The point of departure for the first set of studies is based on French plural morphology as measured in the lexicon, where we demonstrate that in the real words of French, alternations impact polysyllables more than monosyllables. This size-based asymmetry is a novel observation, to our knowledge. The trend is statistically significant, and we offer an analysis that captures the trend grammatically by appealing to initial syllable faithfulness.
The French irregular plural
The plural normally has no distinct morphological marking in French nouns, e.g. 〈nom〉 [nõ] ‘noun’ is identical in the singular and plural, with number only marked on determiners and certain verbs. Some nouns that end in [l] or [j], however, have a phonologically distinct plural that impacts the stem, as shown in (1).
In addition to the nominal alternations shown in (1), the same [al] → [o] alternation is also fairly common for [al]-final adjectives, e.g. [lwajal ∼ lwajo] ‘loyal’. The adjectives show the same kind of lexically-specific variation that nouns do, e.g. [nazal ∼ nazo] ‘nasal’ vs. [naval ∼ naval] ‘naval’.
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(1)
Unfaithful, alternating French pluralsFootnote 1
|
alternation
|
singular
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plural
| |
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a.
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[al] → [o]
|
mal
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mo
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‘evil’
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bokal
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boko
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‘jar’
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Ʒuʁnal
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Ʒuʁno
|
‘newspaper’
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b.
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[aj] → [o]
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baj
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bo
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‘lease’
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tʁavaj
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tʁavo
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‘work’
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supiʁaj
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supiʁo
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‘basement window’
|
These alternations contrast with near-minimal pairs of nouns and adjectives that keep the same form in the singular and in the plural, as in (2). In addition, some variable nouns and adjectives can take either kind of plural, e.g. [val] ‘valley’, [beʁkaj] ‘home’. The alternations do not always impact homophonous nouns and adjectives equally in our data, e.g. the adjective [final ∼ fino] ‘final’ always alternates, but the corresponding noun is variable [final ∼ final/fino] ‘end’.
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(2)
Faithful, non-alternating French plurals
|
singular
|
plural
| |
---|
a.
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bal
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bal
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‘ball’
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ʃakal
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ʃakal
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‘jackal’
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kaʁnaval
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kaʁnaval
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‘carnival’
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b.
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maj
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maj
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‘hammer’
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detaj
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detaj
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‘detail’
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evᾶtaj
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evᾶtaj
|
‘fan’
|
Historically, plural alternations were part of a larger pattern of l-vocalization (Pope 1952). French had a plural suffix [s], and general vocalization of velarized laterals, including the preconsonantal laterals, which were uniformly velarized. Thus the paradigm [mal ∼ maɫs] ‘evil, sg./pl.’ of Gallo-Roman (7th century) turned to [mal ∼ maus] and then monophthongized to [mal ∼ mos] by the end of Early Old French (12th century). Soon after, the plural suffix was lost in all but liaison contexts, producing the modern [mal ∼ mo]. The [j]-final nouns in (1b)–(2b) had a palatal lateral that velarized preconsonantally, and thus followed a similar path, from e.g. [baʎ ∼ baʎs] ‘lease’ to [baʎ ∼ baɫs] to [baʎ ∼ baus] to [baʎ ∼ bos] and with the loss of the plural suffix, [baʎ ∼ bo]. The simplification of the palatal lateral in the 18th century produced the modern [baj ∼ bo] (Pope 1952; see also Bennett 1997).
Up until Early Old French (12th century), all lateral-final nouns were affected without exception, including, e.g. [bal ∼ bos] ‘ball’, now [bal ∼ bal] (Pope 1952). Subsequently, some lexical items started losing the alternation, either keeping the lateral in both forms, like [bal], or losing it in both, like [ʃəvø] ‘hair’, originally [ʃəv εl ∼ ʃəvø]. Why some items kept the alternations and others did not is unknown. It is often suggested that loss of alternation starts with infrequent items (see e.g. Bybee 1995, 2001). However, as we will see in Sect. 2.2, the alternations were mostly lost in short words, and those are generally more frequent. From the time of Modern French (16th century) and onwards, neologisms and loanwords making their way into the language do not alternate, e.g. [ʃakal] ‘jackal’ from Turkish, [mistʁal] ‘the mistral wind’ from Provençal. Similarly, all modern loanwords are non-alternators. The alternation became effectively frozen, or unproductive.
