Natural Phonology: The State of the Art 9783110908992, 9783110147957

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Natural Phonology: The State of the Art

W DE

G

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 92

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Natural Phonology: The State of the Art edited by

Bernhard Hurch Richard A. Rhodes

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1996

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress

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Natural phonology : the state of the art / edited by Bernhard Hurch, Richard A. Rhodes. p. cm. - (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 92). Contributions to a workshop held in connection with the 1990 annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea in Bern, Switzerland, Sept. 18-21, 1990. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 3-11-014795-5 1. Grammar, Comparative and general - Phonology Congresses. 2. Naturalness (Linguistics) - Congresses. I. Hurch, Bernhard. II. Rhodes, Richard Α., 1946III. Societas Linguistica Europaea, Meeting (1990 ; Bern, Switzerland) IV. Series. P217.68.N38 1996 414—dc20 96-20774 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek -

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Natural phonology : the state of the art / ed. by Bernhard Hurch ; Richard A. Rhodes. - Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1996 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 92) ISBN 3-11-014795-5 NE: Hurch, Bernhard [Hrsg.]; Trends in linguistics / Studies and monographs

© Copyright 1996 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printing: Ratzlow-Druck, Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

Contents Introduction Rajendra Singh Natural Phono(morpho)logy: A view from the outside

1

Part I: Theoretical Wolfgang U. Dressier Principles of naturalness in phonology and across components

41

Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kofaczyk Natural Phonology without the syllable

53

Bernhard Hurch Accentuations

73

Juliän M&idez Dosuna Can weakening processes start in initial position? The case of aspiration of/s/and/f/

97

Geoffrey S. Nathan Steps towards a cognitive phonology

107

Richard H. Wojcik and James E. Hoard The application of Natural Phonology to computerized speech understanding ... 121

Part II: Descriptive Marianne Kilani-Schoch Syllable and foot in French clipping

135

Michele Loporcaro On the analysis of geminates in Standard Italian and Italian dialects

153

Liliana Madelska and Wolfgang U. Dressier Postlexical stress processes and their segmental consequences illustrated in Polish and Czech

189

Eva Mayerthaler Stress, syllables, and segments: Their interplay in an Italian dialect continuum 201

vi

Contents

Carmen Pensado Portuguese secondary nasal vowels and phonological representations

223

Richard A. Rhodes English reduced vowels and the nature of natural processes

239

Elke Ronneberger-Sibold Preferred sound shapes of new roots: On some phonotactic and prosodic properties of shortenings in German and French

261

References

293

Subject Index

333

Index of Languages

341

Index of Authors

343

Introduction

1. The Bern Workshop This volume, as its title suggests, presents a number of the contributions to a workshop held in connection with the 1990 annual meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea in Bern, Switzerland, September 18-21, 1990. The intention of the workshop organizers was to invite all scholars who had crucially contributed to the development of the theory of Natural Phonology in recent years. In addition to the contributors to the present volume we wish to express appreciation to those colleagues who presented papers which for one reason or another could not be included here: Peter Auer (Hamburg), Greg Lee (Hawaii), H.C. Luschützky (Vienna), Roy Major (Arizona State), M.L. Onederra (Vitoria-Gasteiz), Peter Siptär (Budapest), and Wilfried Wieden (Salzburg). The organizers also extended an invitation to Rajendra Singh to deliver a general paper on Natural Phonology "from the outside", in order to address both issues raised by the workshop papers and more general issues in phonology and morphophonology. We were fortunate also to have a significant number of regular SLE members who were attending the annual meeting come and actively participate in the discussions contributing to the success of the workshop. Finally, we are particularly grateful to the Societas Linguistica Europaea and the local organizers of the Bern meeting for having hosted our workshop.

2. A thumbnail history of Natural Phonology Since its inception the theory of Natural Phonology has been closely connected with the name of David Stampe. The first, mostly unpublished, studies by him were given at conferences in the late 60's (including "On some recent views of linguistic theory", "Yes, Virginia ...", "How can you say that you can't say it if you haven't tried", and others). Among his early published articles of that era are: "The acquisition of phonetic representation", and "On the Natural Phonology of diphthongs" (both in Chicago Linguistic Society volumes). The first relatively complete presentation of the theory is in Stampe's 1972 dissertation, originally circulated under the title "How I spent my summer vacation" (first published in 1973 by the Indiana University Linguistics Club as "A dissertation on Natural Phonology" and reissued in 1979 by Garland Publishing). The first major work

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Introduction

done by someone other than Stampe is Patricia Donegan's 1978 dissertation on vowel systems (first published in the Ohio State Working Papers in Linguistics and also later reissued by Garland Publishing). In this work Donegan gives a rather detailed explanation of how the theory accounts for the structure of vowel systems, allophonic variation, diachrony, and stylistics. The most comprehensive and accessible presentation of the theory probably is Donegan — Stampe (1979), which addresses issues raised by the generative theories of the time and shows most clearly how Natural Phonology is essentially different from other theories. The theory of Natural Phonology traces its roots to early pre-structuralist ideas on sound alternation and is thus opposed to generative phonology on most important points. The entities which are dealt with in phonology (like phonemes) are not abstract units managed through a classificatory system, but instead are entities whose characteristics crucially depend on the physiology and neurology of speech production and perception. In contrast to Chomsky and Halle's Sound Pattern of English and the generative approaches related to it, Natural Phonology, like classical theories, assumes that phonological alternations are of two ontologically distinct types. The first type, which more or less corresponds to traditional allophonics, is "real" phonology and is completely distinct from the second type, morphophonology (alias morphonology to some naturalists), which is concerned with alternations in morpheme shape. This characterization should not be taken to imply—except in the most general way—that Natural Phonology lines up with structuralist phonemics. Rather, Natural Phonology has maintained from the outset that, in a given language, only those sound-structuring phenomena that follow directly from the nature of the speech apparatus constitute phonology and that these phenomena must be viewed as distinct from morphophonemics. The former are characterized as processes, the latter as rules. Since the original thrust of generative phonology was to lump all alternations together as phonological rules, this has been a key distinction between generative and naturalist theories. Even at this point in the history of phonology when recent generative-derived theories have developed aspects of a two-tiered phonology, Natural Phonology remains theoretically distinct by virtue of insisting on the naturalness of "low-level" phonology and by having developed a full theory of this type of alternation, which current generative approaches all but ignore as uninteresting. Because Natural Phonology views certain kinds of alternations as having an essential dependence on the nature of the vocal-aural apparatus, it does not preassign particular representations to particular levels of derivation. Instead, representations float according to the properties of the phonological units they represent in particular language sound systems. In the view of Natural Phonology the sound pattern of a language arises as a result of balancing competing demands between those processes which tend to make utterances easier for speakers to

Introduction

ix

pronounce and those which tend to make utterances easier for hearers to understand. In the terminology of Natural Phonology phonemic systems arise by the paradigmatic application of processes regardless of whether the processes are context-free or context-dependent. These processes are drawn from more or less the same set which apply syntagmatically to phonemic representations to yield actual utterances. Thus, there are no abstract entities in Natural Phonology, and in particular no underspecified units. In these respects Natural Phonology has taken positions directly opposed to those of classical generative phonology. It is significant to note, however, that at various important points in the development of generative theory practitioners have incorporated pre-generative insights present in Natural Phonology from its inception, e.g., the acceptance of units of prosodic organization such as the syllable and the foot, or the distinction between prelexical and lexical rules in the model of Lexical Phonology. The study of those aspects of grammar which follow from the nature of the users of language has been nearly absent from the popular research traditions of the United States over the past 50 years. Natural Phonology is a dialectic in the sense that it sees phonology as a tension between processes expressing the needs of hearers and processes expressing the desires of speakers. This kind of thinking is very foreign to the pragmatic American mind that feels more comfortable in a noncompromising structuralism. But in Europe naturalist thought is more widely accepted and has been applied more generally in linguistic analysis. Proposals now exist for investigating other components of grammar, especially morphology. One clear proof of its acceptance in Europe is evidenced by the rather large number of relevant descriptive studies, some of which are listed in the bibliography of the present volume (see also Luschützky 1991).

