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Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification

Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné is a dialect of Dëne Sųłıné (ISO: CHP) spoken in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The verb system of Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné has only recently been described (Jaker and Cardinal 2020); this paper is the first to propose an analysis of the distribution of long and short v...

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Autor principal: Jaker, Alessandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9462611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36106133
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-022-09550-5
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author Jaker, Alessandro
author_facet Jaker, Alessandro
author_sort Jaker, Alessandro
collection PubMed
description Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné is a dialect of Dëne Sųłıné (ISO: CHP) spoken in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The verb system of Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné has only recently been described (Jaker and Cardinal 2020); this paper is the first to propose an analysis of the distribution of long and short vowels in Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné prefixes. In Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné, all long vowels in prefixes are derived from intervocalic consonant deletion, although not all cases of intervocalic consonant deletion result in a long vowel. Whether or not deletion of an intervocalic consonant results in a long or short vowel depends on a combination of two factors: the consonant that was deleted, and the morphological level to which the preceding prefix belongs. In this paper, I propose that the basic generalization about prefix vowel length can be stated in terms of Systematic Underspecification (Kiparsky 1993). I claim that prefix vowels, unlike stem vowels, have zero moras underlyingly, and only acquire a mora after passing through at least one level of the phonology. This analysis predicts that prefix vowel length ought to be subject to a Derived Environment Effect (DEE), for which there is indeed evidence. The pattern of mora insertion in Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné prefix vowels is thus an example of the interleaving of phonology and morphology, and illustrates how phonological behaviour can be to some extent predicted based on morphological structure.
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spelling pubmed-94626112022-09-10 Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification Jaker, Alessandro Nat Lang Linguist Theory Article Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné is a dialect of Dëne Sųłıné (ISO: CHP) spoken in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The verb system of Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné has only recently been described (Jaker and Cardinal 2020); this paper is the first to propose an analysis of the distribution of long and short vowels in Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné prefixes. In Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné, all long vowels in prefixes are derived from intervocalic consonant deletion, although not all cases of intervocalic consonant deletion result in a long vowel. Whether or not deletion of an intervocalic consonant results in a long or short vowel depends on a combination of two factors: the consonant that was deleted, and the morphological level to which the preceding prefix belongs. In this paper, I propose that the basic generalization about prefix vowel length can be stated in terms of Systematic Underspecification (Kiparsky 1993). I claim that prefix vowels, unlike stem vowels, have zero moras underlyingly, and only acquire a mora after passing through at least one level of the phonology. This analysis predicts that prefix vowel length ought to be subject to a Derived Environment Effect (DEE), for which there is indeed evidence. The pattern of mora insertion in Tets[Image: see text]t’ıné prefix vowels is thus an example of the interleaving of phonology and morphology, and illustrates how phonological behaviour can be to some extent predicted based on morphological structure. Springer Netherlands 2022-09-09 2023 /pmc/articles/PMC9462611/ /pubmed/36106133 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-022-09550-5 Text en © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022, Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law. This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.
spellingShingle Article
Jaker, Alessandro
Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification
title Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification
title_full Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification
title_fullStr Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification
title_full_unstemmed Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification
title_short Tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: Evidence for systematic underspecification
title_sort tets´ǫt’ıné prefix vowel length: evidence for systematic underspecification
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9462611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36106133
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11049-022-09550-5
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