In concluding this overview of French plural morphology, we note that in addition to the [al/aj]-final nouns discussed above, only five other nouns have plurals that are different from their singulars: [sjεl] ‘sky’, which in addition to the regular plural [sjεl] ‘skies’, may still be associated with the plural [sjø] ‘heavens’, [œj] ‘eye’, which has the suppletive plural [(z)jø], and the three fricative-final nouns [œf ∼ ø] ‘egg’, [bœf ∼ bø] ‘bull’, and [ɔs ∼ o] ‘bone’, which lose their final fricative. We see, then, that the plural morphology of French is overall rather regular, and all plurals that are audibly different from their singular end in [o] or [ø]. The situation is even simpler in feminine nouns, which never change in the plural. Finally, we mention that [l/j] alternations affect five adjectives that acquire a final [l] or [j] in the feminine and before vowel-initial singular nouns (i.e., liaison contexts; for a recent review of liaison, see Côté 2011): [fu ∼ fɔl] ‘crazy’, [mu ∼ mɔl] ‘soft’, [bo ∼ bεl] ‘beautiful’, [nuvo ∼ nuvεl] ‘new’, and [vjø ∼ vjεj] ‘old’. Before a vowel-initial noun like [ami] ‘friend’, these adjectives give rise to what looks like plural alternations, e.g. [vjεj ami] ‘old friend’ ∼ [vjø z ami] ‘old friends’. Before a consonant-initial noun, these adjectives remain unchanged in the plural.
Trends in the French irregular plural
To assess the distribution of the alternations among the real words of French, we extracted all the masculine [al/aj/εl/εj]-final nouns and adjectives from Lexique (New et al. 2001), an electronic dictionary of French that lists 143,000 words. Since alternations with [ε] are limited to the single word [sjεl] ‘sky’, we focused on the 672 [al/aj]-final items. A native speaker of French reviewed all of the monosyllabic [al/aj] items and a random sample of the polysyllabic ones, and classified all of the items for which they knew the plural as alternating, non-alternating, or variable. Items without a known plural were discarded, leaving 16 monosyllables and 102 polysyllables, for a total of 118 masculine [al/aj]-final nouns and adjectives (listed in Appendix A). Since our focus is on the difference between monosyllables and polysyllables, there was little benefit in increasing the number of polysyllables in our sample. The results are shown in Fig. 1, where it is evident that the alternations impact polysyllabic [al/aj]-final items more than monosyllabic ones. The dataset is available at http://becker.phonologist.org/projects/FrenchPortuguese/.
To measure the strength and reliability of the patterns seen in Fig. 1 and to make predictions about nonce words, we fitted a logistic regression model using the glm function in R (R Development Core Team 2016). The dependent variable was a binary distinction between alternating and non-alternating plurals. Variable words, which can take either kind of plural (10 of the 118 items), were counted as non-alternators; we also tried counting them as alternators, which led to nearly identical results (cf. our MaxEnt analysis below, which allows the variability to be modeled). The predictors used were final consonant, a binary factor that contrasted [l] and [j]; monosyllabic, a binary factor that contrasted monosyllables with polysyllables; token frequency (taken from Lexique and log-transformed); and neighborhood density (calculated as explained in Sect. 6 below). A model with consonant and token frequency was significantly improved by addition of monosyllabic (anova likelihood test, \(\upchi^{2}(\mathit{1}) = 10.6\), p < .005). None of the interactions made a significant improvement, nor did neighborhood density.Footnote 2 The final model, in Table 1, enjoys low collinearity (κ = 1.6).
