Meaning in language

This paper addresses the problem of morpho-phonological variability and the role of phonetic detail in morphologically complex words by investigating the gemination behavior of the English prefixes un- and in-. Traditionally, it is assumed that un- geminates while in- degeminates, but empirical studies are rare and not conclusive. This paper presents the first study that uses data from natural speech (Switchboard Corpus, Godfrey and Holliman 1997). It is shown that both prefixes geminate, contra large parts of the literature. Furthermore, there is a difference in nasal duration between un-, negative in- and locative in-. The more segmentable the prefix the longer the nasal duration. The results challenge widely-shared assumptions in morphological theory, lexical phonology and models of speech production, and support models in which the strength of morphological boundaries may impact on the durational properties of complex words. Journal of Phonetics

Gemination and degemination in English prefixation: Phonetic evidence for morphological organization

Cette etude de l’accent secondaire en anglais britannique contemporain s’inscrit dans l’approche developpee par Lionel Guierre et se compose d’un volet theorique et d’un volet empirique. Dans un premier temps, nous apportons notre contribution a l’echange entre l’ecole de Guierre et les theories plus « standard » en phonologie et en morphologie. Pour cela, nous reaffirmons, a l’aide de travaux qui lui sont exterieurs, les specificites de l’approche guierrienne. Ainsi, nous proposons une definition de ce que nous entendons par accent en anglais, nous defendons l’importance de la prise en compte de l’information orthographique dans les analyses de la phonologie de l’anglais, nous faisons des propositions sur la maniere dont la structure segmentale peut influencer l’accentuation, nous argumentons qu’il est necessaire de reconnaitre des unites morphologiques dont le sens est opaque et defendons que l’anglais peut etre analyse comme ayant non pas une, mais plusieurs phonologies. Dans un second temps, apres une presentation des theories contemporaines traitant de l’accent secondaire et une revue de la litterature sur le sujet, nous proposons une analyse d’un corpus de 5829 mots portant un accent secondaire tires de la troisieme edition du Longman English Pronunciation Dictionary. La presence et la position de l’accent secondaire sont analysees pour les differentes categories morphologiques retenues dans le corpus. Nous nous interessons egalement a des phenomenes lies a l’accent secondaire tels que la valeur de la voyelle accentuee sous accent secondaire ou la gemination. 
Nos resultats confirment les analyses precedentes de l’accent secondaire sur plusieurs points. Tout d’abord, celui-ci est bien regit par des contraintes rythmiques s’appliquant au sein d’une meme unite lexicale. Parmi les derives suffixaux, c’est l’isomorphisme derivationnel qui prevaut dans la tres grande majorite des mots etudies, meme si quelques exceptions sont relevees et discutees. Comme le releve l’essentiel de la litterature, les prefixes transparents possedent leur propre domaine phonologique, ce qui se manifeste par la presence d’un accent secondaire meme lorsque le prefixe est monosyllabique et que sa base est accentuee a l’initiale, par des geminees consonantiques ou encore par une valeur libre de la voyelle des prefixes monosyllabiques a voyelle finale. 
En revanche, nous ne sommes pas en mesure de confirmer certaines analyses proposees dans la litterature. Nous ne relevons pas d’impact de la structure segmentale sur le placement de l’accent secondaire dans les mots non-derives ayant au moins trois syllabes pretoniques. Nous ne relevons pas non plus d’effet de la frequence relative sur la preservation accentuelle en deuxieme syllabe parmi les derives suffixaux ayant trois syllabes pretoniques, mais nous relevons un effet de la presence d’un prefixe monosyllabique et de la proeminence relative des deux premieres syllabes. 
La presente etude apporte egalement des elements qui, a notre connaissance, n’ont pas ete releves dans la litterature. Nous relevons des paires antonymiques de prefixes dont l’opposition semantique peut etre ramenee a l’opposition entre les prefixes et pour lesquelles seuls l’un des membres de la paire peut porter un accent sur son prefixe. Nous faisons l’hypothese qu’il s’agit la d’une manifestation du caractere marque de ce membre de la paire. Nous relevons une nouvelle regle de prononciation de la voyelle accentuee que nous avons nommee la « regle de l’initiale pretonique ». Nous relevons egalement que les prefixes monosyllabiques semantiquement opaques ont une tendance a rejeter l’accent secondaire. Enfin, nous proposons une explication au schema /021(-)/ releve dans les derives suffixaux. Ce schema est determine par la frequence relative du derive et de ses derivants ainsi que par la presence ou absence d’un agregat consonantique a la suite de la deuxieme voyelle.

