Kevin Mullin

University of Massachusetts Amherst, Linguistics, Graduate Student

University of North Texas, Linguistics and Technical Communication, Alumnus

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Address: Department of Linguistics
226 South College
University of Massachusetts
150 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003-9274
South College office room #302

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Papers by Kevin Mullin

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Empirical, Theoretical and Diachronic Issues. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter

One of the properties of the classic version of Optimality Theory (OT) in Prince & Smolensky (199... more

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Proceedings of NELS 39 - Volume 1

Implications of Harmonic Serialism for lexical tone association

Phonological Explorations, 2012

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OT-Help 2.0 User Guide

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Strength in Harmony Systems: Trigger and Directional Asymmetries

Ms., University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2011

1 Implications of Harmonic Serialism for Lexical Tone Association 1

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... Download: CACHED: Download as a PDF. by John J. Mccarthy , Kevin Mullin , Brian Smith. Add ..... more

OT-Help 2.0 User Guide

linguist.umass.edu

OT-Help.(Staubs et al.) is a Java-based open source software tool that aids research in fou... more OT-Help.(Staubs et al.) is a Java-based open source software tool that aids research in four variants of Optimality eory (OT; Prince & Smolensky/). From OT-Help., it inherits the ability to nd both constraint rankings, as in classic OT, and constraint weightings, as in Harmonic Grammar (HG; Legendre, Miyata & Smolensky a, b; see Smolensky & Legendre and Pater for overviews of subsequent research). OT-Help. adds the ability to calculate the typological predictions of a ...

Copying Prosodic Constituents

John J. McCarthy, 2010

Abstract: The weight of a syllable-sized reduplicant is never dependent on the syllabification of... more

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Reduplication in Harmonic Serialism

Morphology, 2012

In standard Optimality Theory, faithfulness constraints are defined in terms of an input-output c... more In standard Optimality Theory, faithfulness constraints are defined in terms of an input-output correspondence relation, and similar constraints are applied to the correspondence relation between a stem and its reduplicative copy. In Harmonic Serialism, a derivational version of Optimality Theory, there is no input-output correspondence relation, and instead faithfulness violations are based on which operations the candidate-generating GEN component has applied. This article presents a novel theory of reduplication, situated within Harmonic Serialism, called Serial Template Satisfaction. Reduplicative correspondence constraints are replaced by operations that copy strings of constituents. Depending on the constraint ranking, phonological processes may precede or follow copying, with different effects. Serial Template Satisfaction and reduplicative correspondence theory make different predictions about partial reduplication, prosodic constituent copying, skipping effects, and reduplication-phonology interactions. The predictions of Serial Template Satisfaction are argued to be superior.

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Reduplication in Harmonic Serialism

In standard Optimality Theory, faithfulness constraints are deﬁned in terms of an input–output co... more In standard Optimality Theory, faithfulness constraints are deﬁned in terms of an input–output correspondence relation, and similar constraints are applied to the correspondence relation between a stem and its reduplicative copy. In Harmonic Serialism, a derivational version of Optimality Theory, there is no input-output correspondence relation, and instead faithfulness violations are based on which operations the candidate-generating GEN component has applied.

This article presents a novel theory of reduplication, situated within Harmonic Serialism, called Serial Template Satisfaction. Reduplicative correspondence constraints are replaced by operations that copy strings of constituents. Depending on the constraint ranking, phonological processes may precede or follow copying, with different effects. Serial Template Satisfaction and reduplicative correspondence theory make different predictions about partial reduplication, prosodic constituent copying, skipping effects, and reduplication–phonology interactions. The predictions of Serial Template Satisfaction are argued to be superior.

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Optimal Domains in Harmonic Serialism: Feature Spreading & Shifting and Opacity & Transparency

An account of tone shift that also incorporates an analysis for segmental and tonal opacity (bloc... more An account of tone shift that also incorporates an analysis for segmental and tonal opacity (blocking) and transparency (skipping) in feature spreading building on the earlier work on feature spreading in Harmonic Serialism (McCarthy 2009, forthcoming) by incorporating some of the core ideas of Optimal Domains Theory (Cole and Kisseberth 1995, Cassimjee and Kisseberth 1998, 1999). The association of a feature and a segment or tone-bearing unit is divorced from the phonetic realization of a feature on that segment or TBU. Constraint interaction governs whether a feature is realized phonetically. Typical vowel harmony, then, is feature association with phonetic realization while tone shifting is feature association sans realization. Similarly, transparent segments are associated with a feature, which is not phonetically realized, while opaque segments lack both feature association and phonetic realization. Trimoraic/trisyllabic tone shift is briefly considered since it is a potential challenge to a derivation theory because the shift process is non-surface true (counterfeeding opacity) in longer wordforms. Utilizing Harmonic Serialism retains the solutions for several too-many-repairs pathologies that exist in standard treatments of harmony and tonal spreading in classic OT.