3. Basic concepts Stampe (1969) originally proposed that the acquisition of phonology consists essentially in learning how to limit or suppress innate processes—innate in the sense that the speech apparatus lends itself to particular kinds of use. This progressive limitation of processes is observable in the development from child phonology to adult speech. Furthermore, the systematicity of language acquisition itself seems to be responsible for and explain much of the regularities of phonological systems including diachronic change. Morphophonemic rules, on the other hand, seem to be learned during the course of acquisition. Thus, only phonology is natural in a strict sense. The crucial differences between processes and rules listed in Donegan — Stampe (1979) systematically reflect this observation:

χ

Introduction

the former have synchronic phonetic motivation, the latter may lack it, as they often are remnants of processes easily obscured by historical changes and grammaticalization; processes are applied unconsciously whereas rules primarily fulfill requirements other than phonological ones; processes apply in phonological (prosodic) environments and contexts, rules in morphological domains. The difference also becomes obvious with respect to external evidence. Only processes apply in language games, slips of the tongue, in the pronunciation of a second language, and in the adaptation of loan words. In phonostylistics processes tend to spread; rules do not. Thus, speakers of Northern Standard varieties of German regularly transfer or generalize processes like voicing of prevocalic /s/ to /z/ in second language acquisition or in casual speech but never spontaneously use a morphophonemic umlaut when learning English. Speakers of Italian are wellknown for imposing the characteristics of their prosodic phonology (syllable-timed rhythm, breaking of clusters, epenthetic vowels, etc.) in second languages learned as an adult which differ from their own in these respects, but they do not do so with accentual properties of their language which are due only to diachronically explainable right-headed accentuations of historically compounded verb structures. Classical Natural Phonology divides segmental processes into two types, fortitions and lenitions. Whereas the former arise from acoustic and perceptual considerations and thus contribute to making speech more easily perceptible, the latter allow for greater ease of articulation. The function of processes is to adapt language to the limitations and needs of both speakers and hearers. A process simply ameliorates an articulatory difficulty present in its input structure or rectifies a perceptual difficulty, be it segmental, sequential, or prosodic. Paradigmatic processes which give rise to phoneme inventories and to phonological representations are by definition fortitions. For vowel systems Donegan (1978) showed how a universal theory of vocalic processes functions to explain the universal symmetries of vowel inventories and how virtually the same set of processes captures phonetic representations, historical change, dialect, sociolect and stylistic variation, borrowing, etc. The opposing process pairs of tensing - laxing, raising - lowering, and bleaching - coloring not only produce the relatively unmarked vowel /a/ in their most unlimited application but also by successive limitations produce the set of concrete underlying vowel systems. And, syntagmatically, these processes also give rise to phonetic representations. In syntagmatic derivation all morphology precedes phonology (thus rules precede processes) and within phonology prosody precedes segmental phonological changes and fortitions apply before lenitions. Prosodic processes may constitute the domain of segmental changes and may themselves reapply (resyllabification, foot restructuring, flattening of word or phrase accentual patterns, etc.). Much of the ongoing research in Natural Phonology at the time of this writing is dedicated to various aspects of prosody: rhythm, accent, and the syllable as an

Introduction

xi

organizing element in speech production (Donegan — Stampe 1978 and 1983 and the contributions in the present volume by Dressier — Madelska, Mayerthaler, Dziubalska, Loporcaro, and Hurch). The dichotomy of paradigmatic vs. syntagmatic is taken as underlying natural principles of structuring (e.g., syllabification) which may vary in concrete contexts of realization (as resyllabification during the course of a derivation). It is not, of course, our intention here to deliver a complete introduction to the theory of Natural Phonology. We have only provided a brief sketch so that the uninitiated can start to frame the chapters in this volume, which, it is our hope, will help to clarify some issues. For a fuller introduction we refer the reader to Donegan — Stampe (1979). The contributions in this volume present a snapshot of current studies in the field of Natural Phonology. They continue the thinking of Stampe (1973), which addressed matters of segmental phonology, but this collection of papers also reflects the developments and applications of the thinking of Natural Phonologists to a variety of other concerns, including diachrony, dialect variation, cognition, prosody, typology, neologisms, the interaction of phonology sensu stricto with morphology, and applications to computational issues.

4. Natural Phonology and the study of naturalness in other components The volume also contains one expression of naturalism in linguistic thought not foreshadowed in Stampe's work, namely its extension to other components of grammar (cf. Dressier, this volume). Since the middle of the seventies, a theory of Natural Morphology has been developing in Europe and has, in fact, become one of the leading research paradigms in the field of morphology. The first comprehensive publication on Natural Morphology is Dressier — Mayerthaler — Panagl — Wurzel (1987), which offers a systematic presentation of the three distinctive approaches to the theory of Natural Morphology: Dressler's semiotic functionalism, Mayerthaler's use of markedness, and Wurzel's naturalness and congruity. But what is important here is that the research paradigm of Natural Morphology, while distinct in many important aspects from classical Natural Phonology, has had important influences upon the current practice of Natural Phonology. A recent workshop entitled "Naturalness within and across components" was organized in connection with the Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea in Cracow, August 1993. This workshop addressed issues which, although they originated as influences of Natural Phonology on morphology, are now seen to

xii

Introduction

have repercussions for the study of naturalness in phonology. These issues are most explicitly formulated in W. Mayerthaler (1982) and Dressier (1985a). Dressler's volume has particular relevance for the papers presented here. For Dressier naturalness is a relative matter, both for processes and for morphonological rules. In Dressier (1985a) he proposes a model in which the interaction of phonology and morphology in morphonology is gradual. Processes may be less than fully natural and morphonological rules may have a natural foundation to varying degrees. Most important, the resulting scale of naturalness can be evaluated along the lines of a semiotic model already well established for morphological analysis. Phonetic explanation of phonological matters—historically the central thrust of Natural Phonology—becomes only one of several aspects of naturalness in phonology. From another angle, W. Mayerthaler (1982) opts for a proposal which, in important respects, is based on C.-J. Bailey's work on markedness theory. Just as Dressier treats signs as more basic than phonology, markedness for Mayerthaler is, as it were, pre-existent to phonology. Thus phonetic explanation is just one factor, albeit a very important one, in the evaluation of naturalness. Another research paradigm which, for theoretical reasons, has many interesting points of contact with the study of naturalness in language is one which includes prototype theory and cognitive linguistics (at least in its non-structuralist varieties). G. Nathan has argued in various publications (including this volume) that there are many compatible points in the two approaches and he redefines the units of phonology in the light of prototype theory. In this book we have not wanted to exclude any ideas from the various models of naturalness that the individual authors opt for. The Bern workshop was organized, in part, with the intention of discussing, delimiting, and reconciling different and sometimes conflicting theoretical approaches to phonology in a natural framework. We hope that our collection reflects this intention. Bernhard Hurch Graz Richard A. Rhodes Berkeley June 1994

Natural Phono(morpho)logy: A view from the outside1 Rajendra Singh 3H*t1M k f o c T PI « Bäumkin. Subsequently the suffix changed as the result of historical processes to -chert. The phonological condition which triggered umlaut, the vowel i in the suffix, is no longer present, but the suffix -chen continues to trigger umlaut even when it is added to new forms. For example, Elefant, a loan word, has the diminutive Elefäntchen,"11

3.4.3. Well-formedness

conditions

I still believe phonotactic well-formedness conditions provide a better characterization of the knowledge the speaker can be legitimately said to have than even relativized processes.

18

Singh

In order to maintain my claim, I must show that I can provide a reasonable explanation of processes that seem to bypass my positivist well-formedness conditions. I am thinking of cases like the devoicing of word-final obstruents in languages that don't have any obstruents, let alone voiceless ones, in that position (cf. Stampe 1987, Major 1987). My argument has been that well-formedness conditions are what is learnt in learning the phonology of the socially encrusted institution sometimes called language. Language is the set of conditions that block what Stampe calls processes, or, to put it differently, the phonology of a language is, primarily, the set of conditions that inhibit these processes. They don't constitute the phonology of the speaker, for he, and he alone, has the power to change it, and that is precisely what he does when he pronounces a word-final voiced obstruent in a foreign word as a voiceless one because before that his language did not have any. If he borrows it with the help of epenthesis (cf. Major 1987), he is adapting the word to the phonology of his language (cf. Singh 1985); if he borrows it as a voiceless obstruent, he is forcing his language to adapt to the word. I do not, in other words, see why I cannot provide a picture of what often passes for a language without parading it as a picture of the native speaker. The native speaker is, after all, both the carrier and the changer of his language. Whether the changes he wants to introduce will become the norm of tomorrow or not is, obviously, another matter. Whereas SPE and its offshoots, including Natural Generative Phonology, want to characterize the speaker as a derivative extension of the phonology empirically deduced from distributional regularities, I accept the Stampean view that the speaker is larger than his "phonology", and see the phonology of a language as a constrained derivative delimitation of the speaker. These limitations are what he has to learn, or, more precisely, what he has to learn are the conditions the inevitably skewed distributional regularities of his language exhibit. Having learnt them, he has recourse to a universal set of repair strategies whenever these conditions run the risk of being violated, though his bag of tricks also contains things his language never gave him the opportunity to use. It is also important to point out that the well-formedness conditions of his language that constitute the essence of its phonology are not all language-specific primitives: some of them are merely individual instantiations of universal phonotactic well-formedness conditions. These can and should be factored out. What the speaker has to learn is the set of wellformedness conditions that are truly language-particular or idiosyncratic. He learns them by finding out that the processes with which he is endowed must be inhibited or suppressed under these conditions, but the empirical content of his knowledge is those conditions of phonology. The acquisition of phonology (Li or L2) is the acquisition of those conditions. The argument is that well-formedness conditions are as close as we can hope to get to formulating the knowledge the speaker can be legitimately said to have. It is obvious that what happens is that the processes get delimited qua processes in ways we cannot even begin to describe. The well-formedness conditions, I am willing to

Natural Phono( morpho)logy

19

admit, may describe only accessible knowledge. What actually happens in and to the inner (neurological) code is not yet open to any intelligent guesses, given the severe limitations of our knowledge about such matters. Quine's celebrated gavagai puzzle is the problem here. Unable to know the program in the automaton, the best we can do is to say that under such and such conditions the program, whatever it is, does not run. It is hard to assert that those conditions are an integral ontological part of the program, but even harder to get any closer to it. I plead guilty, in other words, to the insightful accusation of Wojcik — Hoard (1991; this volume), but with an explanation and, if I may say so, a serious problem for those who are perhaps right at a slightly different level.