Table 1 Regression model for the French lexicon. Positive β reflects more alternation
The model in Table 1 shows that final [l] is conducive to significantly more alternations than final [j], frequent items are conducive to significantly more alternations than infrequent items, and polysyllables are conducive to significantly more alternations than monosyllables. In other words, monosyllables are protected from alternations, and this effect is predicted to apply to novel items. Neighborhood density, however, is not a significant predictor of alternations in the lexicon. This statistical model, based on the real words of French, predicts that a novel word of French will be more likely to alternate if it ends in [al] rather than [aj]. Even more strongly, it predicts that a nonce word is more likely to alternate if it is polysyllabic. These predictions are tested with three experiments in Sect. 3 below, where we will see that the weaker effect of the final consonant is not extended to nonce words, but the predicted difference between monosyllables and polysyllables is borne out strongly and clearly. Token frequency, while relevant to the existing words of the language, is irrelevant to novel words, which are all equally new to speakers.
Initial syllable faithfulness protects monosyllables
We have seen that the [al/aj → o] alternation impacts a larger proportion of polysyllables than monosyllables in the lexicon; in Sect. 3, we will also see that speakers represent this trend in their grammar, as evidenced by the fact that they extend it to novel items. We propose that initial syllable faithfulness is responsible for the effect (Trubetzkoy 1939; Steriade 1994; Beckman 1997, 1998; Casali 1998; Barnes 2006; Jesney 2011; Becker 2009; Becker et al. 2011, 2012). In polysyllables like [bo.kal ∼ bo.ko] ‘jar’, the initial syllable [bo] stays intact; thus, the alternation only violates general faithfulness, and there is no violation of initial syllable faithfulness. In a monosyllable like [mal ∼ mo] ‘evil’, however, the alternation impacts the initial syllable, and thus violates both general faithfulness and initial syllable faithfulness.
As discussed in Sect. 2.1 above, the alternation arose from a series of natural steps, including l-vocalization, monophthongization of [au] to [o], and loss of coda [s]. The alternation is no longer natural, since the disappearance of the plural suffix (represented only in the orthography) removed the environment that conditions the change. The change itself is no longer natural either, especially in the case of [aj → o], where [aj] could plausibly fuse to [e], but not to [o]. It should be noted, however, that the alternation does apply to the natural class of continuant sonorants. While French has the continuant sonorants [w] and [ɥ] in addition to [l] and [j], the former are not allowed word-finally (except for the interjection [waw] ‘wow’). Thus, all the continuant sonorants that are allowed word-finally in nouns participate in the alternation (unless one treats the fricative [ʁ] as a liquid due to its distribution in clusters).
We present our synchronic analysis of the French plural in three parts. First, Sect. 2.3.1 uses the autosegmental theory of mutation (Wolf 2007) to cause the [al/aj→o] change. Then in Sect. 2.3.2, the UseListed approach allows established lexical items to maintain a stable plural, while simultaneously allowing lexical statistics to project probabilistically to novel items. Finally, in Sect. 2.3.3, initial syllable faithfulness captures the resistance of monosyllabic items to the [al/aj→o] change.
Alternation caused by a floating [+round]
We propose that the plural affix is a floating [+round] feature that docks on the stem’s final [a], following Wolf’s (2007) autosegmental theory of mutation. The feature [−low] is not needed in the underlying representation of this affix, as markedness constraints ban a [+low, +round, +back] vowel in French. The floating affix is required to dock by Max(float), which in turn causes the stem to surface unfaithfully, changing the lowness and roundness of the stem’s final vowel, and thus creating violations of Ident(round) and Ident(low). Either of these Ident constraints can be sensitive to being in the word-initial syllable; we choose Ident(round) here.
As seen in (3)–(4), Max(float) is outranked by initial syllable faithfulness, preventing monosyllables from alternating. Polysyllables are allowed to alternate, since Max(float) outranks general faithfulness.
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(3)
[bal ∼ bal] ‘ball’ is protected from alternation by Ident-
(round)
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(4)
[bo.kal ∼ bo.ko] ‘jar’ allows the floating /[+round]/ to dock
The winner [bo.ko] in (4) needs to be more optimal than other, more faithful candidates, such as [bo.kol]. Following Wolf’s (2007: Sect. 4.1) analysis of DhoLuo, where alignment constraints force deletion, we use Align-R(affix, stem), a constraint that requires right-alignment of the affixal [+round] with the stem, outranking Max(approx), a constraint that bans deletion of sonorant continuants, as see in (5).
