Linguistics

Rendaku, or ‘sequential voicing’, is a well-known phenomenon in Japanese wherein when forming a compound, if the second half begins with an unvoiced obstruent, it undergoes voicing: te ‘hand’ + kami ‘paper’ -> tegami ‘letter’.  As often as scholars dip their toes into the topic, there is no clear answer as to why rendaku occurs, or what specifically motivates it. There are too many circumstances in which this voicing does not happen, the most famous and concrete of which is Lyman’s Law (Shibatani 1990), which states that if the second element of the compound already contains a voiced obstruent, then rendaku does not take place: jude ‘boiling’ + tamago ‘egg’ > judetamago (*judedamago). This sound law, however, does not explain every instance in which rendaku fails and also says nothing about the process itself. Given an historical phonological rule which states a morpheme cannot have more than one voiced element (Labrune 2012), it could be asserted that Lyman’s Law is a superfluous description of a process already present, having nothing to do with rendaku itself. By examining voicing patterns in Japanese, from an historical perspective, I propose that rendaku is simply post-nasal voicing and that there is a nasal element present in the UR in those compounds which undergo sequential voicing, such as the attributive no or the instrumental nite (Classical Japanese).

A gloss and translation of stanzas 20 through 25 of the Reginsmál followed by a cheeky reinterpretation to fit what I would consider to be today's warriors. Written for an Old Icelandic university course. Thanks to Dr. Mark Wenthe for the assistance and corrections. Any remaining errors are my own.

Phonosemantics is the idea that sounds have inherent meanings. A small, but growing branch of linguistics, phonosemantics lies at the opposite end of the spectrum from Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's Theory of Signs. This theory states that a word and the object to which it refers are arbitrarily related. This, de Saussure explained, is why languages have such variety in words referencing the same object. The work of de Saussure has informed much of linguistics research; however, recent studies in phonosemantics -particularly the work of Damián Blasi at Universität Zurich and his collaborators -have begun to challenge the "arbitrariness of signs." My proposed research project explores phonosemantics inter-linguistically (i.e. across English, French, Vietnamese, etc.) in order to investigate human perceptions of sounds. While there are some phonosemantic studies that examine multiple languages, and some that examine perceptions of sounds, no study does both. The ...

Phonosemantics is the idea that sounds have inherent meanings. A small, but growing branch of linguistics, phonosemantics lies at the opposite end of the spectrum from Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's Theory of Signs. This theory states that a word and the object to which it refers are arbitrarily related. This, de Saussure explained, is why languages have such variety in words referencing the same object. The work of de Saussure has informed much of linguistics research; however, recent studies in phonosemantics-particularly the work of Damián Blasi at Universität Zurich and his collaborators-have begun to challenge the "arbitrariness of signs." My proposed research project explores phonosemantics inter-linguistically (i.e. across English, French, Vietnamese, etc.) in order to investigate human perceptions of sounds. While there are some phonosemantic studies that examine multiple languages, and some that examine perceptions of sounds, no study does both. The pu...

This paper develops a formal model of correspondence between words sharing a Morphological Structure, but not sharing a lexeme. The empirical data used to advocate for this relation is explored using an analysis of nouns and verbs containing /a/ as a Root Vowel in General Modern Hebrew in positions where the corresponding form in Sephardic Modern Hebrew has a voiced pharyngeal. The emergence of Root Vowels reveals mora related generalizations: Root Vowels emerge only if their parallel paradigmatic consonant (consonant that occupies the same prosodic position in other roots of the same Morphological Structure) is in a coda position, i.e. it is moraic. The theory presented in this paper employs Output-to-Output constraints in order to account for surface phenomena which cannot be explained by standard Paradigm Uniformity theory.

This paper argues that imperatives in Tiberian Hebrew are not derived by truncation, but rather by a root-and-pattern association. The argument is based on spirantization, which behaves irregularly in truncated words, but not in imperatives. Tiberian Hebrew spirantization is a well-studied phenomenon within the phonology of the language, due to the fact that the generalizations associated with it are violated in so many instances.

This paper examines the complex interactions between pharyngeals and vowel quality in Sephardic Modern Hebrew. Phonetically similar to low vowels, gutturals in general and pharyngeals in particular tend to trigger vowel lowering and epenthesis of low vowels. Sephardic Modern Hebrew exhibits multiple strategies in order to avoid the proximity of non-low vowels to pharyngeals. The language processes take into account several factors, including the syllabic position of the pharyngeal (onset or coda), prosody (stress) and lexical category (nouns vs. verbs).

This study focuses on data from the verbal system of Modern Hebrew. A full analysis of stress and syncope is given. In Hebrew verbs, some but not all unstressed vowels are subject to deletion. The study identifies the conditions for this deletion and its limitations. It also describes cases in which syncope creates an illicit three consonant cluster that is broken by epenthesis. In these forms stress shifts to the ultimate syllable and the penultimate vowel changes to e: tixtóv-i → tixteví. It is argued that this seemingly serial interaction between phonological processes can be adequately analyzed within a parallel model of phonology, i.e. the non-derivational version of Optimality Theory.

This paper examines non-lexical vowels in Sephardic Modern Hebrew. It is argued that two kinds of vowel, which are triggered by the pharyngeal consonants, should be identified: (a) true epenthetic vowels that emerge on the surface to repair illicit (marked) syllable structures. (b) "Echovowels" that are created by overlapping a vowel and a pharyngeal consonant. These vowels do not repair illicit syllable structures, but rather ease the perception of clusters containing a pharyngeal. These vowels are not syllabic and phonological processes ignore them.

This paper develops a formal model of correspondence between words sharing a Morphological Structure, but not sharing a lexeme. The empirical data used to advocate for this relation is explored using an analysis of nouns and verbs containing /a / as a Root Vowel in General Modern Hebrew in positions where the corresponding form in Sephardic Modern Hebrew has a voiced pharyngeal. The emergence of Root Vowels reveals mora related generalizations: Root Vowels emerge only if their parallel paradigmatic consonant (consonant that occupies the same prosodic position in other roots of the same Morphological Structure) is in a coda position, i.e. it is moraic. The theory presented in this paper employs Output-to-Output constraints in order to account for surface phenomena which cannot be explained by standard Paradigm Uniformity theory. 1.

This study examines the stress patterns in the nominal system of Modern Hebrew. It is argued that stress in Modern Hebrew is trochaic, consisting of binary or degenerate feet. Two competing analyses of stress in Modern Hebrew nouns are provided. It is argued that a trochaic analysis is superior to a strong binary analysis (maintaining that feet in Hebrew are obligatory binary), and can accurately predict the adaptation of loanwords in the language.

This study focuses on data from the verbal system of Modern Hebrew. A full analysis of stress and syncope is given. In Hebrew verbs, some but not all unstressed vowels are subject to deletion. The study identifies the conditions for this deletion and its limitations. It also describes cases in which syncope creates an illicit three consonant cluster that is broken by epenthesis. In these forms stress shifts to the ultimate syllable and the penultimate vowel changes to e: tixtó v-i ! tixteví. It is argued that this seemingly serial interaction between phonological processes can be adequately analyzed within a parallel model of phonology, i.e. the non-derivational version of Optimality Theory.