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Impostoronsets in bicyclic derivations in Mehri
Noam Faust (Université Paris 8, CNRS SFL) & Janet C.E. Watson (FBA, Professor Emerita University of Leeds, Honorary Professor University of St Andrews, Visiting Professor Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat)
According to Bendjaballah & Ségéral (2017), Central Dhofari Mehri exhibits a system with four full vowels /i, u, e, a/ and one defective vowel /ɨ/ (they use [ə]). Stress falls on the last underlying full vowel, but the realization of that vowel depends on syllable structure. In stressed open syllables (including in _C#), /i, u, e, a/ are realized [iː, uː, eː, oː] respectively; in stressed closed syllables, the realizations are [ɨ, ɨ, a, a]. The facts are illustrated for /u/ in (1a,b). Given this description, there should not be stressed [ɨ́]s or [á]s in open syllables. But such vowels do exists in several constructions. Here we concentrate on one: verbs with unstressed object suffixes. The stressed vowel of (2a) is surprisingly reduced to [ɨ́] in an open syllable when the object suffix is added (2b), here the 1pl.obj; curiously, the same vowel does not shorten before the homophonous 2fpl.subj suffix in (2c).
|
(1) |
a. |
ktúːb |
‘he wrote’ |
(2) |
a. |
thɨrkúːb |
‘she gives a ride’ |
|
|
b. |
ktɨ́b-k |
‘I/youmsg wrote’ |
|
b. |
thɨrkɨ́b=ɨn |
‘she/youmsg gives usacc a ride’ |
|
|
|
|
|
|
c. |
thɨrkúːb-ɨn |
‘youfpl give a ride’ |
This puzzle has been addressed in Watson & Al-Mahri (2018) using different rankings for different strata. In this talk, we present an alternative view: the stressed vowel in (2b) is in fact in a closed syllable. We discuss two accounts:
- An OT account with an alignment constraint AlignR,Syll,Base;
- A Strict CV account with lack of intercyclic VC reduction (Kaye & Gussmann 1993)
We bring forth evidence that verbs with object suffixes are bicyclic, thereby motivating the limited communication between the verb and the object suffix. Time permitting, we discuss cases in which umlaut pluralization blocks vowel reduction in the same bicyclic construction, e.g. [thɨrkíːb=ɨn] ‘youmpl give usacc a ride’; and another case of [ɨ] in open stressed syllables, in monocyclic derivations.