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(5)
Root-final consonant deleted in [bo.kal ∼ bo.ko] ‘jar’ due to Align-R(affix, stem) ≫ Max
The complete analysis must also prevent the non-low vowels of the language from alternating, e.g. */gil + [+round]/ → *[gy]. We exclude the front unrounded vowels [i, e, ε, ε̃] with a faithfulness constraint that is specific to front vowels, Ident(round)/front (independently needed in this language, which contrasts roundness on front vowels only). We exclude the round vowels [u, o, ɔ, ̃ɔ, y, ø, œ] with *VacDoc (Wolf 2007), a constraint that penalizes the vacuous docking of a [+round] feature on a round vowel. The remaining non-front, non-round vowel, [ᾶ], is exceedingly rare before word-final sonorants, i.e. the constraint *[ᾶ][+son]# is generally respected in the language, and removes potential targets for the floating [+round]. Alternatively, one could enlist *Map constraints (Zuraw 2013) to rule out the unattested mappings.Footnote 3
To prevent the deletion of final consonants other than [l] and [j], e.g. */gak + [+round]/ → *[go], we employ Max(obstruent) and Max(nasal) to block the alternations from words that do not end in a sonorant continuant. It is thus safe to allow the floating round feature to attach to any stem in the language; the analysis limits the possibility of docking to [al/aj]-final items.
In the lexicon, [l] is more deletable than [j]; we can incorporate this fact into our analysis by further relativizing Max to the particular type of deleted segment, i.e. introducing Max(glide), a constraint that penalizes the deletion of [j] but not [l]. As we will see in Sect. 3, however, speakers failed to extend the greater deletability of [l] to nonce words. We propose that speakers are biased against learning a discontinuous treatment of the sonority scale: since French prevents deletion of low sonority segments (obstruents and nasals), learners expect the deletion pattern to continue to follow the sonority scale, making liquids either less deletable or as deletable as glides, but not more deletable. The French lexicon offers a disfavored pattern, and speakers leave it unlearned. Such “surfeit of the stimulus” (Becker et al. 2011, 2012) cases, or anti-Universal patterns, would be available to purely statistical learners that are not equipped with the biases that humans bring to the table.
One could imagine that speakers would learn to prefer [al→o] over [aj→o] by deploying a markedness constraint against final [al] or final [l]; however, given that final [(a)l] is extremely common in French across the entire lexicon, it is hard to see how it could be assigned a sufficiently large weight to tip the scale.Footnote 4 We return to the question of the final consonant in Sect. 2.3.4 and Sect. 3.4.
UseListed protects established lexical items
Most existing lexical items in our data have an established plural. For example, the plural of [bokal] ‘jar’ is normally the unfaithful [boko], while the faithful plural is practically never attested for this word. Novel items and infrequent items are often subject to more variation, e.g. both plurals are attested for [val] ‘valley’ (see Sect. 2.1). The UseListed approach (Zuraw 2000; Hayes and Londe 2006; Becker et al. 2012) is specifically designed to account for the difference between established and novel items, as seen in a variety of languages. A probabilistic grammar is created based on the statistical trends in the existing lexical items, but these items are protected from the same trends by the UseListed constraint. The original proposal in Zuraw (2000) used a stochastic version of Optimality Theory, but because stochastic OT was since discovered to be intractable (Pater 2008a, a.o.), we use the mathematically solid Maximum Entropy approach (Goldwater and Johnson 2003; Hayes and Wilson 2008; White 2014), implemented using Hayes and Wilson’s (2008) MaxEnt Grammar Tool.Footnote 5
A MaxEnt grammar is a multinomial logistic regression model, and thus is quite similar to the binary logistic regression model we presented in Table 1; both models use the probability of the alternating plural as the dependent variable.Footnote 6 Using the MaxEnt Grammar Tool with its default settings (μ = 0, σ = 100,000), we trained the grammar on the probabilities of the alternating plurals in the lexicon, which included the 118 [al/aj]-final words from Sect. 2.2, and a sample of 100 [εl/εj]-final words from Lexique. Five constraints were used in the analysis: four of these are seen in the tableau in (6), with the weights assigned to them by the MaxEnt grammar tool, while the fifth, Ident(round), was assigned a weight of zero, i.e. it made no numerical contribution to the analysis. The harmony (ℋ) of each plural is the sum of multiplying each violation mark by the weight of the violated constraint; this harmony is then exponentiated, and dividing these exponents by their sum in each tableau yields the expected probability. The tableau in (6) shows two plurals for the nonce monosyllabic singular [gnal]: the faithful plural [gnal] and the alternating [gno]. The expected probability of the alternating monosyllabic plural [gno] is 35 %, less than that of the faithful plural.
