F10 LING310 * Assignment 6 * posted Sunday Nov 28 – see p. 1 for due date!
LING310 Assignment 6
posted Sunday November 28 2010
due: ... Originally due Thursday Dec 2. However, since it was posted late, I will give you until
Monday, Dec 6 (which is a week, like normal). If you hand it in on Thursday or Friday (Dec 2 or
3), I will make sure you get it returned on Tuesday, the last day of this class (Dec 7). If you hand
it in on Monday, I can’t guarantee it will be marked the next day – but I will make arrangements
in class for when you will be able to pick it up, during extra office hours between the end of
classes and the final assignment.
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F10 LING310 * Assignment 6 * posted Sunday Nov 28 – see p. 1 for due date!
A Return to Allophones in Canadian French (34 marks)
One of your earlier assignments’ first question was about the distribution of high vowels in
Canadian French. It contained two sets of data, which I reproduce here:
From our discussions in class in the last couple weeks, you are now in a position to reconsider
this pattern from a constraint-based perspective.
Q1: Describe in words the distribution of high tense vs. lax vowels in Canadian French – in
terms of syllable structure! Make sure your description covers both data sets. (2 marks)
***
Now you will provide a constraint-based grammar for tense vs. lax vowels in this data. To get
this question completely right, you will again need to make reference to syllable structure, as per
Q1. And this is in turn will mean you need to make sure your grammar can pick the right
syllabification of surface forms.
Q2: So, first we address syllabification. Given your description of the data in Q1, draw
syllabification trees to indicate how the following words must be syllabified (4 marks)
(i)
[plozɪb]
(ii)
[sifle]
Tell me in a couple sentences how you chose these syllabifications over the possible alternatives.
(2 marks) ... The reason for choosing one syllabification over another is either that you know all
languages prefer one syllable profile over another, or that your explanation in Q1 of how high
vowels are distributed, syllable-wise, requires a particular syllabification rather than another.
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F10 LING310 * Assignment 6 * posted Sunday Nov 28 – see p. 1 for due date!
Q3: Use ranked constraints (constraints on syllables that we have already seen in class –
remember Japanese and so on?) in tables, to show how Canadian French chooses the right
winner among the following 4 options: (8 marks)
UR:
Possible Candidates:
/afrɪk/
(i)
[af.rɪk]
(ii)
[afr.ɪk]
(iii)
[a.frɪk]
(iv)
[a.frɪ]
***
Now back to tense and lax vowels. Your grammar of allophonic vowel distribution will be driven
by three constraints, and I give you one of them:
Don’t Change [+/-tense]:
Assign a star to every pair of input and output vowels
for which the UR vowel is [α-tense] and its output
candidate vowel is [β- tense].
(Remember that the alpha and beta symbols just mean that the value for tense is different in the UR and the output
candidate vowels – so, +tense in one and –tense in the other, or the reverse.)
Along with this constraint, your grammar will require two new structural constraints –
constraints that will describe environments in which you shouldn’t have tense or lax high vowels
in your surface candidates.
Q4: Given your description in Q1, write these two structural constraints – give them definitions
that start with ‘Assign a star for every...’ the way I have above. (4 marks)
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F10 LING310 * Assignment 6 * posted Sunday Nov 28 – see p. 1 for due date!
Q5: Now show, using tables, how your two structural constraints must be ranked compared to
Don’t Change [+/-tense] to chose the correct winner in the following tables. (10 marks)
LOOK CAREFULLY at the URs I have given you – make sure you use them exactly as they
appear below! Also NOTE: when you put these possible candidates in your tables, you must
syllabify them! I have not included the syllable breaks, because you need to decide where to put
them in Q3 – but YOU have to add them, otherwise your constraints on syllables won’t know
where to put stars!
Table (a)
UR:
/afrɪk/
Table (c)
UR:
Possible Candidates
Table (b)
UR
Possible Candidates
(i)
[afrɪk]
/sifle/
(i) [sifle]
(ii)
[afrik]
(ii) [sɪfle]
Possible Candidates
Table (d)
UR
Possible Candidates
/vit/
(i)
[vɪt]
/vit + ɛs/
(i) [vɪtɛs]
(‘quickly’)
(ii)
[vit]
(‘speed’)
(ii) [vitɛs]
Q6: As you will have hopefully noticed, the distributions of tense and lax high vowels in
Canadian French causes morphophonemic alternations: notice that the French word for ‘speed’
has a tense vowel, which corresponds to a lax vowell in the word for ‘quickly’.
Suppose this fact was observed by someone in the class, and they made the following claim:
“Since this alternation is only obvious once children know that words like ‘speed and
‘quickly’ are morphologically related, they cannot learn the distribution of tense vs.
lax allophones before they know the meanings of morphemes – that is, before the
underlying forms of words like ‘speed’ have been decomposed into multiple
morphemes.”
Do you agree or disagree with this claim – or to what extents do you agree? If so, how so; if not,
why not? It should take you a few sentences to explain your answer. (4 marks)
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