3.4.4. Antithesis and other problems While I am impressed by the empirical and conceptual clarity with which Natural Phonology has demonstrated the role inter-modular competition or conflict plays in language change, I'm not sure if it has paid enough attention to intramodular competition or antithesis, as Vennemann (1989) calls it. This possible importance of antithesis in resolving some diachronic puzzles is suggested in Dressier (1974) but, to my knowledge, has not been systematically explored. I believe the dialectic of antithesis is as important as that of conflict, and must be taken up again outside of sociophonology and aphasia, where it has been in focus. The conceptually rich note Mayerthaler (1981:62) adds to the Jakobsonian aphorism (1968 [1971]:706) that language is prejudiced in favor of the speaker provides me with an additional reason for not believing in what has sometimes been called the second lexicon (cf. Vennemann 1974), though Natural Morphology sometimes seems every bit as Paninian as generative morphology. Suffice it to say that I have some difficulty with all morpheme-based theories of morphology, for reasons sketched out in Singh — Martohardjono (1988) and Ford — Singh (1992). As the theory of morphology referred to in (2.3) above postulates bidirectional rules of word-formation, I must also add that I have some difficulty with Dressler's (1976:329) disarming question particularly because I would have thought that the predicate of evaluation and social prerequisites of language of which Wurzel (1989) speaks could easily take care of the fact that back-formations are as uncommon as they indeed are. I have similar difficulties with Wurzel's ruling out substitution as a morphological operation. Wurzel (1989:46) wants to rule out substitution or truncation essentially on the ground that the result of the operation of substitution is hard to accommodate within his notion of modificative morphology (and the operation is clearly neither additive nor subtractive, the only two other types he entertains). Kiparsky (1982) invokes similar arguments.

20

Singh

The arguments seem to me to result from the attempt to save units below the word, and such Paninian accounts as Kiparsky's and Wurzel's clearly leave out 33.3% of morphological relatedness. The elegance of nomin as the root for nominate and nominee omits the fact that -ee attachment is, apparently, not as free as the rule that attaches it will lead us to believe; -aux [o] attachment in French is similarly constrained: it doesn't attach to any arbitrary root but only to those that terminate their singulars in -al. As far as Wurzel's otherwise penetrating analyses are concerned, I can only plead that the bidirectional strategies get all that he wants and more (cf. Ford — Singh 1984 and 1985). Notice that the incorporation of substitution eliminates one possible threat to the word-based nature of morphology. Cases like Afro-American can also be handled similarly. The remaining counter-example types, illuminatingly enumerated in Dressier (1988a), will require a larger defense of my view of morphology, but here my purpose is only to argue that Wurzel's reasons for not incorporating substitution strike me as less than convincing: 33.3% is a considerable loss even in these inflationary times! As far as Matthews' classical Paninian examples from Latin are concerned, I shall simply refer the reader to Ford — Singh (1984, 1985, and 1992), and not go into the matter partly because Matthews is just a simple Paninian and not a natural one and partly because it will save some space. Productivity must take what I shall call computational complexity in addition to system congruity and class stability into account. The reason the /z/ plural in English is productive as opposed to other plural markers is that there is nothing common in the phonological structure of the nouns in which it appears (cf. Kuczaj — Borys 1988) and because that fact leads the acquirer to postulate the rule to slap on a /z/ to any old (new) noun he wants to pluralize (for whatever reasons, including his having forgotten it). My biggest problem seems to be the impression that I have, and I hope it is wrong, that although Natural Phonology and Natural Morphology define naturalness in terms of "biological and social prerequisites of natural language" (Wurzel 1989:202), they are made somewhat more relativistic in morphology than seems warranted. Just as phonological knowledge can be represented by phonological processes, howsoever they are to be formalized, morphological knowledge must be representable in nonnegotiably nonrelativist schemas of some sort, their relativization being left to non-biological factors. It seems to me that whereas generative grammar insists on too rich a hard-wiring, Natural Morphology suggests too little, surprisingly because it has all the means at its disposal to get the typological and language-particular facts right. Competence, after all, must be, as Natural Phonology beautifully shows, our potential and not merely the system underlying what we normally end up doing even if it is the system of naturalness. I have already suggested that the biological prerequisite, the secure guard-rail of Nature, requires only that all morphological relatedness be captured through one schema-type universally, and that its concretization and relativization, to be

Natural Phono(morpho)logy

21

subjected, of course, to Dressler's and Wurzel's predicates of evaluation, should be left to particular languages and lexica. This relativization, however, cannot affect the form which contains language-specific schemas. Once contribution of the secure guard-rail in question is specified, both conceptually and representationally, the matter can be hopefully handled with other prerequisites. I also have considerable difficulty with the use by Natural Phono(morpho)logy of the notion of conversion in morphology. The zero-derivation approach assimilates the relatedness in question to the concept of morphological derivation according to which morphologically complex items are derived from their simplex counterparts by postulating zeros in cases that seem to depend for their interpretation on identical forms belonging to another category. The main problem with this approach is that it is not always clear as to what is derived from what, and historical evidence sometimes runs counter to what would appear to be the synchronic direction of derivation. The advantage this approach has lies in its ability to present a unified theory of morphological operations by assimilating them all to derivation. The conversion approach seems to lose on both counts: it sets up a new category called conversion without conclusively coming to terms with the question of priority, for what is converted into what is just as tricky as what is derived from what (cf. Sanders 1988). The identity approach does not set up a special category and totally bypasses the priority question. It simply claims that in the strategy schema [ X ] a [X']ß, X and X" can be identical if α * β. This condition is necessary in order to avoid the construal of the relationship amongst the different senses of a word belonging to a particular grammatical category as morphological. That polysemy is not a matter of morphology should require no argumentation. It is important to emphasize that in the projection model, the strategy schema remains exactly the same as for other matters of lexical relatedness. Null is simply one of the values I can assume without affecting anything. I also think that Natural Phono(morpho)logy does not take its logic to its conclusion, particularly in morphology, possibly because of its heritage, almost as Paninian as that of generative morphology. Consider, for example, the idea of exceptions in morphology. Phonological theory does not seem to allow any and at least some theories of syntax do not need them. If the lexicon is a repository of exceptions (cf. Bloomfield 1933, Chomsky 1965) what does it mean to have exceptionality emerge out of there? Are adjectives that take -ity exceptions to the 'rule' that attaches -nessf If not, why not, or, more precisely, how could there be exceptions in morphology? The purpose of morphological rules is to establish lexical relatedness and not to designate some words as exceptions. As languages typically accomplish specific morphological complexity in a number of mutually competing ways, morphological rules end up subdividing the lexicon, but they don't have to create or nurture exceptions. Thus, German has half a dozen rules to form plurals and English almost the same number of ways to get denominal verbs. Sure, some of these ways apply to more words and are used more often, but that is

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Singh

because of other considerations, other naturalnesses. All that is left is suppletion but suppletion cannot possibly be a matter of morphology. That requires both formal and semantic similarity. The right metalanguage for morphology, in other words, is bound to expose exceptionality in morphology for what it really is: an artifact. Another big problem I have is the fact that Wurzel (1989) almost concedes the Kolmogrovization of linguistics practiced in its least ungrounded form by Labov and his followers (for arguments, see Singh —Ford 1989).

4. Recent contributions 4.1. Introduction In this part of the paper, I turn to some of the other papers in this volume. Because of limitations of space, I shall restrict myself to those papers that seem to be of general theoretical interest, regretfully because many of the papers on which I shall not be able to comment contain subtle and insightful analyses of rich arrays of facts. As Dressier's paper touches on everything and more, I shall take them up in the reverse alphabetical order.

4.2. Wojcik — Hoard Wojcik — Hoard (this volume) correctly draw our attention to the ghost of the Alternation Condition, originally proposed as a constraint on abstract representation but practically interpreted as a license for the position that only morphophonology is phonology, that still haunts the corridors of generative phonology. As far as psycholinguistics is concerned, it seems there are two kinds: (i) the kind that operates with relatively thin descriptions and hopes, despite Quine, to find what linguistic programs we humans have and (ii) the kind that operates with "thick" descriptions and wants to find out what speakers do with what the linguist says they have at their disposal (cf. Singh forthcoming b). Apparently, Frauenfelder — Lahiri (1989) are pleading for a synthesis without recognizing that their point de depart makes such an effort impossible. Lexical Phonology and Morphology is not only unrelated but also unrelatable to speech-processing considerations (cf. Robitaille 1987). Although I agree with Wojcik — Hoard that Natural Phonology provides an illuminating account of phonemic hearing, "the sharp dichotomy" they speak of is, obviously, not unique to Natural Phonology. The interplay of fortition and lenition

Natural Phono(morpho)logy

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certainly reduces the number of candidate forms to be matched against lexical entries. Their discussion of the diagnosis of a non-native /naifs/ is, however, less than clear. Given the non-universality of biuniqueness (cf. Dressler 1985ft and Eliasson 1986, for example), the non-exclusive reliance on phonology is quite understandable as is their desire to give Natural Phonology the central role it deserves.

