[PLing] 4 talks in phonology

[Markus Poechtrager]

Dear colleagues,

it is my great pleasure to announce 4 talks in phonology at the 
Department of Linguistics.


The first two talks will be by Heather NEWELL (Université de Québec à 
Montréal, Montreal, Canada):

(1)
"Bracketing Paradoxes Resolved"
Monday, March 23, 2020
16:30--18:00
Department of Linguistics, Seminarraum 3 (9., Sensengasse 3a)


(2)
"Function Words and their Completely Normal Phonology"
[based on joint work with Tom Leu and Tobias Scheer]

Tuesday, March 24, 2020
09:00–10:30
Department of Linguistics, Seminarraum 3 (9., Sensengasse 3a)



The other two talks will be by Péter SZIGETVÁRI (Eötvös Loránd 
University, Budapest):

(3) "The vowel system of British English"

Thursday, April 23, 2020
17:30--19:00
Department of Linguistics, Seminarraum 3 (9., Sensengasse 3a)


(4) "Stress in English"

Friday, April 24, 2020
14:30--16:00
Department of Linguistics, Hörsaal 1 (9., Sensengasse 3a)



Abstracts for all talks can be found at the bottom of this e-mail.

Everyone is cordially invited; I am looking forward to seeing you all.

Best,
Markus Pöchtrager







Heather NEWELL
Bracketing Paradoxes Resolved

Bracketing Paradoxes, apparent phono-syntactic mismatches, have long 
given rise to ad-hoc solutions such as such as special LF rules for 
prefixes (Pesetsky 1979; Williams 1981), rebracketing at PF (Williams 
1981; Nespor & Vogel 1986; Marantz 1984a/b, 1987, 1989; Sproat 1984, 
1985, 1988), quantifier raising of nonquantifiers (Pesetsky 1985), or 
suspension of Bracket Erasure (Kiparsky 1982). This talk argues that we 
have been searching for a solution to these paradoxes in the wrong way. 
Bracketing Paradoxes, rather than giving us evidence for extra 
mechanisms available to the grammatical system, shine a light on where 
we have mis-analysed ‘paradoxical’ structures. The key to solving these 
paradoxes is to return to our initial morpho-syntactic and phonological 
theories and revise them in order that Bracketing Paradoxes do not 
arise. I argue here that Bracketing Paradoxes give crucial insight to 
where our theories have gone wrong, with a focus on how linear 
phonological frameworks avoid problems raised by hierarchical frameworks 
such as the Prosodic Hierarchy.



Heather NEWELL
Function Words and their Completely Normal Phonology (based on joint 
work with Tom Leu and Tobias Scheer)

The current views of the special nature of function word phonology are 
that either function word variation is driven strictly by allomorphy 
(Kaisse 1985, Ito & Mester 2019), that function words are somehow 
‘ignored’ by the phonological system; lexical words project prosodic 
structure (the PWd) while function words do not (Selkirk 1996, 2011), or 
that function words are lexically specified with phonological 
subcategorization frames (Inkelas and Zec 1993, Tyler 2019). While it is 
clear that some variation in the exponents of function words is due to 
allomorphy (e.g. is/are), like for lexical items, this is an exception 
to the rule. Many alternations are, we argue, clearly phonological and 
predicted by the phonological rules of the languages in question (e.g. 
her [həɹ]/[əɹ], can [kæn]/[kn̩]). Given that in the modular theory of 
grammar to be assumed here, the phonology cannot be sensitive to the 
distinction between functional and lexical items (these are not primes 
in the morpho-syntax either). We appeal here to the underpsecification 
of phonological structure in lexicon, combined with a piece-based 
realizational theory of the grammar o account for why (and when) 
function words are subject to the kinds of variation we see 
cross-linguistically.



Péter SZIGETVÁRI
The vowel system of British English

With a few exceptions (like Trager & Bloch 1941), descriptions of the 
vowel system of English always mention diphthongs.  From a theoretical 
viewpoint, the borderline between diphthongs and other vowel+approximant 
clusters is fuzzy.  Worse still, from a descriptive viewpoint, there are 
hardly any serious arguments for the claim that English vowel+glide 
clusters are diphthongs.  I will review some of these arguments 
(collected by Cruttenden 2014) and show that they are either void or 
becoming invalid with recent changes taking place in British English 
(like L-vocalization or glide fronting).  The result of a reanalysis of 
diphthongs is a simpler and neater vowel inventory.



Péter SZIGETVÁRI
Stress in English

English vowels (syllables) are usually assigned one of several degrees 
of stress (primary, secondary, tertiary, etc).  It is claimed that 
stresses avoid occurring on vowels too close to each other, and as a 
result stresses can move.  On the other hand, stress seems to be a very 
stable phenomenon in English: lexically stressed vowels remain stressed, 
and unstressed vowels cannot acquire stress.  This paradox stems from a 
sloppy use of the term "stress".  There are two separate phenomena 
involved: a melodic/segmental phenomenon, a phonological property of 
some vowels, and a prosodic/rhythmic phenomenon.  If we clearly 
distinguish the two, eg by assigning them different names ("stress" vs 
"accent" or "full/reduced vowel" vs "stress", cf Vanderslice & Ladefoged 
1972, Gussenhoven 1991), a simpler picture emerges, in which there is no 
need for different levels of either.

-- 
Mag. Dr. Markus A. Pöchtrager
Institut für Sprachwissenschaft / Department of Linguistics
Universität Wien / University of Vienna