Morpho-phonology by Adam Ussishkin
Other by Adam Ussishkin
The purpose of this project is twofold. First, it aims to provide supporting evidence for the roo... more The purpose of this project is twofold. First, it aims to provide supporting evidence for the root as an abstract unit of morphological analysis. Second, it explores the place and the role of the root in accounting for certain phonological processes, in light of recent works at the interface between phonology and syntax (see Marvin 2002, Marantz 2001, 2007, Pigott & Newell 2006, Samuels 2010 and Scheer 2011, among others). Within a phasal (cyclic) approach to derivation, the root along with its category-defining heads will be argued to form the domain of application of various phonological processes including epenthesis, spreading and harmony. Traditional phonological opacity and sandhi phenomena will be analysed at the interface between phonology and morphosyntax. In Berber for instance, standard phonological approaches fail to explain how glide-high vowel alternation (u/w) occurs in words like gru ‘pick up!’ / agraw ‘assembly’ but not in gru-j-as ‘pick to him’ where the vowel u remains unchanged. Assuming that glides typically appear in the immediate vicinity of a vowel, in complementary distribution with the corresponding high vowels, hence the forms agraw / gru, how is the dative form grujas ‘pick to him’ derived? Followed by a vowel-initial morpheme –as, the final U should normally surface as a glide, leading to the form *grwas. Instead, a glide j is inserted between the vowels u and a in order to avoid hiatus.
Another facet of this project focuses on the structure of templates. I seek to determine how and when templates, as fully-fledged morphemes, interact with roots. Templates commonly refer to sequences of consonantal and vocalic positions ordered in a fixed way and designed to convey specific grammatical information.
The project also includes psycholinguistic study of roots in Berber. The aim is to test the psychological reality of consonantal roots and their role in the mental lexicon. In line with recent studies on Semitic (see Deutsch, Frost & Forster 1998 on Hebrew, Boudelaa & Marslen-Wilson 2001 on Arabic, Ussishkin et al. 2010 on Maltese), we plan to conduct auditory priming experiments in order to determine whether the consonantal root yields any morphological priming effect.
Papers by Adam Ussishkin
This paper has three objectives. The first is to situate the properties associated with French de... more This paper has three objectives. The first is to situate the properties associated with French default vowels with more typologically common epenthesis patterns. The second is to make use of an approach to predicting the quality of the default vowel that uses the function of epenthesis within a system of communication as a starting point. Finally, we address the issue of how to quantify the properties associated with epenthetic vowels, for which we use the Generalized Context Model (Nosofsky 1988) and tools from Informa- tion Theory (Shannon 1948), in particular, entropy and information content.
Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics, 2013
Stress in Modern Hebrew
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Morpho-phonology by Adam Ussishkin
Other by Adam Ussishkin
Another facet of this project focuses on the structure of templates. I seek to determine how and when templates, as fully-fledged morphemes, interact with roots. Templates commonly refer to sequences of consonantal and vocalic positions ordered in a fixed way and designed to convey specific grammatical information.
The project also includes psycholinguistic study of roots in Berber. The aim is to test the psychological reality of consonantal roots and their role in the mental lexicon. In line with recent studies on Semitic (see Deutsch, Frost & Forster 1998 on Hebrew, Boudelaa & Marslen-Wilson 2001 on Arabic, Ussishkin et al. 2010 on Maltese), we plan to conduct auditory priming experiments in order to determine whether the consonantal root yields any morphological priming effect.
Papers by Adam Ussishkin
Another facet of this project focuses on the structure of templates. I seek to determine how and when templates, as fully-fledged morphemes, interact with roots. Templates commonly refer to sequences of consonantal and vocalic positions ordered in a fixed way and designed to convey specific grammatical information.
The project also includes psycholinguistic study of roots in Berber. The aim is to test the psychological reality of consonantal roots and their role in the mental lexicon. In line with recent studies on Semitic (see Deutsch, Frost & Forster 1998 on Hebrew, Boudelaa & Marslen-Wilson 2001 on Arabic, Ussishkin et al. 2010 on Maltese), we plan to conduct auditory priming experiments in order to determine whether the consonantal root yields any morphological priming effect.