Consonant harmony and coronality
John R. Rennison
1. Consonant harmony and vowel harmony
Please do not expect this article to make sense as a text. It simply shows
you some typical formatting. As early as 1980, Jean-Roger Vergnaud
summarised the formal properties of harmony systems in natural languages.
In the past 20 years, the autosegmental treatment of vowel harmony has
been refined and adapted in various ways, but has remained one of the core
phenomena for which phonological theory has a standard account. In
language L, autosegments of type T are interpreted non-locally at positions
of type V within a domain D. I would like to extend this characterisation of
VH to consonant harmony, along the lines of (1), with the parametric
restrictions given in (2).
(1) A general formulation of harmony processes:
In language L, autosegments of type T are interpreted non-locally at
positions of type p within a domain D.
where p = V or C, and T = I, U, ATR, A, L, H
(2) Parameters for harmony processes:
p can be restricted to V or C, or to V or C realising (one/some/all of)
the element(s) E.
T can be restricted to one or more elements not contained in E.
Clearly, the aptness of these formulation depend crucially on the properties
of the phonological theory to which they relate. Under the general approach
of Government Phonology (GP) laid out by Kaye, Lowenstamm &
Vergnaud (1985, 1989), I assume the variety set forth in Rennison &
Neubarth (in press), and the type of autosegmental tiers proposed in
Rennison (1987, 1990).
2 John R. Rennison
(3) Chichewa vowel harmony (from Rennison, 1987)
a. A-tier
A
A
|
|
I,U-tier
I
I
I
I
|
|
|
|
skeleton C V C V C + V C
V C
p e l e k
e z + e dw+
b. A-tier
A
A
|
|
I,U-tier
I
I
|
|
skeleton C V C V C +
p e l e k +
I
|
V C
V
e l + a
A
I
|
V C
V C
e z + a n +
I
|
V C
V
i ts + a
In (3) we see the tier configuration of Chichewa, a Bantu language. The
elements I and U share a tier, and the element A has a tier of its own. The
VH process shown in (3a,b) is what has been called parasitic harmony. It
could be formulated as in (4).
(4) Chichewa vowel harmony rule (first formulation)
An element on the A-tier that is associated with a nucleus that is
associated with an element on the I,U-tier spreads rightward to a
nucleus that is associated with an element on the I,U-tier.
I hope that you will agree that the formulation in (4) is rather clumsy.
Moreover, I would like to claim that it misses the point, because the I,U-tier
is mentioned twice. This seems to imply that one occurrence of “I,U-tier”
could perhaps be replaced with the name of a different tier – and I think
that that is not the case. On the contrary, it is quite essential that the I,U-tier
be present to provide a vehicle for A-harmony to use. I therefore represent
parasitic harmony of this kind with associations from element to element
rather than from element to skeleton. My reformulation of the Chichewa
vowel harmony rule is given in (5).
(5) Chichewa vowel harmony rule (final formulation)
An element on the A-tier sees the I,U tier and spreads rightward along
it.
Consonant harmony and coronality
3
Of course, this type of representation means that the “no-crossings
constraint” must be reformulated. The harmonising A-element in (3b) must
be sensitive to whether or not it is trying to attach to an I or U element that
is realised further right than the position where the second A element in
(3b) is realised.
2. The R element
2.1. Why we need an R element
The second ingredient of my analysis of consonant harmony involves the
representation of coronal consonants. There is a school of thought within
GP which equates the R element with the A element.
(6) SOAS 1992 revised elements: A = R (cf. e.g. Williams, 1998)
The merger of the R element with the A element neatly accounts for the
behaviour of vowels preceding positions where phonetic [r] is lost in
English and German. So not much is gained by getting rid of the coronal
element.
The problem with the R element is that it is not found in vowels, and is
therefore a prime target for reduction. However, I propose that we make a
virtue out of this vice and take the coronal element to be something special.
(7) Some important properties of the R element:
a. It ensures that segment inventories of languages contain more
consonants than vowels, ceteris paribus.
b. When present, it clearly identifies a consonantal position.
It is the property in (7b) that provides the raison d’être of consonant
harmony. If a harmony process is parasitic on the R element, then it will
always a) affect consonants but skip over intervening vowels, and b) add
some element other than R itself to the representation of the target segment.
4 John R. Rennison
2.2. Combinations of R, I and U
The available elements in the Rennison & Neubarth (in press) model of GP
is given in Table 1 below).
Table 1 The phonological elements of Rennison & Neubarth (in press).
(ME = melodic expression)
element
F
I
U
R
H
L
position
C
V
C
V
C
V
C
V
C
V
C
V
as head of ME
stop
“A” (non-high)1
i-glide
“I” (front)
u-glide
“U” (rounded)
liquid
n/a
fricative
high tone
nasal
nasal / low tone
as operator in ME
fricative
ATR
palatal
front
labial, “dark”
rounded
coronal
n/a
aspiration
high tone
voiced
nasal / low tone
The elemental composition of some consonants relevant to CH are given in
Table 2 below.
