F10 LING 310 * Assignment 5 * due Tuesday November 23 2010 * A.M.Tessier
LING310 Assignment 5: Syllables (50 marks total)
assigned Tuesday November 16, 2010
due Tuesday November 23, 2010
Tibetan Numerals
Note: for this assignment there is no need to use featural rules. Segments are fine..
Examine the following data from Tibetan:
Tibetan
gloss
Tibetan
gloss
dʒu
10
gu
9
dʒig
1
dʒurgu
19
dʒugdʒig
11
gubdʒu
90
ʃi
4
ŋa
5
dʒubʃi
14
dʒuŋa
15
ʃibdʒu
40
ŋabdʒu
50
This data contains 5 underlying forms only: the words for ‘1’, ‘4’, ‘5’, ‘9’ and ‘10’. The
rest of the numerals are multi-morphemic – combining two of these underlying forms in a
particular order to mean e.g. ‘40’ or ‘14’. The allomorphy that you see on the surface is
the result of phonology happening – and the phonology has to do with syllable structure.
Important note: you must consider [dʒ] to be an affricate – that is, it is a single
consonant. Just ONE consonant, merely transcribed to look like two. I cannot draw good
ligatures above my segments, otherwise there would be one over every [dʒ] token.
Q1: What is the order of morphemes that indicates teens vs. multiple of tens?
That is – what order do you put the morphemes in to mean ‘14’ vs. ‘40’? Try to be clear.
(4 marks)
For Q2, just compare the surface pronunciation of the forms ‘10’, ‘1’ and ‘11’. Given the
forms ‘10’ and ‘1’ in isolation, there is a phonological alternation seen in the form
meaning ‘11’.
Q2: a) In words: first describe the alternation. Only look at 10, 1 and 11! (3 marks)
Then, consider what the explanation for the alternation could be. There are three options,
in principle – two of them involve deletion and one of them involves epenthesis. Looking
JUST at these three words,
b) Spell out the three options in words, making clear what the underlying forms
for ‘10’ and ‘1’ would need to be in each case. (6 marks)
c) For each of the three options, write the necessary rule. (9 marks)
Hint/clarification: you will write TWO rules in which a segment is deleted, and ONE
where a segment is epenthesized. For each option you will need to make slightly different
assumptions about what the UR for ‘10’ and ‘1’ are!
F10 LING 310 * Assignment 5 * due Tuesday November 23 2010 * A.M.Tessier
Q3: Alright, now look at the entirety of the data. I give you a hint: the correct option
involves DELETION! Not epenthesis!
a) Which of the options works for the whole data set? Explain your reasoning in
prose – this may be tricky and feel convoluted, but try to do so in a couple
sentences. (2 marks)
b) Give the correct underlying forms for each of the five morphemes (9 marks)
c) Write a rule that explains ALL the alternations between underlying and
surface forms. This rule will be a more general version of one of the rules you
wrote in Q3c), but now covering all the data rather than just those three words.
For the purposes of writing this rule, you can assume that every consonant works
the same as every other consonant, in the environment in which your rule applies.
That is, it doesn’t matter for your rule whether you are looking at /b/ or /g/ or
anything else. (4 marks)
Now: I hereby inform you that this rule of Tibetan is really aiming at a syllabification
target. That is: Tibetan makes certain demands of what its syllables can look like, and this
rule you have written in Q3 is one way to satisfy those demands. As in class, we will now
consider the possibility that these demands are in the phonology itself, as a constraint.
Q4: Write the Tibetan constraint on syllables that drives the alternation in this
data. Remember that your constraint should talk about what is allowed in onsets, nuclei
or codas – you only need to talk about one of them in this question. (4 marks)
Q5: If you have indeed written your constraint in terms of syllables, and you listened
to my advice in Q3c) that in this question any consonant is the same as any other, then
you should now consider the syllabification of words with more than one syllable. Look
at strings like [dʒugdʒig] and [dʒubʃi].
a) Given the constraint you wrote in Q4, how must these two words be syllabified?
Draw syllabification trees for these two words, showing how many syllables
there are, and which segments fall in the onset, nucleus and coda of each
syllable. (6 marks)
b) The constraint you wrote in Q4 should rule out a different syllabification –
illustrate by drawing this incorrect syllabification and explaining how it
disobeys your syllable constraint. (3 marks) (This is sort of the equivalent of
showing how if you put rules in the wrong order they give you the wrong
outcome…)