This chapter considers the major questions that arose as phonologists utilized and explored the o... more This chapter considers the major questions that arose as phonologists utilized and explored the ordered-rule methodology developed in The Sound Pattern of English. Can any limitations be placed on the disparity between the underlying and surface phonetic representations (abstractness, absolute neutralization)? Should phonological rules be distinguished in terms of phonetic vs. morphological function and motivation (natural processes)? Are there more or less natural interactions between the rules (feeding, bleeding, and opacity)? Do the rules aim at particular outputs either singly or in concert (conspiracies and derivational constraints)? Is the application of a rule determined solely by the immediately preceding step in the derivation or can remote structures also play a role (global rules)? The different answers to these questions that appeared in the decade following SPE are considered as well as their reverberations in later stages of development in the generative approach.
This chapter attempts to provide a very rough guide through the critical decades of the 1970s and... more This chapter attempts to provide a very rough guide through the critical decades of the 1970s and 1980s during which the ‘beads on a string’ view of phonological representations espoused by The Sound Pattern of English was radically reimagined as a complex multi-linear, (partially) independent, (sometimes) hierarchically arranged structure. The chapter devotes a significant portion of the text to Autosegmental Phonology, as the conceptual framework and linguistic arguments employed in advancing its agenda are significantly mirrored in the various developments that follow: the representation of syllables, stress, distinctive features, the internal phonological structure of words and sentences. Most of these advances in phonological representation have remained central to the enterprise of theoretical phonology, even if the abandonment of the SPE model out of which they arose provides new challenges in how they should be implemented.
Page 1. Chapter 11 Optimality Theory and the Theory of Phonological Phrasing: The Chimwiini Evide... more Page 1. Chapter 11 Optimality Theory and the Theory of Phonological Phrasing: The Chimwiini Evidence Charles W. Kisseberth Tel Aviv University 11.0 Introduction. An important source of data on the interface of phonology and other aspects of linguistic structure ...
This is a draft of a collection of Chimiini proverbs. The first author [CWK] began collecting Chi... more This is a draft of a collection of Chimiini proverbs. The first author [CWK] began collecting Chimiini proverbs in the 1970s with the assistance of the late Mohammad Imam Abasheikh. He resumed collecting, together with the second author [BH], from 2009 to the present, primarily with the indefatigable help of Gelani Mohamed Diini. This draft lacks fully developed introductory materials, but does contain most of the proverbial lore that we gathered. Each proverb is written in a practical orthography and also in an orthography that more accurately represents one of the possible pronunciations of the proverb. The orthographic problem that Chimiini poses is that with respect to the features of vowel length and accent, the pronunciation of each word in a sentence depends on the "phrasing" of the sentence (i.e. the way in which words are grouped together in phrases).
This paper examines how questions, both Wh-questions and yes-no questions, are phrased in Chimwii... more This paper examines how questions, both Wh-questions and yes-no questions, are phrased in Chimwiini, a Bantu language spoken in southern Somalia. Questions do not require any special phrasing principles, but Wh-questions do provide much evidence in support of the principle Align-Foc R, which requires that focused or emphasized words/constituents be located at the end of a phonological phrase. Question words and enclitics are always focused and thus appear at the end of a phrase. Although questions do not require any new phrasing principles, they do display complex accentual (tonal) behavior. This paper attempts to provide an account of these accentual phenomena.