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01414997/document

L'accent secondaire en anglais britannique contemporain

Morphological theories that assume all word formation to consist in concatenation of morphemes run into difficulties stating the defining properties of the notion of final combining forms that can be used as constituents of novel words. The novel words under consideration are of two types: (a) nouns ending in forms like -ology, -ography, -ometer, -crat, -naut, -phile; (b) nouns ending in forms like -(a)holic, -(a)thon. Forms of type (b) are only roughly identifiable due to their indeterminable size of segmental material. In this paper the notion of final combining form is called into question and ultimately rejected on the grounds that words allegedly built with final combining forms of type (b), when analysed within the theory of universal, ranked and violable constraints in its OO Correspondence version, conform to the defining properties of blends.

Novel Words with Final Combining Forms in English. A Case for Blends in Word Formation

In English, some complex words can display exceptional accent preservation (EAP): they can preserve an accent from their base even when this would violate a general restriction against adjacent accents (e.g. retu rn → retu rne e). This paper analyses EAP both empirically and theoretically. The analysis of a set of 291 derivatives from Wells (2008) shows that this phenomenon can be partially attributed to the relative frequency of the base and its derivative and partially also to syllable structure, and that these two factors have a cumulative effect. It is also shown that the existence of a more deeply embedded base (e.g. colle ct → colle ctive → co llecti vity ~ colle cti vity) can increase the likelihood for a derivative to display EAP. A formal account of the phenomenon is proposed building on Collie's (2007, 2008) " fake cyclicity " analysis, using weighted constraints (Pater 2009, 2016) and Max-Ent-OT (Goldwater & Johnson 2003). Finally, a model of lexical access building on Hay's (2001, 2003) model and integrating more deeply embedded bases is proposed.

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When Accent Preservation Leads to Clash

Trubetzkoy's recognition of a delimitative function of phonology, serving to signal boundaries between morphological units, is expressed in terms of alignment constraints in Optimality Theory, where the relevant constraints require specific morphological boundaries to coincide with phonological structure (Trubetzkoy 1936, 1939, McCarthy & Prince 1993). The approach pursued in the present article is to investigate the distribution of phonological boundary signals to gain insight into the criteria underlying morphological analysis. The evidence from English and Swedish suggests that necessary and sufficient conditions for word-internal morphological analysis concern the recognizability of head constituents, which include the rightmost members of compounds and head affixes. The claim is that the stability of word-internal boundary effects in historical perspective cannot in general be sufficiently explained in terms of memorization and imitation of phonological word form. Rather, these effects indicate a morphological parsing mechanism based on the recognition of word-internal head constituents. Head affixes can be shown to contrast systematically with modifying affixes with respect to syntactic function, semantic content, and prosodic properties. That is, head affixes, which cannot be omitted, often lack inherent meaning and have relatively unmarked boundaries, which can be obscured entirely under specific phonological conditions. By contrast, modifying affixes, which can be omitted, consistently have inherent meaning and have stronger boundaries, which resist prosodic fusion in all phonological contexts. While these correlations are hardly specific to English and Swedish it remains to be investigated to which extent they hold cross-linguistically. The observation that some of the constituents identified on the basis of prosodic evidence lack inherent meaning raises the issue of compositionality. I will argue that certain systematic aspects of word meaning cannot be captured with reference to the syntagmatic level, but require reference to the paradigmatic level instead. The assumption is then that there are two dimensions of morphological analysis: syntagmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for decomposing words in terms of labelled constituents, and paradigmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for establishing relations among (whole) words in the mental lexicon. While meaning is intrinsically connected with paradigmatic analysis (e.g. base relations, oppositeness) it is not essential to syntagmatic analysis.

Renate Raffelsiefen

Papers

Morphological word structure in English and Swedish: the evidence from prosody