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Locality in exceptions and derived environments in vowel harmony

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Abstract

The regular realm of vowel harmony in Assamese consists of right-to-left regressive [Atr] harmony. In contrast with this regular pattern of vowel harmony, the exceptional Assamese processes dealt with in this paper are symptomatic of the behavior of a pair of morphemes that trigger additional processes not seen elsewhere in the language. This pair of morphemes allows raising of the otherwise opaque vowel // and fronting/backing of // depending on the [Back] quality of a mid vowel adjacent to //. Raising is strictly local in the presence of preceding high and low vowels, but there is also another pattern which shows backness assimilation to a previous vowel if there are mid vowels preceding the // of the input. This exceptional raising occurs to allow [Atr] harmony to spread regressively by changing the [−Atr] low vowel into a [+Atr] mid vowel. I analyse these cases within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004) and show that these exceptional occurrences are morpheme-specific. It is also shown that these exceptional occurrences lend themselves to an account based on indexation of markedness constraints (Flack 2007; Ota 2004; Pater 2000, 2006, 2009). Consequently, the Assamese examples show that indexed markedness constraints are able to deal with an exceptional alternation where a low vowel undergoes harmony locally. This article also shows that an emergence of the unmarked analysis is required to account for the low back vowel that alternates with a front vowel if there is a preceding front vowel. This article goes beyond the problems encountered in Assamese, and claims that there is no need to invoke locality in exceptional blocking in vowel harmony, as both exceptional and non-exceptional blocking in vowel harmony are always local and bounded. The goal of this paper is to shed light on exceptional and emergent processes, arguing that they are always local and governed by strong universal properties of grammar.

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Notes

  1. Some combinations, like /ɔ/ + /ε/ were found not to exist in the native vocabulary.

  2. The other possibility is the inclusion of Alignment constraints, but Alignment in a regressive system does not provide us with an adequate explanation as there is no linguistically significant morphological or prosodic edge which can be used to designate edge alignment. It can also potentially result in candidates which are aligned to the wrong edge (Hansson 2001).

  3. Throughout this paper, the symbol is used to indicate the candidate which is the attested form, but fails to be the optimal candidate in the tableau. The symbol indicates the candidate which is not the attested form, but which is the winner as a result of the constraint hierarchy.

  4. The grounding conditions in Archangeli and Pulleyblank’s (1994) work pertain to the fact that tongue root advancement ([Atr]) and tongue body raising ([High]) are articulatorily synchronized, while tongue root advancement ([Atr]) is detrimental to the production of tongue body lowering ([Low]).

  5. This has been reported for [Atr] harmony in Hall and Hall (1980), mostly in West African languages (e.g. Wolof, Fula, Diola Fogny). In these systems, the organizing principle is such that [+Atr] vowels are dominant and [−Atr] vowels are recessive, so that opaque vowels can block the harmony propagated by the triggering [+Atr] vowel and start their own harmony domain.

  6. There is no evidence that the second vowel harmonizes in /CCVC/ sequences. As has been exhaustively discussed, [e] and [o] are allophonic in Assamese and should occur only in harmonic environments (i.e. in the presence of /i/ and /u/ to the right). In the absence of underlying /e/ and /o/, we cannot claim that the resulting [ε] and [ɔ] appear as a result of the preceding //.

  7. The origin of the suffix /-iy/ can be traced to Sanskrit /-i+k+/ and /-uw/ to the Sanskrit suffix /-u+k+/ which implies loveableness, affection, scornfulness, etc. of the object implicated. In some instances of Standard Colloquial Bengali /i/ contracts to /e/ and /u/ to /o/. (Both are counterparts of /-iy/ and /-uw/ respectively.) (Tunga 1995)

  8. See Bakovic (2000) for an analysis of ‘re-pairing’ in Maasai, Turkana and Turkish. In the specific case of Turkish, prospective [æ] are prohibited by re-pairing the mid [−Low −Back] with the [+Low +Back] vowel []. Although this is a characteristic of the entire phonology of Turkish, in Assamese ‘raising’ is the result of harmony triggered only by the exceptional morphemes.

  9. /-iy/ and /-uw/ behave in a largely equivalent manner as far as their involvement in exceptional patterns is concerned. Therefore, any reference to only one of them implies reference to the other one as well.

  10. Although in the literature on vowel harmony, it is not uncommon to find consonants which also block vowel harmony (see Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994; Krämer 2003; Mahanta 2008; Woock and Noonan 1979).

  11. A reviewer suggests the option of positing a special faithfulness constraint Ident[Back]/[−Low] which specifies that back values of input [−Low] vowels should be preserved. Faithfulness constraints of any type, special or general, are not able to enforce front harmony in the data attested here. The constraint Ident[Back]/[−Low] would be ineffective in prohibiting the candidate without any [Back] harmony from emerging as the successful candidate, such that when the input is /εlh/+/uw/, both the unsuccessful candidate */elohuw/ and the actually attested form /elehuw/ will fare equally well with the constraint Ident[Back]/[−Low]. In the absence of any other markedness constraint which prohibits the // → [o] alternation, the evaluation will then select */elohuw/ because it will perform better with Ident[Back].

  12. The dictionary scanned for this purpose was Barua (1900/2007).

  13. Another word /xehotiy/ (also cited in Mahanta 2008) shows that [e…o] does not occur in the root because [o] is a part of the suffix: /xεh/+/ɔtiy/. These restrictions in the non-derived domain do not extend to morphologically complex words showing that such combinations of /ε…ɔ/ are highly productive.

  14. The markedness of rounded back vowels has been captured by Kaun (1995) by using the constraint *ROLO, a featural markedness constraint which prohibits vowels which are pronounced with a lower jaw position.

  15. Alternatively, the conjoined constraint could also be *[−Back][+Back]&Ident[Low]. The conjoining of this sequential markedness constraint with the faithfulness constraint would not lead to any improvement in the results predicted by LC.

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Acknowledgements

This paper owes much of its existence to various people who have helped me in understanding the problem at hand, and primary among them is Joe Pater. I express my sincere gratitude to three anonymous reviewers for offering concrete suggestions to improve the paper. The associate editor Junko Itô helped in numerous ways with extensive comments and suggestions. This paper would not have been publishable without their valuable input. Another version of this paper was presented at the VIIth Asian GLOW colloquium in Hyderabad and I am grateful to the audience, especially Paul Kiparsky, for comments. Earlier versions of this work have benefitted from the comments of Wim Zonneveld, Janet Grijzenhout, and Kie Zuraw. All remaining errors are mine.

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    Shakuntala Mahanta

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Mahanta, S. Locality in exceptions and derived environments in vowel harmony. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 30, 1109–1146 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-012-9173-5

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