We focus in this paper on two prosodic phenomena in Chimwiini: vowel length and accent (or High t... more We focus in this paper on two prosodic phenomena in Chimwiini: vowel length and accent (or High tone). Vowel length is determined in part by a lexical distinction between long and short vowels, and also by various morphophonemic processes that derive long vowels. Accent is penult in the default case, but final under certain morphosyntactic conditions. In order to account for the distribution of vowel length and the location of accents in a Chimwiini sentence, it is necessary to segment sentences into a sequence of phonological phrases. This paper examines the phonological phrasing of both canonical relative clauses and what we refer to as "pseudo-relative" clauses. An account of relative clause phrasing is of critical importance in Chimwiini due to the extensive use of pseudo-relatives in the language. Close examination of the pseudo-relatives reveals that their phrasing is not exactly the same as the phrasing of canonical relative clauses. Â
It has been established since Kanerva’s work that focus conditions phrasing – directly or indirec... more It has been established since Kanerva’s work that focus conditions phrasing – directly or indirectly – in several other Bantu languages, e.g. Chimwiini (Kisseberth 2007, Downing 2002, Kisseberth & Abasheikh 2004), Xhosa (Jokweni 1995, Zerbian 2004), Chitumbuka (Downing 2006, 2007), Zulu (Cheng & Downing 2006, Downing 2007), Bemba (Kula 2007), etc. In this paper, I will argue that focus also conditions phrasing in Shingazidja, a Bantu language3 spoken on Grande Comore (or Ngazidja, the largest island of the Comoros). Many works have been dedicated to the tonology of Shingazidja. The bases of the system were firstly identified by Tucker & Bryan (1970) and reanalyzed by Philippson (1988). Later, Cassimjee & Kisseberth (1989, 1992, 1993, 1998) provide a very convincing analysis of the whole system of the language, and my own research (Patin 2007a) shows a great correspondence with their results. However, little attention has been paid by these authors or others (Jouannet 1989, Rey 1990,...
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1992
Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session... more Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on The Typology of Tone Languages (1992)
This chapter considers the major questions that arose as phonologists utilized and explored the o... more This chapter considers the major questions that arose as phonologists utilized and explored the ordered-rule methodology developed in The Sound Pattern of English. Can any limitations be placed on the disparity between the underlying and surface phonetic representations (abstractness, absolute neutralization)? Should phonological rules be distinguished in terms of phonetic vs. morphological function and motivation (natural processes)? Are there more or less natural interactions between the rules (feeding, bleeding, and opacity)? Do the rules aim at particular outputs either singly or in concert (conspiracies and derivational constraints)? Is the application of a rule determined solely by the immediately preceding step in the derivation or can remote structures also play a role (global rules)? The different answers to these questions that appeared in the decade following SPE are considered as well as their reverberations in later stages of development in the generative approach.
This chapter attempts to provide a very rough guide through the critical decades of the 1970s and... more This chapter attempts to provide a very rough guide through the critical decades of the 1970s and 1980s during which the ‘beads on a string’ view of phonological representations espoused by The Sound Pattern of English was radically reimagined as a complex multi-linear, (partially) independent, (sometimes) hierarchically arranged structure. The chapter devotes a significant portion of the text to Autosegmental Phonology, as the conceptual framework and linguistic arguments employed in advancing its agenda are significantly mirrored in the various developments that follow: the representation of syllables, stress, distinctive features, the internal phonological structure of words and sentences. Most of these advances in phonological representation have remained central to the enterprise of theoretical phonology, even if the abandonment of the SPE model out of which they arose provides new challenges in how they should be implemented.
Page 1. Chapter 11 Optimality Theory and the Theory of Phonological Phrasing: The Chimwiini Evide... more Page 1. Chapter 11 Optimality Theory and the Theory of Phonological Phrasing: The Chimwiini Evidence Charles W. Kisseberth Tel Aviv University 11.0 Introduction. An important source of data on the interface of phonology and other aspects of linguistic structure ...
This is a draft of a collection of Chimiini proverbs. The first author [CWK] began collecting Chi... more This is a draft of a collection of Chimiini proverbs. The first author [CWK] began collecting Chimiini proverbs in the 1970s with the assistance of the late Mohammad Imam Abasheikh. He resumed collecting, together with the second author [BH], from 2009 to the present, primarily with the indefatigable help of Gelani Mohamed Diini. This draft lacks fully developed introductory materials, but does contain most of the proverbial lore that we gathered. Each proverb is written in a practical orthography and also in an orthography that more accurately represents one of the possible pronunciations of the proverb. The orthographic problem that Chimiini poses is that with respect to the features of vowel length and accent, the pronunciation of each word in a sentence depends on the "phrasing" of the sentence (i.e. the way in which words are grouped together in phrases).
