

NO

NO

1st sample

---

201

Slovak

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

The first step towards the comparative grammar of monosyllables Number Glossonym

237

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

202

Slovene

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

203

So

NO

NO

1st sample

---

204

Somali

NO

NO

1st sample

---

205

Sorbian (Upper)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

206

Spanish

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

207

Swabian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

208

Swahili

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

209

Swedish

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

210

Tagalog

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

211

Tahitian

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

212

Tamashek

NO

NO

1st sample

---

213

Tatar

NO

NO

1st sample

---

214

Telugu

NO

NO

1st sample

---

215

Tetum

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

216

Tinrin

NO

NO

1st sample

---

217

Toba

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

218

Totonac

NO

NO

1st sample

---

219

Turkish

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

220

Tyrolean

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

221

Tyrolean (South)

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

222

Udmurt

NO

NO

1st sample

---

223

Urubu-Kaapor

NO

NO

1st sample

---

224

Uzbek

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

225

Valencian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

226

Venetian

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

227

Viennese

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

228

Vietnamese

NO

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

229

Walloon

YES

YES

---

2nd sample

230

Welsh

YES

YES

1st sample

2nd sample

231

Yabêm

NO

NO

1st sample

---

232

Yiddish

YES

NO

1st sample

2nd sample

233

Yoruba

NO

NO

1st sample

---

234

Yucatec Maya

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

Thomas Stolz, Sonja Hauser & Heiko Stamer

238 Number Glossonym

Indo-European

Europe

1st sample

2nd sample

235

Yukaghir

NO

NO

1st sample

---

236

Yukaghir (Kolyma)

NO

NO

1st sample

---

237

Yurak (Nenets)

NO

NO

1st sample

---

238

Zulu

NO

NO

---

2nd sample

239

Zyryan

NO

NO

1st sample

---

List of Contributors

HANS BASBØLL Institute for Language and Communication University of Southern Denmark Campusvej 55 DK-5230 Odense M DENMARK [email protected]

SONJA HAUSER Fachbereich 10: Linguistik Universität Bremen Postfach 330440 28334 Bremen GERMANY [email protected]

YUAN-LU CHEN Linguistic Institute National Chung Cheng University 168 University Rd., Min-Hsiung Chia-Yi, Taiwan 62102, R.O.C. [email protected]

ALEXIS MICHAUD LACITO-CNRS 7 rue Guy Môquet 94800 Villejuif FRANCE [email protected]

IGOR DREER Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics Ben-Gurion University of the Negev P.O. Box 653 84105 Beersheba ISRAEL [email protected] FRANCK FLORICIC Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie UMR 7018, CNRS/Sorbonne-Nouvelle 19 rue des Bernardins 75005 Paris FRANCE [email protected]

LUCIA MOLINU Les Résidences du Parc (Villa 26) 112 Chemin de Basso Cambo 31100 Toulouse FRANCE [email protected] NICOLE NAU Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza Instytut J5zykoznawstwa Zakład Bałtologii al. NiepodległoCci 4 61-874 Poznań POLAND [email protected]

240 PAULA ORZECHOWSKA The School of English Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań POLAND [email protected] CONNIE K. SO Bankstown Campus, Building 1 MARCS Auditory Laboratories University of Western Sydney (Bankstown), Locked Bag 1797 Penrith South DC NSW 1797 AUSTRALIA [email protected] HEIKO STAMER Fachbereich 10: Linguistik Universität Bremen Postfach 330440 28334 Bremen GERMANY [email protected] PETRA C. STEINER Institut für Anglistik/Amerikanistik Universität Rostock August-Bebel-Str. 28

List of Contributors 18051 Rostock GERMANY [email protected] THOMAS STOLZ Fachbereich 10: Linguistik Universität Bremen Postfach 330440 28334 Bremen GERMANY [email protected] CORNELIA STROH Fachbereich 10: Linguistik Universität Bremen Postfach 330440 28334 Bremen GERMANY [email protected] SABINE ZERBIAN Institut für Linguistik Universität Potsdam Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 24/25 14476 Potsdam/Golm GERMANY [email protected]