Grammatical Constraints and Descriptive Adequacy

This is an argument against Optimality Theoretic analyses that depend upon lexical prespecificati... more This is an argument against Optimality Theoretic analyses that depend upon lexical prespecification. Arguments in favor of prespecification analyses over grammatical (diacritic) analyses in terms of elegance of analysis lose their force if prespecification analyses are descriptively inadequate. I show that a prespecification analysis cannot account for the distribution of lexical stress in Guahibo (under standard assumptions). A grammatical analysis using lexically-indexed constraints, however, can easily account for Guahibo stress showing that grammatical analyses, in contrast, are descriptively adequate.

Apachean Historical Phonology with Special Reference to Obstruents

A reconstruction of Proto-Apachean (Southern Athabascan) obstruents that supersedes earlier resea... more

Strength in Harmony Systems: Trigger and Directional Asymmetries

This paper proposes an account of harmony systems that have asymmetries in directional spreading,... more This paper proposes an account of harmony systems that have asymmetries in directional spreading, directional blocking, directional bounds, and trigger strength. I show that adopting a derivational version of Optimality Theory with weighted constraints – Serial Harmonic Grammar – as the analytic framework can successfully generate these systems in a general way without relying on problematic Local Constraint Conjunction. Additionally, building on earlier work, the serial nature of the grammar is used in order to prevent predictions of implausible typological pathologies found in existing parallel Optimality Theory and Harmonic Grammar analyses. Small typologies generated by this grammar are presented, and a complex test case from Chilcotin is examined.

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Implications of Harmonic Serialism for Lexical Tone Association

In some languages, notably Kikuyu, the association of tones and syllables is completely predictab... more In some languages, notably Kikuyu, the association of tones and syllables is completely predictable. In this paper, we show that a derivational version of Optimality Theory, Harmonic Serialism, cannot account for Kikuyu if underlying representations include preassociated tones. If Richness of the Base is to be maintained, then underlying representations can contain associated tones in no language, even a language with contrastive tone association. This leads to a discussion of alternative ways of lexically encoding these contrasts, such as sequences of identical tones and diacritic accents. [An earlier 2010 version of this paper is available as ROA-1096.]

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Copying Prosodic Constituents

The weight of a syllable-sized reduplicant is never dependent on the syllabification of the base ... more The weight of a syllable-sized reduplicant is never dependent on the syllabification of the base — that is, no language has a reduplicative morpheme that copies a coda in [pat-pat.ka] but no coda in [pa-pa.ta]. Yet this behavior is attested in the second syllable of foot-sized reduplicants: [pa.ta-pa.ta.ka], [pa.tak-pa.tak.ta]. Why is dependence on base syllabification possible in foot-sized reduplicants but not in syllable-sized ones? This article provides an answer to that question in the form of a novel theory of reduplication called Serial Template Satisfaction (STS), which is situated within Harmonic Serialism (a derivational variant of Optimality Theory). In STS, a reduplicative template of type X can be filled by copying constituents of type X-1 from the base. A foot-sized reduplicant can be filled by copying syllables, but not a syllable-sized reduplicant, which must be filled by copying segments. Lacking base-reduplicant correspondence constraints, STS has no way of forcing segment copying to depend on base syllabification, so it cannot produce the unattested pattern. This article also fleshes out STS as a general theory of reduplication that can be compared to other approaches in Optimality Theory and rule-based phonology. Phenomena discussed include reduplicant size, locality, and identity of base and reduplicant.

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Strength in Harmony [handout]

An account of asymmetrical restrictions in harmony using Serial Harmonic Grammar.

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OT-Help 2.0 User Guide

The user guide for the new release of OT-Help version 2.0. (http://web.linguist.umass.edu/~OTHelp... more The user guide for the new release of OT-Help version 2.0. (http://web.linguist.umass.edu/~OTHelp/) OT-Help is software for calculating typologies for parallel ‘classic’ Optimality Theory (OT), parallel Harmonic Grammar (HG), Harmonic Serialism (i.e., serial OT), and serial HG as well as a solver for parallel OT and parallel HG. For serial typologies, OT-Help allows user-defined constraints and operations for candidate generation.

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