Table 2 Some representations of consonant types: fricatives
a. Polish
type
plain alveolar
palatalised alveolar
plain post-alveolar
palatalised post-alveolar
b.
elements
R
R,I
R,U
R,IU
consonant
[s]
[sj]
[ʃ]
[ɕ]
full ME of example
(F,FR)
(F,FRI)
(F,FRU)
(F,FRIU)
elements
R
R,U
R,IU
consonant
[s]
[θ]
[ʃ]
full ME of example
(F,FR)
(F,FRU)
(F,FRIU)
English
type
plain alveolar
plain post-alveolar
palatalised post-alveolar
Consonant harmony and coronality
5
3. Consonant harmony
3.1. Zayse
Now let us look at a typical case of CH: the sibilant harmony of Zayse, an
Omotic language documented by Hayward (1986). I have chosen this
process because it a particularly simple case of root-controlled harmony.
Some relevant data are given in Table 3 below.
Table 3 Data on sibilant harmony in Zayse (Omotic) – from Hayward (1986)
stem
a. merb. na
̤ʃʒa
̤ʃen-
causative
mersis
na
̤ʃiʃ
ʒa
̤ʃiʃ
ʃenʃiʃ
gloss
forbid
love
throw
buy
Words of type a. are the most common in Zayse, and here what I assume to
be the lexical form of the suffix, namely /sis/ emerges without
modification. But if the word stem contains a post-alveolar fricative, in any
position and whether voiced or voiceless, it causes the s’s of the causative
suffix to assimilate and become post-alveolar too.
My analysis of this assimilation process is given in (8).
(8) Representation of “sibilant harmony” in Zayse [SSiS ‘cause to
buy’ as U-harmony parasitic on R
I,U-tier U
|
R-tier
R
R
R
R
|
|
|
|
skeleton
C V C V C V C V
ʃ e n
ʃ i ʃ
Unfortunately, I do not know enough about Zayse to say whether the
language has a segment to which this /n/ could change – although I would
doubt it. However, if this were the case, the analysis could still be
maintained with the addition of visibility of another tier containing
elements that are associated to an /s/ – for example the F-tier or the tonal
tier.
6 John R. Rennison
3.2. Other cases
I think it should be fairly clear how other cases of CH will be analysed
under this approach. The crucial point is that the R-tier becomes visible to
an element on another tier. This means that the target of CH will usually be
a plain coronal (although actually, there is no reason why it should not be
more complex), but crucially, it means that some element will be added to
the melody of the target segment. So, for example, palatal harmony, labial
harmony and laryngeal harmony can be adequately handled in this way. In
(9) I have given the typological consequences of this treatment of CH.
(9) Typology of consonant harmony
a. The target consonant always contains an R element
b. The harmonising feature can be I (palatality) U (labiality) H
(aspiration) N (nasality) F (spirantisation) or a combination of
these
c. No vowel will block consonant harmony
4. Conclusion
The main implication of this analysis is that CH is not structure sensitive.
In other words, in GP terms, we do not need to assume that there is an
Onset projection – which would be a catastrophe anyway, since it would
predict that not only coronal consonants harmonise, but also labials,
palatals and velars.
(10) There is no Onset Projection.
Notes
7
Notes
(Your endnotes should automatically appear below this paragraph. Feel
free to edit them, but do not delete this paragraph or try to remove the line
which follows it!)
1
In this paper, for better comprehensibility, I will sometimes refer to the older A
element rather than the F-head.
8 John R. Rennison
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Bibliography
Hayward, Richard J.
1986
Remarks on Omotic Sibilants. In Papers from the International
Symposium on Cushitic and Omotic Languages, Marianne
Bechhaus-Gerst and Fritz Serzisko (eds.), 263-299.). Hamburg:
Buske.
Kaye, Jonathan D., Jean Lowenstamm, and Jean-Roger Vergnaud
1985
The internal structure of phonological elements: a theory of
charm and government. Phonology Yearbook 2: 305-328.
1989
Konstituentenstruktur und Rektion in der Phonologie. In
Phonologie, Martin Prinzhorn (ed.), 31-75. (Linguistische
Berichte Sonderheft 2/1989.). Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Rennison, John R.
1987
Vowel harmony and tridirectional vowel features. Folia
Linguistica XXI: 337-354.
1990
On the elements of phonological representations: the evidence
from vowel systems and vowel processes. Folia Linguistica
XXIV: 175-244.
Rennison, John R., and Friedrich Neubarth
in press An
x-bar
theory
of
phonology.
Ms.
www.univie.ac.at/linguistics/gp/papers/neubarth_rennison_xbar.p
df.
Williams, Geoffrey
1998
The Phonological Basis of Speech Recognition. Dept. of
Linguistics. Ph.D. dissertation, SOAS, University of London.