Index of Authors

Abramson, Arthur S. 123 Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 201 Åkesson, Katarina 24, 25 Alexander, Jennifer 59 Altmann, Gabriel 173, 175, 178, 179, 183, 216, 217 Avanesov, Ruben 72 Azim, Abdul 72 Bafile, Laura 159 Bargiełówna, Maria 94, 100 Baron, Stephen P. 126 Basbøll, Hans 9, 13, 14, 16–18, 20–22, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 33, 35–37, 197, 198, 203 Batibo, Herman M. 133 Battistella, Edwin 91 Bauer, Robert S. 57, 65 Baxter, William H. 116, 121 Beckman, Mary E. 56, 58 Benedict, Paul K. 57, 65 Benítez Marco, Maria Pilar 163 Best, Catherine T. 55–58, 66, 67 Best, Karl-Heinz 178 Bibeau, Gilles 73 Bickel, Balthasar 96 Biryla, Mikalaj 72 Björverud, Susanna 125 Bleses, Dorthe 24–28 Blevins, Juliette 13, 91 Bloch, Bernard 93 Böhm, Gerhard 204 Bosch i Rodoreda, Andreu 164 Bovet, Ernesto 167

Brachet, Auguste 84 Bradley, David 125 Bradley, Travis G. 43, 44 Brandon, F.R. 133 Brants, Thorsten 179 Brown, Cynthia 56 Brumme, Jenny 212 Bühler, Karl 181 Bunge, Mario 174 Burlyka, V.R 72 Bybee, Joan L. 198, 221 Cabré i Monet, Teresa 156, 157 Carlson, Rolf 58 Carton, Fernand 73, 74 Casagrande, Jean 73, 74 Čebanov, Sergej Grigorevič 178 Čekman, Valerij 72 Chafe, Wallace L. 203, 204 Chebanne, Andrew M. 135, 139, 140, 142 Chen, Marilyn Y. 49 Childs, G. Tucker 202 Clements, George N. 93 Clements, Nick 122 Coetzee, Andries W. 136 Cole, Desmond T. 135, 137–143 Cramer, Irene M. 217 Creissels, Denis 138, 154 Crystal, David 92 Curtius, Georg 161, 162 Cyran, Eugeniusz 93, 94 Cysouw, Michael 221

Index of Authors

242 D’Ovidio, Francesco 160, 161, 167 Daneš, František 163 Davis, Joseph 72, 74, 77, 78, 81, 87 Delsing, Lars-Olof 24, 25 Dickens, Patrick 136 Diderichsen, Paul 30 Diver, William 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 87 Dixon, R.M.W. 201, 206 Dobrogowska, Katarzyna 94 Donegan, Patricia 91 Downing, Laura J. 133–136, 138–141, 144, 152 Dreer, Igor 10, 73, 75 Dresher, B. Elan 134, 145 Dressler, Wolfgang U. 37, 95, 100, 102, 206 Dryer, Matthew S. 96 Dubisz, Stanisław 100 Dunaj, Bogusław 94 Dziubalska-Kołaczyk, Katarzyna 37, 91, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 102, 107 Erelt, Mati 205 Fagyal, Zsuzsanna 73, 74 Fatihi, A. R. 72 Fenk, August 179, 180 Fenk-Oczlon, Gertraud 179, 180 Ferlus, Michel 115–117, 119–124, 198 Fisiak, Jacek 100 Flemming, Edward 43–45, 47, 48, 50 Flores, Nydia 72 Floricic, Franck 10, 133, 135, 151, 154, 155, 159, 165, 167, 168 Fouché, Pierre 158 Fougeron, Cecile 73 Fox, Anthony 55, 58 Fradkin, Robert 73 Frøkjær-Jensen, Børge 19 Furhop, Nanna 197, 201 Gallmann, Peter 201 Gandour, Jackson T. 56 Gauthiot, Robert 152 Gilliéron, Jules 166