4.3. Rhodes Rhodes' (this volume) paper picks up a thread that has been present in his thought-provoking work since 1973. The language-dependent relativization of "raw" processes (cf. Rhodes 1974:286) is an important issue, both empirically and conceptually (cf. Rhodes 1988, Singh 1988ft). Rhodes' paper explores that problem in the context of non-salient contrasts displayed by the unstressed vowels of English. His argument is that a distinction between raw, natural processes and their language-specific implementations is needed in order to construct an account of the various unstressed vowel-systems of English because these systems need to appeal to a set of partially overlapping processes. The paper provides clear and rich evidence regarding the various reduced-vowel systems of English, but I shall comment only on his insistence that languageparticular processes must be seen as language-specific instantiations or implementations of universal processes and on his attempts to formalize the heart of the Hegelian problematic (individual/universal) in phonology. These questions are more in focus in Rhodes (1988), where he argues that natural processes "are different from the language-specific instantiations that realize them in three ways: 1) in potential content, 2) in uniqueness and 3) in status as process versus rule" (p. 61) and proposes the formalism utilized in Rhodes (this volume). Although I am quite in agreement with him regarding the ontological distinction he makes, I am not sure if the Labovian variable-color his formalism assumes is entirely pleasing. The variable hierarchization of low and high vowels or tauto- and heterosyllabic vowels ought to follow from theoretical considerations. To state such things in the process, almost ä la Labov, is to admit that it is really an almost entirely arbitrary fact to be learned; something generative phonology has long disguised under what it calls "phonological rules". The explicit stipulation of these factors in language-specific instantiations takes the edge off, reducing them to what processes can be naturally seen as replacing. Perhaps the difficulty is inherent in the sort of formalizations available to us now, but the question must be addressed, without giving up the need to make the distinction Rhodes rightly insists must be made. It is perhaps a bit self-serving, but I may be allowed the illusion that the relativization problem addressed by Rhodes can be solved within generative

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phonotactics rather easily: the language-particular idiosyncracies are assigned to language-particular well-formedness conditions and the universality of processes remains intact under their interpretation, with differences noted earlier and later but not relevant here, as repair strategies. It is, obviously, hard for me to be entirely objective about this, but I would certainly like to see why the alternative I am proposing should not be preferred.

4.4. Pensado Pensado 's (this volume) empirically rich paper addresses the question that troubled Twaddell (1935) considerably and has troubled everyone since. She is reluctant to accept Jakobson's (1971 i?) positivism that refers to fiction as "the firm ground of linguistic analysis" and to the firm ground of the speaker as "the hazy area of introspection" or the fag on de parier hypothesis that takes pieces of fiction far more seriously than it should. She appeals to the Kiparskyan (1968) window of diachrony, now, unfortunately (cf. Singh 1988a:36-37) shut by Kiparsky himself, to throw some useful light on the subject. The contrast in the history of Portuguese primary and secondary nasal vowels leads her to question not only Jakobsonian positivism but also the credentials of the closet structuralist parading as a mentalist. Just as synonymy can be said to result from a willing suspension of disbelief for reasons of discourse, phonological generalizations can be said to result from "undiscriminating perception", and Pensado illuminatingly exploits the unpredictability, sociolinguistic or otherwise, which makes speakers aware of phonetic differences in order to make her case against the algorithmic, positivistic conception of the phoneme that sometimes haunts even naturalist corridors. She draws our attention to the possibility that between phonemes and their intrinsic allophones, "there is really no processing at all", undercutting, substantially, the notion of "derivation", one of the two foundation stones of generativism. In view of claims that other domains of cognition cannot legitimately be said to require multi-strata derivations, language must be seen as nonunique exactly to the extent to which it cannot be said to have them either. She concludes that the phonetic/phonological interface debate (cf. Keating 1988 and Ohala 1990, for example) is perhaps "an artificial result of a badly chosen metaphor", a conclusion Wittgenstein would have endorsed whole-heartedly. She sees the problem grounded in the dialectic of phonological naturalness and semantic differentiation, and finds herself unable to resist the beauty of the Stampean paradox that the nucleus of phonological abstraction is not a result of deliberate linguistic processing but of the lack of it. The resolution of the problem, according to Pensado, resides in the fact that phonological rules—by which she means processes—may hit consciousness, as they apparently do in situations requiring

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sociolinguistic discrimination, and become manipulable without losing their builtin, "on-behalf-of' motivation. Notice that her approach does not reduce phonology to phonetics; it simply rejects the "interface" metaphor for a reason different from Ohala's (1990). The issue is not unrelated to what Rhodes (this volume) calls "saliency", and calls into question the algorithmic definition of the phoneme, rightly, I believe. The evidence presented by Pensado should also be compared with the compelling evidence for allophonic regalia illuminatingly presented by Vennemann (1978). The argument is simple enough: the history of Portuguese shows, Pensado says, that at the point when words, like lumioso 'luminous' and gädo 'cattle' must be said to contain underlying nasal vowels, words such as pensar 'think' and mando Ί send' must be said to contain underlying /VN/ sequences. At this stage, nasalization was considered contrastive for underlying nasal vowels but disregarded as a low-level outcome of VN sequences. Contemporary Western Campidanese Sardinian, she claims, is like that stage of Medieval Portuguese. The fact that Contini — Boe (1972) do not even mention the existence of contextually nasalized vowels in their analysis of Western Campidanese Sardinian is taken by Pensado to be significant evidence for the claim that the two series are perceptually independent, even for the trained linguist, she adds. Aware of the potential danger of playing fast and loose with perceptual criteria, Pensado duly notes that the rise of interpretive or perceptual difference, a difference that leads to what Dressier (1981) calls quasi-phonemes, must involve extremely natural processes. That interpretation and perception must play an important role in the realization of phonological intention is clear from Pensado's examples. They involve the phonologization of apparently low-level, phonetically motivated insertions of intrusive stops, apparently heard long after their actual appearance, or, equivalently, "ignored" for a long time. As I am not an expert on Portuguese or Romance languages, I shall not comment on the empirical content of Pensado's paper. I shall conclude by noting that if the facts are right, and they certainly seem to be to me, Pensado has not only presented an eminently plausible analysis but, like Morin (1988), also re-opened the window that was, unfortunately for generativism, closed by Kiparsky (1985). Her insistence that naturalism needs to go beyond its structuralist heritage should be seen not only as an immanent critique but also as a plea for coming fully to terms with what Wojcik — Hoard (this volume) correctly see as the fundamental difference between Natural Phonology and other phonologies.

4.5. Nathan Nathan's (this volume) clearly written paper is an attempt to show that Natural

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Phonology is clearly embeddable and embedded in what Dressier (this volume) calls "largely acknowledged theses on human nature". The congruence between Cognitive Grammar (Lakoff 1987, Langacker 1987) and Natural Phonology is not, he argues, a fortuitous coincidence but provides independent confirmation of Natural Phonology. The paper also contains other important theses, and I shall take them up first. The first of these has to do with what might be called the infinity of phonology thesis. Nathan's underlining of pronounceability as grammaticality is a particularly welcome move because it allows one to see how the phonology of the speaker may be tapped rather than be seen merely as a derivative extension of the phonology of his language, a point that need not be belabored here. I must, however, relish, with you, repeating his "as if the ability to pronounce foreign words or the behavior of language-games were external to the principles governing the pronunciation of a language". The fact that foreign words sometimes end up changing the laws of pronunciation has to do with bilingualism and its transmission (cf. Singh 1985) and does not in any way vitiate the simple elegance, albeit with a cutting edge, of Nathan's formulation. Equally pleasing, and, therefore, valid is his emphasis on the bodily grounding of the metaphors we live by, though I find his assessment of the instrumental abridgement of reason called science since the 17th century (cf. Gadamer 1981:155ff) somewhat more charitable than mine (cf. Lele — Singh 1991). He correctly takes to task disembodied classificatory objects and substantially stripped lexical representations. Words seem to exist in their full natural phonemic glory, and, may be, even with the additional regalia suggested by Vennemann 1978 (cf. Vennemann 1978 and Martohardjono — Singh 1992). The distinction between rules and words seems to have escaped the attention of generative representational enthusiasm (despite its earlier awareness of distinctions such as sentence/sentoid [cf. Staal 1967]). Needless to say I agree with him not only about the binary distinction schema/representation (where the latter term implies "full") but also about the two types of schemas he suggests for phonology, provided, of course, the process part is seen somewhat differently. Although I do not mean to quibble or cast doubts on the notion of prototypicality, the move away from pure, pristine Platonic categories, hard-wired ä la Chomsky (1980) or not, must, in part at least, be attributed to or seen in the light of Wittgenstein's Family Resemblance Principle. Nathan's North-American cooks, assuming there are some, actually illustrate the Family Resemblance Principle rather well, and there is no reason why the "radial" is not simply a joint family. And Wittgenstein would not have disagreed with our inability to predict the extension of what we, not he, call meaning. Nor would he find anything to disagree with in Nathan's illuminating illustration with the voiceless alveolar stop [t]. But I am quibbling, perhaps because centrality seems to me to be a function of where one is.

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Nathan's thoughtful characterization of phonological processes as extension principles rather like metonymy and metaphor deserves serious empirical and conceptual elaboration, and his lucid articulation of Stampe's pregnant "on behalf o f ' deserves to be read at least by those who find anything more than pedagogical repetition oracular. The fact that Sommerstein (1977:234) found it necessary to add a footnote explaining Stampe's "North o f ' shows precisely why such accounts are needed

4.6

Mayerthcder

Assuming, though not without some argumentation, the validity of the syllable, and drawing on Vennemann's (1988) impressive compendium, Mayerthaler (this volume) argues that the parameter of syllable structure is a resolution of two competing strategies, both dependent on accent type, for optimizing contrast. She takes accent to be the primary determining factor because of its pervasively dominant role in language (cf. Stampe 1979). Taking a homological, preferential point of view, she provides an impressive list of fully verifiable correlations. These collapse into two major principles, one motivated by articulatory considerations and local perceptual ones and the other by non-local perceptual ones. As I have not, unfortunately, had the time to verify the empirical correlations proposed, I shall comment only on a few non-empirical matters. First, I wonder precisely what role foot-structure can be said to play in the non-peripheralizing type. I also wonder what the mirror images of these principles would be for phonologies that seem to have much less to do with accent. My last query, obviously dear to me, has to do with her footnote 8. Her answer to the question posed there may help understand why it is possible for someone to undermine the syllable (cf. Dziubalska-Kotaczyk, this volume).