This paper examines how questions, both Wh-questions and yes-no questions, are phrased in Chimwii... more This paper examines how questions, both Wh-questions and yes-no questions, are phrased in Chimwiini, a Bantu language spoken in southern Somalia. Questions do not require any special phrasing principles, but Wh-questions do provide much evidence in support of the principle Align-Foc R, which requires that focused or emphasized words/constituents be located at the end of a phonological phrase. Question words and enclitics are always focused and thus appear at the end of a phrase. Although questions do not require any new phrasing principles, they do display complex accentual (tonal) behavior. This paper attempts to provide an account of these accentual phenomena.
We focus in this paper on two prosodic phenomena in Chimwiini: vowel length and accent (or High t... more We focus in this paper on two prosodic phenomena in Chimwiini: vowel length and accent (or High tone). Vowel length is determined in part by a lexical distinction between long and short vowels, and also by various morphophonemic processes that derive long vowels. Accent is penult in the default case, but final under certain morphosyntactic conditions. In order to account for the distribution of vowel length and the location of accents in a Chimwiini sentence, it is necessary to segment sentences into a sequence of phonological phrases. This paper examines the phonological phrasing of both canonical relative clauses and what we refer to as "pseudo-relative" clauses. An account of relative clause phrasing is of critical importance in Chimwiini due to the extensive use of pseudo-relatives in the language. Close examination of the pseudo-relatives reveals that their phrasing is not exactly the same as the phrasing of canonical relative clauses. Â
It has been established since Kanerva’s work that focus conditions phrasing – directly or indirec... more It has been established since Kanerva’s work that focus conditions phrasing – directly or indirectly – in several other Bantu languages, e.g. Chimwiini (Kisseberth 2007, Downing 2002, Kisseberth & Abasheikh 2004), Xhosa (Jokweni 1995, Zerbian 2004), Chitumbuka (Downing 2006, 2007), Zulu (Cheng & Downing 2006, Downing 2007), Bemba (Kula 2007), etc. In this paper, I will argue that focus also conditions phrasing in Shingazidja, a Bantu language3 spoken on Grande Comore (or Ngazidja, the largest island of the Comoros). Many works have been dedicated to the tonology of Shingazidja. The bases of the system were firstly identified by Tucker & Bryan (1970) and reanalyzed by Philippson (1988). Later, Cassimjee & Kisseberth (1989, 1992, 1993, 1998) provide a very convincing analysis of the whole system of the language, and my own research (Patin 2007a) shows a great correspondence with their results. However, little attention has been paid by these authors or others (Jouannet 1989, Rey 1990,...
Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 1992
Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session... more Proceedings of the Eighteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on The Typology of Tone Languages (1992)
This is a draft of "Chimiini Lexicon and Chrestomathy" (12-25-2019), a very long work that docume... more This is a draft of "Chimiini Lexicon and Chrestomathy" (12-25-2019), a very long work that documents the Chimiini lexicon by providing thousands upon thousands of example phrases and sentences, all of which are prosodically analyzed. Every Chimiini spoken utterance must be assigned a phrasing and this phrasing plays a critical role in determining vowel length and accent.