Goldsmith, John 93 Golston, Chris 97 Gonçalves, Carlos A. 165, 166 Gottfried, Terry L. 59 Grabčikov, Stepan M. 74 Grau Sempere, Antonio 165 Grønnum, Nina 13, 24, 33, 35–37 Guion, Susan G. 55, 56 Gussmann, Edmund 93, 94 Hagège, Claude 117 Hagman, Roy S. 204 Hajek, John 205 Hall, T. Alan 201 Hallé, Pierre A. 56 Harris, John 93, 94 Harshman, Richard A. 56 Haspelmath, Martin 198, 221 Haudricourt, André-Georges 115, 117, 120– 122, 125, 198 He Jiren 125, 126 Hellwig, Birgit 182, 183 Hempel, Carl G. 174 Henderson, Eugénie J.A. 122, 123, 125 Herbermann, Clemens-Peter 201 Herman, Rebecca 152 Hermans, Ben 93 Hofmann, Johann Baptist 162 Hoijer, Harry 203, 204 Høysgaard, Jens Pedersen 33 Huber-Sauter, Margrit 159, 161 Huffman, Alan 75 Huffman, Franklin E. 123 Hume, Elizabeth 56 Hyman, Larry M. 133, 152 Isačenko, Alexander V. 168 Jabeen, Sh. Sh. 72 Jacobs, Haike 160 Jacques, Guillaume 115, 118, 119, 121 Jakobi, Angelika 213 Jankowskƒ, Fjodar M. 72 Jassem, Wiktor 95

Index of Authors Jespersen, Otto 13, 93 Jiang Zhuyi 125, 126 Johnson, Keith 56 Jørgensen, Rune Nørgaard 28 Kager, René 160 Karlgren, Bernhard 126 Kawasaki, Haruko 93 Kehrein, Wolfgang 97 Kgasa, Morulaganyi L.A. 147, 148 Khoali, Benjamin T. 136 Kiparsky, Paul 160 Köhler, Reinhard 174, 175, 177, 179 Kotzé, Albert E. 139 Kraska-Szlenk, Iwona 154 Krivickij, A.A. 72 Krott, Andrea 179 Kruszewski, Mikołaj 150 Kryvicki, A. 72 Kuryłowicz, Jerzy 93 Kutsch Lojenga, Constance 206 Ladefoged, Peter 15, 16, 199, 203 Ladusaw, William A. 126 Lambertsen, Claus 27 Lappe, Sabine 94 Laver, John 13 Leather, Jonathan 56 Lee, Yuh-Shiow 55, 56 Lehmann, Christian 211 Lewitz, Saveros 123 Lindsey, Geoff 93 Loban, Mikalaj P. 74 Lodge, Anthony R. 73 Lombard, Alf 151, 167 Lombard, Daan P. 135 Łubowicz, Anna 43–56 Maas, Utz 203 Maddieson, Ian 91, 199, 202, 203 Madejowa, Maria 94 Madsen, Thomas O. 27 Magnus, Johannes 33 Maiden, Martin 159

243 Mańczak, Witold 159, 161, 162 Martin, Sven Carl 179 Martinet, André 78, 80 Martynaw, Viktar U. 72 Massourre, Jean-Louis 167, 168 Matisoff, James A. 116 Maurer, Philippe 209 Mayo, Peter 72, 73, 82 Mazaudon, Martine 115, 117, 124 Meillet, Antoine 151, 154, 162 Michailovsky, Boyd 115, 117 Michaud, Alexis 10, 121, 124, 125, 127, 198 Miestamo, Matti 198 Millardet, Georges 162, 166 Miller, Raymond 72 Miyawaki, Kuniko 56 Mokaila, Dingaan Mpho 142 Molinu, Lucia 10, 133, 135, 154, 155, 159, 168 Moll, Francesc de B. 157, 158 Myers, Scott P. 133 Nannucci, Vincenzo 160 Neira, Jesús 164 Nespor, Marina 133 Neukom, Lukas 214 Ney, Hermann 179 Nichols, Johanna 96 Nyrop, Kristoffer 84 Ohala, John J. 15, 93 Oppenheim, Paul 174 Padgett, Jaye 43–45, 47, 50 Padlužny, Alexandr 72, 73 Park, Jae-Ick 153 Parkvall, Mikael 220 Patnaik, Manideepa 214 Pérez Saldanya, Manuel 157 Pierrehumbert, Janette 94 Pike, Kenneth L. 15, 16 Plank, Frans 202, 220, 221 Polka, Linda 56 Primus, Beatrice 199 Prün, Claudia 211