4.7.

Hurch

Hurch's (this volume) illuminating account of accent, which could, and perhaps should, have been called "Another essay on stress" (pace Halle — Vergnaud 1987), deals with the heart of the matter, the generative assumption that all stress placement is a matter of phonology. Although I would prefer to say that nonphonological accentuation, accentuation not derivable from prosodic/rhythmic well-formedness conditions, can be, and sometimes is, constitutive of the morphology, as in textbook English examples like prdtest vs. protest routinely cited in favor of what the generative tradition calls the cycle, Hurch puts his finger

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squarely on the problem and we should be indebted to him for his profound remark that nonphonological accentuation is in fact the negation of prosody. At this level, my only comment would be that perhaps we need to subdivide further both phonological and non-phonological accentuation: the former into primary and secondary and the latter into morphological and lexical. The particular focus of his paper is, to borrow from Stowell (1979), the unification of accent systems under richly differentiated preference scales, which include the uncontroversial binary over non-binary feet, the somewhat controversial preference postulated for falling accent patterns, the scale that correlates the structural depth of accent with the size of the domain, and his extremely elegantly formulated Quantity Sensitivity Scale that puts notational exercises such as Hayes (1987) into perspective. I do, however, wonder if, given the clear recognition of what Hurch refers to as the semantical body, the stem > affix scale needs to be stated at all. In cases where the affix appears to take precedence, it is apparently lexically marked as such (cf. English non-). The precedence of the derivational piece will also seem to follow from the same semantic principle. Affixes are likely to get their accent not because it is placed on them but because it is displaced on them as some of them attract it by creating phonological configurations that cause a displacement for rhythmic reasons (cf. Schane 1979). In effect, the accentuation of affixes seems to me to follow largely from the fact that whereas containers of Hurch's semantical body have their accents marked in the lexicon, affixes rarely do. Hurch's equally illuminating functional differentiation of accents, following Wurzel's (1980) proposal, does, however, seem to me to leave more room for phonologically-determined accentuation than seems warranted, for even languages like Hindi seem to use accent for morphological purposes, and rumors about French have begun to circulate. I am inclined to believe that accent placement can actually never be phonological; at most it is accent displacement or adjustment that can be purely phonological, except, of course, in languages in which it is non-phonemic. If it is phonemic, it is necessarily morphophonemic, and, hence, morphological. Displacement and adjustment processes can, of course, be morphologically or phonologically motivated. This is not surprising. What would be surprising would be a language that used its rhythmic resources to make phonemic distinctions but did not use them for signaling morphological function or that did not have any constraints on its rhythmic patterns the violations of which did not require metrical repair of the sort the English Rhythm Rule effects. I realize that the hypothesis proposed above is somewhat unorthodox, and stated without empirical reanalyses of putative cases of phonological accent sounds like a private opinion, but to unpack it would need space I don't have. I am, therefore, content to leave it as a somewhat contentious counterpoint, a case of vigrah. Notice that my insistence on the non-phonologicality of accents is fully compatible with Hurch's elaboration of Wurzel's concept of system adequacy. The nonphonologicality of the accent in Italian virtü is indeed entirely expected.

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The American structuralist view that accent in English is phonemic generally meant that it was lexical and the generative view that it is rule governed has generally meant that it is not phonemic and has nothing to do with morphology. Hurch's enlightened account finally opens the door to proper understanding of accent, and, mutatis mutandis, of tone. I have argued that, in some sense, he does not go far enough, but he certainly goes farther than anybody else. I'm confident that the gap between our views is narrower than it appears at the moment. To Hurch's penetrating critique of representational manipulation of largely incorrect domain-decisions in the generative enterprise, something Goldsmith (1989) honestly acknowledges, I can only add that the tradition is consistent with itself. Halle (1959) sensitizes underlying representations to phonotactic considerations (cf. Singh 1990ft and Thelin 1975), and Myers (1987) uses syllable structure to condition morphophonemic rules — he syllabifies the t of gratitude, natural, and metric with the first vowel in order to "predict" the shortness of that vowel despite the fact that it is not glottalized as honest-to-God syllable-final /'s in English are. And we all know that the cycle is largely a name for onion-skin morphological structure, the need for which can be made to disappear in any number of ways, including non-sequential rule application and simultaneous domain application. The fact that this manipulation produces not only the peripherality condition but also exceptions to exceptions to it, as chez Harris (1983), is a reminder that the attempt to force morphonology, to use an illegal term, (particularly accentual and tonal morphonology) into phonology is doomed to failure, despite the three-dimensional imagination of some representational enthusiasts.

4.8. Dressier A sentence I wish I had never written reads as follows: "Some may argue that [Dressler's Morphonology] presupposes familiarity with an enormous body of literature, but I feel that someone not familiar with most of that literature should perhaps be doing things other than phonology" (Singh 1986:346). Keeping up with Dressier is an almost full-time, though thoroughly enjoyable, occupation. What makes it enjoyable is the fact that he insists on making full sense of things by taking them, at all levels of analysis, to where they must be taken. The difficulty comes from the fact that life is short, and he keeps pointing to things that NorthAmerican literature quite comfortably ignores, apparently for functional reasons. Dressler's (this volume) illuminating paper takes stock of what has been accomplished in the last twenty years and suggests questions that should keep us busy for the next twenty years. The focus of his paper is the gap in Natural Phonology that emerges by looking at the results of naturalist explorations of various other aspects and components of language.

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As the present paper by Dressier is conceptually richer and more ambitious than most of his other papers I have had the pleasure of reading, it is difficult to comment on all parts of it without, in effect, proposing, at least in outline form, a full theory. I shall, accordingly, restrict myself to the few things that seem important to me. I take the main point of his paper to be that it is possible now to work towards a Natural Linguistics, which includes Natural Phonology, Natural Morphology, Natural Syntax, and Natural Text Linguistics. Along this dimension, I regretfully note the absence, with the outstanding exception of sociophonology (cf. Dressier — Wodak 1982), of Natural Sociolinguistics, a version of which I have tried to sell under the name of Critical Sociolinguistics (cf. Singh — Lele — Martohardjono 1988, Lele — Singh 1989, and Singh et al. forthcoming), but shall not take it up here in any detail except to note that if naturalness is the dialectic between the biological and the social, no theory of language and naturalness is going to be complete without a sociolinguistics that goes beyond correlational exercises of the sort with which Labovians seem intent on flooding the world. ^ This is particularly important because it is possible to argue that the logic of psychology is the logic of the semiotic interaction of a social group or of, if you like, the logic of ideological communication (VoloSinov 1986:13). If the psychological is regarded as anything more than a tenant lodging in the social edifice, it is not clear how the metaphysical difficulties associated with Fodorian irreducibility can be avoided, except to admit that that is merely a fagon de parier. Even if VoloSinov's (1986:15) plea, that what is needed is profound and acute analysis of the word as a social sign before its psychological role can be understood, can be dismissed as an understandable exaggeration, the grain of truth inherent in it must be listened to. "The reality of the inner psyche", VoloSinov (1986:26) said, "is the same reality as that of the sign." and, "The correlate of the natural is social." (34) On a more familiar terrain, I cannot but wholeheartedly agree with Dressler's repeated emphasis on external evidence. As someone who is on record having argued that perhaps internal evidence is no evidence at all (cf. Singh 1988α), I must underline the fact that external evidence is crucial for determining the shape of things where the experiential component is crucially missing, as in, for example, phonotactic acceptability. The plea for external evidence does not solve Quine's puzzle but, hopefully, takes us one step closer to determing whether the Newtonian laws of linguistics hold for mental grammars, as is generally alleged, at least by some. Within phonology itself, Dressier offers a careful weakening of the innatist hypothesis of Stampe, introducing the crucial variable of maturation for which the late emergence of epenthesis (cf. Oiler 1974 and Ford — Singh 1980) provides some evidence. I am personally particularly delighted to see his characterization of natural processes as "universally likely reactions" to difficulties to be overcome. I also agree, as I believe he knows, that the contribution from the original hand of