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(6)
MaxEnt prediction for an [al]-final monosyllable
To summarize, the MaxEnt analysis is trained on the plurals of real words of French and uses their distribution to calculate constraint weights. While the plurals of existing words are protected by UseListed, the plurals of nonce words are assigned a probability based on their weighted violations of the constraints in (6). The constraint UseListed was not used during training, and thus was not assigned a weight by the MaxEnt tool. Its weight can be assumed to be arbitrarily high.
Protection of monosyllables
We have seen in (6) that the [a→o] change in the nonce word [gnal ∼ gno] violates Ident-
(round), since the stem change impacts the word’s first (and only) syllable. In contrast, the same [a→o] change in a nonce polysyllable such as [guval ∼ guvo] does not violate Ident-
(round), since the initial syllable [gu] is left unchanged (7). As a result, the predicted probability of the alternation in an [al]-final polysyllable with the given constraint weights is 0.66, and more likely than the faithful form, in contrast to tableau (6).
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MaxEnt prediction for an [al]-final polysyllable
It is worth discussing the differences between an account based on protection of initial syllables, as proposed here, and one based on specific protection of monosyllables. While the two kinds of protection overlap completely in the cases we examine in this paper, the predictions diverge in other cases. For example, the differential protection of codas in the initial and non-initial syllables of polysyllabic words in Tamil (Beckman 1997, 1998) does not single out monosyllables as special. Conversely, a hypothetical case of prefixation that impacts the left edge of polysyllables but not monosyllables, if observed, would require a protection of monosyllables, and would not be amenable to a treatment in terms of initial syllable protection. While cases of monosyllable-specific faithfulness are uncommon in the literature, some relevant evidence may come from Kirk and Demuth (2006), an acquisition study in which children showed higher accuracy for coda consonants in monosyllabic words vs. iambic or trochaic disyllabic words. We adopt initial syllable faithfulness here for its broader coverage of the cases that are known to us and the majority of cases that are described in the literature, while fully acknowledging that the specific set of results here could in fact be handled entirely with monosyllabic-specific constraints.
Summary
The proposed analysis uses a floating [+round] plural suffix, which allows the alternation to occur as a synchronic morphophonological process. The floating feature can be safely attached to any given noun or adjective, since the grammar only allows the feature to dock on [al/aj]-final words; other words are protected from change with a family of faithfulness constraints.
A weighted constraint MaxEnt grammar is trained on the established words of the language to assign constraint weights, and uses these weights to predict the probability of alternation of novel words. When the alternation impacts a monosyllable, it incurs a violation of initial syllable faithfulness, which decreases the predicted acceptability of the alternation. In Sect. 3 below, we show that speakers extend this differential treatment of monosyllables from the words in their lexicon to nonce words.
Our analysis strongly penalizes the alternation of [εl/εj]-final nouns using Ident(round)/front, a constraint that is independently needed in this language, which contrasts rounding on front vowels. We will see that participants strongly reject the alternation with [ε].
In the lexicon, [l] is more deletable than [j], which the analysis captures with a Max(glide) constraint that penalizes the deletion of [j]. In our experiments, however, participants do not seem to disfavor the deletion of [j]. If indeed one concludes that [l] and [j] are equally deletable, the model can be revised to diminish the effect of Max(glide), keeping its weight closer to zero using a Bayesian prior (cf. similar use of priors in MaxEnt models in Wilson 2006, White 2014, a.o). In the next section, we assess the extent to which speakers have generalized the trends found throughout the lexicon when it comes to governing the treatment of alternation in nonce words.