Index of Authors

244 Pulleyblank, Edwin G. 124 Pullum, Geoffrey K. 126 Rabel, Lili 203, 204 Reid, Aileen A. 203 Rice, Keren 93 Riester, Devon N. 59 Rischel, Jørgen 23 Ritter, Nancy A. 91 Roach, Peter 95 Rothe, Ursula 178 Rottland, Franz 133 Sagart, Laurent 115, 116, 121 Salvioni, Carlo 167 Sanders, Nathan 43, 44 Sapir, Edward 203, 204 Saporta, Sol 94 Saussure, Ferdinand de 71, 75, 77, 78 Scheer, Tobias 93, 94 Schpak-Dolt, Nikolaus 201 Schuchardt, Hugo 150, 161 Schultze-Berndt, Eva 206 Selkirk, Elizabeth 93 Sievers, Eduard 13, 93 Smith, Caroline L. 73 Snyman, J.W. 147, 148 So, Connie. K. 55, 57, 58, 66, 67 Söderberg, V. 34 Solnit, David B. 117 Stampe, David 91 Steiner, Petra 10, 179 Stolz, Thomas 10, 128, 198, 206, 216, 218 Sudnik, Mikhail R. 74 Sudnik, Tamara 72 Sussex, Roland 72 Tees, Richard C. 56 Teixeira de Jesus, Etel 166 Ternes, Elmar 203 Thami da Silva, Hayla 165

Thompson, Laurence C. 116, 125 Thornton, Anna Maria 156, 158, 159 Tiersma, Peter Meijes 216 Tobin, Yishai 71, 72, 75, 76, 80, 81, 85, 87, 88 Tøndering, John 24 Trager, George L. 93 Tranel, Bernard 73, 74 Trnka, Bohumil 94 Tsonope Joseph 147, 148 Uspensky, Boris A. 162 Vallina Alonso, Celestina 164 van der Hulst, Harry 134, 145 Vennemann, Theo 14, 91, 200, 201 Vogel, Irene 133 Vyhonnaja, L.C. 72 Wackernagel, Jacob 152 Walker, Douglas C. 73, 74 Walter, Henriette 73, 80 Wardhaugh, Ronald 95 Wayland, Ratree P. 55, 56 Weber, Sabine 184 Werker, Janet F. 56 Wexler, Paul 72, 84 Whitney, William Dwight 93 Wiese, Richard 197 Wimmer, Gejza 178 Wohlgemuth, Jan 221 Wurzel, Wolfgang U. 201 Yip, Moira 55, 57, 58, 65 Zee, Eric 126 Zerbian, Sabine 10, 139, 154 Zhivov, Viktor M. 162 Zipf, George Kingsley 178, 211, 213, 214, 216 Zwicky, Arnold M. 201

Index of Languages

Armenian (Old) 151, 152, 154, 203, 208, 215, 231 Asturian 157, 163, 164, 227, 231

Faroese 26, 226, 232 French 10, 15, 19, 34, 58, 71–87, 162, 166, 205, 208–213, 215–218, 220, 226, 232

Bantu 131–135, 138–140, 143, 144, 152 Southern Bantu 10, 131 Belarusian 10, 71–87

Galician 157, 226, 232 Gascon 157, 167, 168, 227, 232 German 8, 31, 33, 34, 44, 84, 175, 187, 203, 210, 229, 230, 232, 233 Goemai 10, 182–184, 186–188, 195 Greek 34, 92, 208, 209, 233

Cambodian 122 Catalan 156–158, 161, 163, 164, 167, 168, 208, 210–214, 227, 231 Chinese 7, 9, 56, 115, 117, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 212, 231 Cantonese 9, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 65, 66 Hong Kong Cantonese 55, 57, 58, 59, 60 Late Middle Chinese 121, 124 Mandarin 9, 43, 45–53, 55–60, 62, 65–67, 121 Old Chinese 116, 117, 122, 124, 125, 127 Czech 15, 21, 227, 232, Danish 9, 13, 14, 19–31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 198, 203, 208, 210, 213, 229, 232 English 9, 10, 15, 21, 31, 34, 44, 55–60, 63, 65–67, 71, 72, 74, 75, 81, 91–97, 100, 101, 105–111, 137, 186, 187, 208–214, 227, 232 Canadian English 57 American English 56, 205, 215, 232 Australian English 55, 58, 59

Icelandic 26, 205, 208, 215, 233 Italian 72, 81, 87, 150, 156, 158, 159, 162, 208, 209, 211, 215, 216, 226, 233 Japanese 9, 55–60, 62, 65, 66, 213, 233 Japhug 118 Khamou 116 Kha-Phong 119 Khmer 116, 123, 202, 233 Latin 33, 34, 84, 85, 160, 161, 187, 211, 214, 216, 218, 220, 221, 229, 234 Laven 119, 120 Laze 126, 127 Lolo 125 Mon 116, 123 Muong 119