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Nature, in Chomsky's interpretation of Hume's celebrated phrase, is substantially poorer than Chomsky would have us believe. I am, however, somewhat more skeptical of Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) (cf. Rumelhart — McClelland 1986) or any other version of autopoiesis (cf. Maturana — Varela 1980) for it leaves the fact that there is only a restricted number of repair alternatives unexplained. It falters, as Dressier himself points out, at the altar of convergence. I am, however, not as confident as he seems to be that the universal limitations of phonetic processors and other cognitive bases will yield the right results. Again, epenthesis comes to mind: its phonetic motivation, as compared to that of gardenvariety assimilation for example, is hard to see. In relation to Dressler's maturational addendum to Natural Phonology, it is perhaps worth pausing to reflect on why phonology grows, or may be said to. The standard assumption seems to be that the acquisition of phonology is complete long before the acquisition of morphology. I suspect that the phonology that grows is a contribution from global redundancies the child can extract from his ongoing acquisition of morphology. Perhaps a concrete example will clarify things. On hearing cat, dog, rose, cats, dogs, and roses the child must postulate three rules of morphology, or at least two. It is only when he comes to perceive that sibilant + sibilant coda clusters are globally disallowed in English that he abstracts the epenthetic vowel and puts it in his phonology in the form perhaps of a minor algorithm to be called upon when needed. Whereas Dressier seems to want to attribute the growth of phonology to the increase in the phonetic information to be handled, I think that phonology grows at least partially because abstract operational capability increases. Although Dressler's maturational addendum is a welcome move, I must say that I find it somewhat difficult to be saddled with Yoruba word-final devoicing of French words, for it was precisely this example that was offered to me in 1984 as a counter-example to my admittedly overstated claim that loan adaptation was a matter of well-formedness conditions. I thought it was a valid counterexample, and I still do. Dressler's view that devoicing should be made available as a repair strategy will not, I am afraid, do the trick because a repair strategy that does not repair is a problematic construct. I am also somewhat puzzled by Dressler's demand for massiveness, though as Pulleyblank (1983) and Major (1987) have shown, the phenomenon is indeed not rare. My surprise is based, in other words, on the nature of that demand. The numbers game, I believe, is better left to applied mathematicians, and I hope Dressier will consider my plea. How good my own answer is to the Yoruba puzzle is, of course, for us all to decide together. Dressier is, undoubtedly, right about the lack of work that has significant bearing on parameters and typology. The generative work on parameters in phonology is, at the moment, equally inadequate, even woefully, if Booij (1983), for example, is any index. Dressier himself proposes some suggestive correlations in "morphonology", but, he correctly points out, even the outline of a phonological

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typology does not seem available. I suspect that such an enterprise must await a clear delineation of what could be called a phonological parameter. These will have to come, I believe, not from generative notational exercises to reduce variability in largely ad hoc representation-dependent decisions but from the work of distinguished phoneticians as Abercrombie (1973), Laver (1980) and Ladefoged (1980). The grid for defining the reference points along which parameters have to be constructed can and must be extracted from this work. As usual, external evidence can help. We should perhaps look at what comedians and mimics do in order to pass muster in a language or a variety they do not normally use. There are, of course, matters that go beyond the neutral setting and the phonatory and articulatory systems, and these will have to include parameters of prosodic complexity and their linkages with morphology (cf. Hurch this volume). By putting Natural Phonology in a larger context, Dressier is able to draw our attention to gaps in our knowledge, and his rich programmatic outline is as welcome to this outsider as it must be to the privileged insiders. I cannot, however, resist the temptation of explicitly adding external sandhi that needs to be explored as a phonological parameter (cf. Andersen 1986). Neither can I resist speculating on why phonological parameters remain largely unexplored. Is it possible that that lack is a result of phonology's obsession with distinctiveness and opposition? It is the similarities that cut across the differences that define a language, and it is time to explore them. That somersault should be relatively easy for Natural Phonology because it was, after all, Natural Phonology that first turned the opposition theory on its head by arguing that what the child was learning was not how to make an opposition but how to suppress the tendency to neutralize it (cf. Darden 1974:v).

4.9. In conclusion Although I realize that I have not been able to do full justice to the papers I have commented on, I must bring this section to an end. I do, however, hope that I have been able to bring out a few things we can profitably talk about for the next few years. Other such matters must be left to the reviewers of this book.

5. A summing up A new synthesis in phonology and morphology, and in fact in linguistics in general, is impeded by what Dasgupta (1985) charitably characterizes as the necessity of relating each piece of research to some particular tradition in order to

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achieve coherence and readability. The splendid isolation of paradigm-bound explorations, however, must be transcended. My plea in the generative court has been that empirically-observed tendencies do not, indeed cannot, constitute limits on our potential, as generativists would have us believe. Competence is a matter of not what we normally do but what we can do. My plea in your functionalist court has been that although what speakers normally do is indeed a matter of naturalness defined ä la Wurzel, there is a set of principles that guide what speakers can do and that cannot be reduced to functional considerations. I shall not dwell on the functionalist tendency to move from an outcome to the source, defined in terms set by the outcome itself, but merely remind you of the dangers, noted and fully appreciated by theoretically sophisticated minds. I will, however, provide an example to show that though not uncalled for in cases where the generativist turns a tendency into an effect of hard-wiring, functionalism must be kept on leash. Pandharipande (1981) argues that there is a hierarchy of nativization of loans from Sanskrit, Persian, and English and that this hierarchy is explainable on the basis of the attitudes of Marathi speakers towards these languages. She argues, for example, that the old Indie prefix a- is attachable to Marathi nouns but not to English nouns because of these attitudes. The claim is comparable to the claim that the historically Romance suffix -ity is held at bay by English speakers at will. The fact is that a- is a prefix largely for etymologists only. Attitudes, and I shall not discuss here the question of what they really are (cf. VoloSinov 1986, Singh — Lele 1985), can hold the act of borrowing at bay but not what is done with borrowed words if they have to be adapted. One way to phrase what my plea amounts to is to say that function determines not the form but the status of the form. Dressier is surely right when he says that extra-linguistic factors limit "the choice of operations" (1985α:288). I only want to plead for an afterthought, "but not their form", which must be, to use Rhodes' phrase, licensed by what we can for lack of a better word call "archi gram mar", the sort of grammar I have proposed for phonology and morphology. My claim is not that "there is only one human language" (Chomsky 1989) but that there is only one archigrammar and that it licenses all particular grammars directly, i.e. without any interventions from markedness or anything else. Such a view leads to minor modifications. Instead of saying, as Dressier does, "that the child has a collection of universal linguistic operations as conditioned by extralinguistic factors" (1985a:288), we could perhaps say "universal linguistic operations as conditioned in their application" or "universal linguistic operations, whose availability and application are conditioned by extralinguistic factors". Whereas the former fag on de parier seems to allow the possibility that these extralinguistic factors, as variationists are fond of saying, may in fact have an impact on the structures and processes that have traditionally constituted the study of grammar, the latter does not acknowledge that possibility with open arms and denies, rightly I believe, that revisions may strike anywhere.

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The fact that the structures, processes and forms we postulate in our archigrammar will always be subject to Quine's query should not lead us to the belief, for which no evidence seems to exist, that socially produced conditions of availability and application can revise them. One may not have a structure because one was deprived of the opportunity to acquire it, but whatever one has and howsoever sparingly one uses it, one must have it in the only form in which it comes. We may never know the form of archigrammar for certain, but we do seem to know that it is not revisable by Labovian time or space (pace Labov 1980). The fact that it is our fabrication does make it subject to time and space, but that is an entirely different matter. The sort of claim variationists make has nothing to do with sociology of knowledge, and must be rejected. Given the resilience of archigrammar in the face of interlinguistic variation, it is highly unlikely that intralinguistic variation could ever produce the evidence needed to sustain that claim. Within the limits imposed by Quine's query and by sociology of knowledge, archigrammar can actually be said to be, as Bateson (1972) would put it, of zero dimension. It is, of course, not as richly articulated as generativists claim, but neither is it as revisable as variationists would have us believe. Its ability to directly license all particular grammars, which derives from its utter simplicity and what some would call its poverty, also makes it immune to variationist or markedness revisions. In that enterprise, the very existence of highly unnatural phenomena becomes an argument for our potential, even if the why and how of some of them have to be referred to the devil's case list supplied by Dressler (1985a:278). I have no trouble with the appeal to diachrony, for it is clear that there is a substantial grain of truth in Bloomfield's dictum that a language is a book of dead metaphors, at all levels, one might add. It is not an accident, for example, that language-particular phonotactic conditions that cannot be subsumed under the sonority hierarchy generally do not amount to more than a handful of diachronic residues. I am merely pleading that the raw and the rare, to mix my Levi-Straussian and Jakobsonian metaphors, is a salute to human potential, not some pathology. Let me go back to back-formation in morphology. Rare indeed, but neither Marchand (1969) nor Kiparsky (1982) do justice to linguistic competence by treating it only as exceptional. What it shows must be built into a potentialoriented grammar. Its uncommonness can and should be explained in terms of Dressler's "universale of naturalness". Or, even to morphology in general. The archigrammar option I am asking you to consider delivers, I believe, the goods. Notice that the specified and non-specified word-parts can between them give one almost everything one may want— morphemes, roots, stems, affixes, and other objects of wonder since Pänini—except phonesthemes (cf. Mel'Cuk 1982), but, then, who needs them in morphology, for though they may have a certain or charmingly vague semantics associated with them they never play a part in word-formation. To isolate them as units and give