Citshwa is an underdescribed member of the Tsonga language complex (Bantu) spoken in Mozambique. ... more Citshwa is an underdescribed member of the Tsonga language complex (Bantu) spoken in Mozambique. In the phonological literature, dialects of Tsonga are best known for their phrasal tonology, due to the pioneering work of Beuchat 1959, Cole-Beuchat 1961, 1962 and Kisseberth's (1994) reinterpretation of that work within an early "domains"-based approach, and the subsequent theoretical and descriptive work of Selkirk (2011), Selkirk and Lee (2015), and Lee and Selkirk (2022) within the "Match" theory of the interface between phonology and syntax. Citshwa has not been a part of this literature on phrasal tonology, and as it turns out, it differs in one significant respect from the previously studied dialects, perhaps challenging some of its conclusions. The focus of the present paper is not the phrasal phonology, though some of its major features will of necessity be mentioned as they will be apparent in the data discussed. Our focus, however, is the tonology of the Citshwa verb; specifically, how the verb in a number of tenses is pronounced, both when the verb is final in the utterance and also when it is followed by other words. The tonology of this array of verb tenses is complex and difficult to make sense of in terms of consistent underlying representations and general tonological rules. We argue that the tonal pattern of the verbal word requires recognizing a small number of interacting tonal allomorphs whose selection determined by the "tense" system of the verb, where a tense is a specific morphological array of subject marker, tense-aspect-mood markers, negative marker, and the "macrostem" (i.e., an optional object marker and an obligatory verb stem which consists of a root and one or more derivational and inflectional suffixes and an obligatory final vowel) that hosts them. We refer to the set of allomorphic choices that a given tense makes as its "allomorphic profile". Unfortunately, these profiles are unexpectedly diverse when the profiles are examined in all their details. For the larger study of the phrasal tonology, essentially all that matters is whether a verb ends in a High tone or not. Unfortunately, one cannot know whether it will end in a High tone without knowing its allomorphic profile. Thus ultimately, the study of even the phrasal tonology is connected to the internal workings of the verb. Before introducing the allomorphy and illustrating the patterns in detail, we will present some basic observations about the Citshwa tone system.
This is a draft of a collection of Chimiini proverbs. The first author [CWK] began collecting Chi... more This is a draft of a collection of Chimiini proverbs. The first author [CWK] began collecting Chimiini proverbs in the 1970s with the assistance of the late Mohammad Imam Abasheikh. He resumed collecting, together with the second author [BH], from 2009 to the present, primarily with the indefatigable help of Gelani Mohamed Diini. This draft lacks fully developed introductory materials, but does contain most of the proverbial lore that we gathered. Each proverb is written in a practical orthography and also in an orthography that more accurately represents one of the possible pronunciations of the proverb. The orthographic problem that Chimiini poses is that with respect to the features of vowel length and accent, the pronunciation of each word in a sentence depends on the "phrasing" of the sentence (i.e. the way in which words are grouped together in phrases).
In the course of the first half of the 1990s, while still working at the University of Illinois, ... more In the course of the first half of the 1990s, while still working at the University of Illinois, we worked relatively intensively on Shingazidja, the Comorian languages spoken on the Grand Comoros island. Our consultants were two young men who were studying English at the University of Illinois in preparation for seeking undergraduate degrees in the United States. One of the consultants was particularly adept at recognizing different possible prosodic realizations of sentences and pronouncing the variants in a fashion that was helpful to our non-native ears. This permitted us to particularly focus on the accentual structure of the language. Although we published a number of articles on the topic, much of the material we assembled remained unpublished. The departure of our consultants and our own move to Tel Aviv, effectively ended our data collection. Over the subsequent years, we analyzed a fair bit of the material we had assembled and started to prepare a lexicon of Shingazidja, but one that focus on the tonal structure. Each entry identified the tonal structure of a word in isolation and then illustrated its use in a variety of phrases and sentences, all of which were tonally marked. The present "Contribution to the Study of Shingazija" contains a draft of this project as it existed in 2010. By then, the second author had retired from Tel Aviv University and returned to the United States permanently, but he found himself soon immersed in returning to projects that had been begun in the 1970s: the study of Chimiini and Emakhuwa. There seems little likelihood that we will do new work on Shingazidja, so we are making this 210 draft lexicon available. We have made no corrections or additions to the draft.
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