246

Index of Languages

Naxi 121, 126 Eastern Naxi 125 Western Naxi 125, 126, 127 Ndebele 135, 139, 140, 141, 152, 153 Norwegian 22, 24–28, 228, 235 Bokmål 26 Nynorsk 26 Nyaheun 119, 120

Siswati 152, 153 Situ 118 Souei 123 Southern Min 9, 43, 45–53 Swahili 153, 154, 220, 229, 237 Swati 135 Swedish 22, 24–28, 33, 38, 208, 214, 229, 237

Polish 10, 79, 91–97, 100–105, 107–111, 228, 235 Pong 119 Portuguese (Brazilian) 164–166, 205, 208, 209, 211, 212, 215, 216, 226, 235

Thai 56, 115, 120 Thavung 119 Tswana 10, 131, 132, 135–145, 154 Vietnamese 115, 116, 119, 120, 125, 202, 205, 210, 214, 220, 229, 237

Russian 73, 74, 84, 187, 207, 236 Yongning Na 125, 127 Sách 119 Sardinian (Logudorese) 154, 155, 160, 162, 168, 169, 228, 236

Zulu 56, 133, 230, 238

Index of Subjects

acquisition 26, 37, 95, 149 articulators 71, 78–88, 125 coarticulation 124, 125 consonantal depletion 115, 120, 124 feature shuffling 125 frequency 10, 28, 71, 82, 84, 86, 106, 118, 132, 149, 150, 160–162, 168, 178, 179, 183, 184, 187, 197–199, 211, 213, 214, 216–222 imperatives 10, 13, 32, 38, 95, 96, 100, 111, 133, 135, 136, 142, 144, 145, 149–152, 154–164, 166–169 inflection 30, 96, 182, 183, 215 macrostem 134, 141, 142, 143, 145 Mandarin tones 9, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 65, 66, 67 minimality 10, 131, 133–145, 153–156, 158, 159, 162, 164, 168 minimality constraints 10, 142, 144, 150, 152, 154 monosyllabicization 115– 120, 122, 124–128 morphology 7, 8, 10, 37, 91, 94–96, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110, 119, 131, 133, 134, 139, 144, 150, 167, 168, 197, 198, 206, 218, 222 noun class prefix 132, 137, 144, 146

panchronic phonology 117 passive 38, 88, 132, 138, 139, 141, 145, 146, 210 Perceptual Assimilation Model 55, 57, 58, 67 phonation-type registers 115, 126, 128 phoneme 9, 21–23, 30, 43–52, 73, 74, 76, 81, 82, 84, 85, 125, 179, 198, 203, 204 phonetics 9, 20, 76, 161, 200 phonological and phonetic properties phonological erosion 55, 56, 57, 65 phonology 7, 10, 13, 19, 32, 33, 72, 91, 92, 97, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, 117, 124, 141, 144, 150, 156, 164, 168, 169, 173, 197, 198, 200, 216, 222 Phonology as Human Behavior (PHB) 10, 71, 72, 75, 76, 85, 87 phonotactic distribution 71, 75 present tense 111, 134, 135, 139, 140–142, 216 prosodic systems 55, 57, 58, 65–67 prosody 13, 33, 38 reduplication 132, 138, 142, 183 registrogenesis 122, 124 sonority 9, 13–21, 26, 27, 30, 34, 36–38, 92, 93, 97 stød 13, 26, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 203 suffix 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 127, 134, 136, 139 syllable 8–10, 13–15, 17–23, 26, 27, 30, 32– 38, 43, 45, 48, 50–52, 55, 59, 67, 74, 85,

248 91–94, 100, 109, 116–120, 122, 125–128, 133, 134, 136, 137, 141, 142, 144, 145, 149, 152–154, 157–160, 165, 168, 177, 179–183, 186–188, 197, 199–204, 206, 217, 221, 222 tones 9, 55–67, 115, 116, 120–124, 126, 127, 131, 138, 181, 182, 183 tonogenesis 121, 124

Index of Subjects word 8, 11, 13, 21–23, 28–33, 35–38, 44, 59, 60, 74, 75, 81, 84, 85, 92, 97, 119, 120, 121, 126, 127, 133–137, 144, 150–153, 155–160, 167, 177, 180–182, 201–204, 206, 207, 214, 217, 218, 220, 222 word structure 9, 10, 13, 28, 29, 30, 34, 38, 118, 128