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them a name is, as Bhartrhari might have said, like talking about the horns of a rabbit: sure they exist, but only because nominalists talk about them. As far as the other Paninian entities like roots and stems are concerned, the purpose at hand and the nature and type of language will, as Dressier (1988a) shows, decide what you get and how systematically. But to want them as anything other than secondary outcomes, of no theoretical import, seems neither warranted nor possible, despite learned speakers and "scientists all over the world". It is my fervent hope that Dressier will reconsider the case he thinks (cf. Dressier 1983) their behavior can or does make. The ordinary speaker, I submit, underlines the pointlessness of the game these non-ordinary people play. Sure, individual languages will throw the linguist off the scent by persuading his Brahmanic mind to work with unicorns or rabbits with horns, and some would even argue that the universal is a Sears catalogue. I am, on the other hand, trying to plead that the universal is capable of providing each individual with its reflection and that it is not a Sears catalogue. It is a potential which may assume an almost infinite variety in its actualizations (almost, because man cannot fly). There is, however, no need to play the game in which one says "Bring me the broomstick and the brush which is fitted on it" (cf. Wittgenstein 1953:30). Should the brush be needed separately, it can, of course, be gotten, but that is a different game. We can call the "broomstick" by its name, and negotiate, in style to boot, what Wittgenstein (1953:46) rightly called necessary friction, produced by typological and other games languages and their speakers play. That game is, thanks to the penetrating work of Dressler, Wurzel, and Mayerthaler, largely well understood. In phonology, Rhodes has already made my task easier by pleading that mechanisms required for phonology be licensed by universal processes. The disagreement about the proper formulation of those mechanisms does not affect their licensing. I, of course, see the language-particularity involved as licensed by the domains, and the conditions of well-formedness that can be said to hold in those domains and the licensing authority as a set of elementary operations that are called upon to repair things, and that can appear to take myriad shapes only because the conditions in which they come to rescue vary enormously from phonology to phonology. I believe the relatively late genesis of svarabhakti requires this picture, but perhaps it is no less misleading than any other picture, as both Wittgenstein and Quine, for different reasons, remind us. Perhaps I am, as Wittgenstein (1953:48) puts it, only "tracing around the frame" through which I look at the patterns on the wings of butterflies. I must, however, insist that these patterns are not necessarily the contribution of the hand of biology, which is what Chomsky means when he uses Hume's famous phrase, any more than they are exclusively a contribution of man's sociality. They are merely the mirrors in which the ill-understood fact that no language is an island finds a reflection. The metalanguage or archigrammar I have proposed for phonology and morphology is poor so that the richness of your naturalness can find its natural place, and it is not likely to provide any comfort to

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phrenological enthusiasm. In conclusion, I can only say that it has been a pleasure to have been given the opportunity to appreciate, compare, and confront a remarkably rich tradition of inquiry that, though always dear, I cannot, unfortunately, claim to be my own. It is easy enough to blame our ways of doing science for this, but I shall take full responsibility for gaps and misunderstandings that I am sure characterize my efforts to comprehend your way of making sense of the little corner of the human enterprise we are committed to. Not unaware of the fact that I am not entirely comfortable with three other great traditions—the Paninian, the American structuralist, and the Generative—that I have been fortunate enough to have been exposed to, I can only say that, as the head-piece of this paper makes clear, the Great Indian Grammatical tradition, which Pänini, perhaps despite himself, was a part of, fully licenses what I have attempted to do.

Notes 1.

This is a slightly revised version of an invited lecture given at the International Workshop on Natural Phonology, Berne, Switzerland, September 18-20, 1990. I am grateful to Bernhard Hurch for the invitation to participate in the workshop, for supplying the texts, in good time, on which the second part of this paper is based, and for making other eminently reasonable arrangements. I am also grateful to Geoffrey Nathan for "negotiating" the time I thought I would need to say what needed to be said. Last, but not least, I am grateful to W. Dressier, J. Lele, Y.-C. Morin and J. Reighard for several useful comments on an earlier version of this paper. They are all, however, hereby absolved of any responsibility, empirical, conceptual, or political. And finally, I am grateful to David Parkinson for help far beyond the call of duty. Work on this paper was in part supported by an FCAR grant from the Gouvernement du C ^ b e c and a research grant from S.S.H.R.C., Ottawa.

2. 3.

The translation is from Staal (1972). Quantity adding up to quality is not an uninteresting problem, but I shall not be able to discuss it here. Having mentioned politics in this paper, I cannot resist the temptation of pointing out that it is precisely this lack of sense for the dynamics, particularly the internal dynamics, of things that allowed American analysts of Soviet politics to entertain and even propagate the belief that it could go on indefinitely and that only some shock from outside the system could possibly change it. I regret using the unhappy adjective "phrenological" here and elsewhere in

4.

5.

Natural Phono(morpho)logy

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

37

this paper. "Modular", unfortunately, is ambiguous. This should not be interpreted to mean that structuralist phonology is right. What I mean is perhaps better stated as follows: "The structuralism practiced by generative phonologists seems even more inadequate than the structuralism practiced by those they (generative phonologists) chose to call structuralists." It is only now that the generative brand of structuralism is beginning to even approach what generativists called structuralism. To avoid the charge of practicing the arrogance of hindsight, I provide a more recent example: it is not clear why the generative tradition in morphology generally refuses to seriously consider the non-Paninian possibility that maybe words just don't have any internal morphological structure, something which is strongly suggested by the rich battery of Paninian devices designed to make the internal structure of words inaccessible to morphological operations. The theory of morphology presented in Ford — Singh 1991, to repeat a commercial, takes the possibility that words have no internal structure very seriously indeed. Conditioned by the place where I live, I sometimes use the terms "morphophonology" and "morphonology" interchangeably. "Somewhat incorrectly" because Vennemann's and my appropriation of the term "generative" refers only to its vulgar and uninteresting sense "explicit, formal." Eliasson (1986:91) puts it thus: "Lexical representations characterized in terms of the feature values unmarked (u) and marked (m) must by necessity belong to specific languages and hence constitute, not a facet of, let's say, some 'universal lexicon', but an additional level of individual grammars." For a recent illuminating critique of this sort of markedness, see Desrochers (1990). It is presented as a case against Hooper (1976a:91), who rules out the stripping of conditions on a "morphophonological rule" as a possible evolutionary development. The conditions under which the stripping in question can lead to the "phonologization" of an alternation expressed by Hooper as an MP-rule must be studied very carefully, for even a case of the sort Morin et al. (1990) make is not all that common. Perhaps the real import of the case in question is that I am mistaken in speaking of synchronic, cognitive extractability and diachronic, social generalizability in the same breath. Extraction is apparently not done by speakers, but certain factors may serendipitously bring about a state of affairs that cannot be empirically distinguished from those that Hooper wants to rule out. The rarity of such evolutionary developments is, in this story, a simple consequence of the fact that the happy combinations required are not likely to arise frequently. The generalization of a "morphophonological rule" along the

38

11.

12.

Singh forbidden path I describe does, however, remain unattested For a somewhat different attempt to deal with the case at hand, see Klausenburger (1992). Morin (personal communication) has convinced me that our 1983 assessment of Picard's case is erroneous. The crucial facts are that the deletion of / is found not only with la and les, as was claimed by Picard, but also with le, and in word-initial and word-internal position. The facts, in other words, suggest that / deletion is a garden-variety phonetic rule. I leave this citation untouched, however, lest I be accused of the arrogance of hindsight. Our main point, fortunately, still survives. The appearance on the scene of Language Variation and Change, a journal devoted to variationism, hopefully licenses this somewhat dramatic metaphor. It is interesting to note that the policy statement of the house-journal of the "paradigm" that came into being on essentially methodological grounds (cf. Labov 1978) contains the following statement: "Papers with substantive content will be preferred over articles that are solely argumentative or methodological".

Parti Theoretical

Principles of naturalness in phonology and across components Wolfgang U. Dressier

1. Introduction In this contribution I am going to point out the repercussions of "extraphonological" naturalness theories on Natural Phonology. I will deal particularly with the extralinguistic bases of phonological naturalness (section 2), functionalist theories of science (3), the semiotic foundations of Natural Phonology (4), substantive or external evidence (5), especially that of first language acquisition (5.3), and the three levels of naturalness (6). Classical Natural Phonology (Stampe 1969, 1979, Donegan — Stampe 1979) was a pioneering endeavor to establish and develop the concept of linguistic naturalness in only a single component. As a consequence, morphonology could be defined only negatively, so to speak, as unnatural phonology or as the realm of learned rules which were seen as the negative complement to natural phonological processes. Since then, other areas of linguistic naturalness have been more or less established (cf. Dressier 1990a)—first of all Natural Morphology (cf. Mayerthaler 1981, Wurzel 1984, Dressier et al. 1987, Kilani-Schoch 1988), then—still much less developed—Natural Syntax (see, e.g., Dotter 1990, Mayerthaler — Fliedl 1993), and Natural Text Linguistics (see Dressier 1989a, 1990£). As a result, morphonology could be characterized by reference both to Natural Phonology and to Natural Morphology (Dressier 1985a), and morphopragmatics can arise (Dressier — Merlini Barbaresi 1991) by reference both to Natural Morphology and to Natural Text Linguistics. Thus it is no longer possible to develop Natural Phonology "in splendid isolation", as if phonological naturalness had nothing in common with morphological, syntactic and textual naturalness. Rather we are now compelled to study commonalities and differences between various types of naturalness and to devise both a consistent metatheory and compatible methodologies for all of them. Otherwise we cannot systematically account for the synchronic and diachronic interactions between components and we stand less of a chance of competing successfully with models which encompass all or many components of language (e.g., neostructuralism, systemic grammar, tagmemics, Simon Dik's functionalism, and the various schools of generative and generative-related grammars). Notice in

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particular the enthusiasm among students of Government and Binding Phonology in applying principles of syntax to phonology.

2. Bases of naturalness Classical Natural Phonology concentrated on the phonetic bases of phonology—and this may, partially, explain the widespread misreading of Natural Phonology as reducing phonology to phonetics (e.g., Anderson 1981, who confused Stampe's phonetic motivation of phonological processes with phonetic determination and reductionism, cf. the critique in Dressier 1984, 1985a). However, if cognitive, psychological, and sociopragmatic bases play a role in Natural Morphology, Natural Syntax, and Natural Text Linguistics, then it is highly unlikely that they were negligible in Natural Phonology. Some important nonphonetic factors motivating aspects of phonological naturalness are the following: a) Rhythmic organization of sequential activity is not only a property of speech (production and perception) and music, but of any motor activity, thus rhythmicity in prosodic phonology is simply a special case (cf. Mayerthaler 1982:221 ff; Auer 1990:14). b) There is a semiotic principle of figure and ground (cf. Dressier 1990a:81-2, 91-92) which predicts that figures tend to be foregrounded, grounds to be further backgrounded. As a result, within a contrasting pair or triple, the perceptually more salient partner tends to be further enhanced in perceptual salience, the less salient partner(s) tend to be further backgrounded. Therefore the well-known "rich-getricher" principle of Natural Phonology (Donegan 1985a: 143) may be subsumed under the more general semiotic principle of figure and ground, insofar as the phenomenon that comparatively "weak" elements are more liable to be further weakened rather than strengthened, whereas comparatively "strong" elements are more likely to be strengthened than weakened, can be seen as a phonological consequence of the tendency towards contrast-sharpening between figure and ground, provided that: 1) prosodically strong positions are identified as figures, prosodically weak positions as grounds; 2) the rich-get-richer principle is required to account for strengthening in strong positions and for weakening in weak positions. Thus the rich-get-richer principle ceases to be an ad hoc principle. It can be subsumed under a semiotic principle which holds for perception and the perceptual basis of language in general. An excellent example of a radical application of the figure and ground principle to the phonology of a language is phonological change in Middle Persian as interpreted by Back (1981) (other examples in Back 1991). c) Topological principles of good perceptibility result in gestalt preferences in all components. For example, the proximity law "that near stimuli tend to be

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grouped together" (Löpez-Garcia 1990:124-128) not only supports the demarcation of phonological words (cf. Nathan 1985) but also of syntactic constituents and textual chunks. Of course, this principle is very general and has been put to very different uses in Nathan (1985) and in topological or liminar grammar (e.g., by Löpez-Garcia 1990). d) The "Renschburgsche Hemmung", i.e., an inhibition on repeating an identical operation after an insufficient interval, is, presumably, the basis of both phonological dissimilation and morphological or morphonological haplology (cf. Menn — MacWhinney 1984). e) The universal preference for binary paradigmatic and syntagmatic contrasts (cf. Dressier 1990a:85) is neurologically based (starting with the binary choice between presence and absence of neural firing) and holds not only in phonology (e.g., features, culminative vs. demarcative signals, and other phonological antagonisms, cf. Vincke 1989), but also in morphology (e.g., head vs. non-head), syntax and text (e.g., preference for binary over n-ary figure vs. ground contrasts). f) The consequences of cognitive load and overload (as propounded for frequency relations by G. Fenk-Oczlon, e.g., 1989) demand a systematic study in Natural Phonology as well. For example, Fenk-Oczlon (1989) has related to a principle of cognitive economy the well-known sociophonological phenomenon that frequent words are more liable to undergo backgrounding processes than rare words, viz., the guarantee of a constant flow of information. As a consequence, frequent and therefore relatively uninformative elements need not be as salient as less frequent (more informative) ones. Backgrounding is then a means for diminishing unnecessary salience. Similarly, foregrounding processes may serve to make a highly informative element more salient. g) The concept of prototype, amply used in cognitive linguistics, and also in Natural Morphology, Natural Syntax, and Natural Text Linguistics (cf. Dressier 1990a) seems to be useful in Natural Phonology as well (cf. Nathan, this volume), e.g., in characterizing allophonic, non-neutralizing, contact assimilation processes as prototypical segmental processes (of the backgrounding type). Here a prototype equals a bundle of universal preferences, i.e., the universal phonological preferences for allophonic over phonemic processes, for non-neutralizing over neutralizing processes, for context-sensitive over context-free processes, for context-sensitive processes that index an adjacent rather than a distant context, for assimilatory over non-assimilatory processes (see Dressier 1984:35-45). h) A last example: the interplay between foregrounding processes (more general than fortition processes, cf. Luschiitzky 19886; Dogil — Luschützky 1990) and backgrounding processes (cf. lenition) is based not only on phonetics and general rhythmic behavior (cf. above 2a), but also on the sociopragmatic foundation of communication in the interaction between speaker and hearer (cf. Dressier — Wodak 1982; Dressler — Moosmüller 1991), i.e., rhythmic alternation and socioprag-

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matics are not only secondary intervening variables in the actualization of speech behavior (and occasional sources of unnaturalness) but a sine qua non of the antagonism between foregrounding and backgrounding (cf. also Auer 1990:16). For examples of how these concepts are used, see Madelska — Dressier (this volume), Dziubalska-Kotaczyk (this volume). Of course in underlining such non-phonetic bases of Natural Phonology I do not want to diminish, by any means, the dominant role phonetics plays in the foundations of Natural Phonology (more in Mayerthaler 1982), especially with respect to universal natural processes, the most prominent universal preferences in phonology. These phonetic foundations can be viewed in several ways, one being best represented by Ohala (e.g., 1987) and characterized by Beddor (1991:84) in the following way: "the output conditions of the [scil. phonetic] model are viewed as physical limits which have fairly direct consequences for the behavior of speakerhearers: these phonetic consequences may become incorporated into the phonological system", scil. via diachronic change. This approach, although having correspondences for Natural Morphology, is not the dominant one in Natural Phonology. Practitioners of Natural Phonology instead follow (at least implicitly) a second approach which (in Beddor's well-chosen words, 1991:85) "assumes that speaking and listening are processes governed in part by the biological principle of least effort and that the development of phonological systems is in part an adaptation to this principle". This leads us to functional analyses as summarized in the next section.

3. Scientific theory From the beginning of Natural Phonology on, Stampe's philosophical stand has been anticonventionalist, i.e., instead of positing largely ad hoc axioms and deducing from these the most exclusive testing hypotheses (sometimes called the Galilean style of research, e.g., by Botha 1984), linguistic universals (i.e., preferences) are derived from largely acknowledged theses on "human nature" (cf. section 2). However, in order to operationalize such a stand explicit reference to, and use of, the methodology of a particular scientific theory is necessary. The choice many adherents of Natural Phonology have made, implicitly or explicitly, is functionalism, i.e., an appeal is made to a functional or "teleonomic" theory of science (as in Woodfield 1976), e.g., for allowing statements such as linguistic universals to have the teleology of overcoming substantial difficulties of language performance (e.g., "hardware" difficulties of articulation and perception or "software" psychological difficulties). We can try to give such statements theoretical consistency by inserting them into a functional model which starts with the two

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main functions of language, the communicative and the cognitive ones, and subordinates the two main functions of phonology (i.e., of making language pronounceable and perceivable) to overall communicative function (cf. Dressier 1985a:69, 262ff). Such functional analyses include both property and transition functionalism (cf. Cummins 1984). For example, a natural process represents a transition from one natural phonological class to another one, and has, within a system of phonological semiosis, the function of improving articulation or perception, whereas the distinctiveness of phonemes (sound intentions) is a functional property of a phonological sign system (for a functional phonetic approach, see Lindblom 1990 with references). Evidently a functional stance has consequences for assumptions about the phylogenesis (evolution) of phonology (for a general discussion, see Marquardt 1984; Pinker — Bloom 1990). In all probability, articulatory and perceptual "hardware" originated as exceptions, i.e., they had primary non-linguistic functions, but were recruited for secondary linguistic functions. But phonological "software", at least much of it, is either adaptive (cf. Pinker — Bloom 1990:714, 759, 772; Lindblom 1990) or due to ontogenesis (cf. section 5.3 below).

4. Semiotic foundations If we focus on the sign character of language and if we want to compare the components of language among themselves and language as a whole with other sign systems, such as music or non-verbal communication (e.g., a natural analysis of American Sign Language would be very welcome; for a natural analysis of graphic symbols; see Munske 1990), we need an appropriate metatheory. Semiotics seems to be the best choice, particularly Peircean semiotics as argued for in Dressier (1990a:76-78), for example. Semiotics can be construed, in equivalent ways, either as a relational theory or as an action theory so that phonological processes as actions can be subsumed under human actions in general. As already described in Dressier (1984, 1985a: chapter 10), several semiotic parameters are of value not only in Natural Morphology, Natural Syntax, and Natural Text Linguistics, but also in Natural Phonology. If we deduce, from semiotics and the other bases of phonology (cf. 2.), universal preferences for each of these semiotic parameters and assume that, ceteris paribus, each preferred option thus deduced is also actually preferred over corresponding dispreferred options, we can explain cross-linguistic frequency distributions. 1) The preference for iconicity helps to explain, inter alia, the following asymmetries in cross-linguistic distribution:

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b)

c)

d)

Phonological processes are more frequent than morphonological (learned) rules. This phenomenon can be related to a difference in iconicity, insofar as the input and output of a phonological process are generally in a more iconic relation than those of a morphonological rule, i.e., phonological processes generally change fewer phonological features, and less drastically, than do morphonological rules. Deletion processes are rare (apart from fast/casual speech), because a zero output of a non-zero input is non-iconic. In casual/fast speech, iconicity plays a much smaller role than the function of making pronunciation easier. Phonological processes tend to be regular, because this enhances iconicity, i.e., a diagrammatic relationship between inputs and outputs. Phonological metathesis processes are rare, because they violate the diagrammatic relationship between an input sequence and its corresponding output sequence, i.e., they transform an /AXB/ sequence into a [bxa] sequence.

2) Indexicality preferences explain, inter alia, the following asymmetries: a)

b)

Among postlexical segmental processes, context-sensitive processes are more frequent than context-free ones, because they are indexical, whereas context-free processes are non-indexical (note that postlexical processes are signs, prelexical ones are not). Contact assimilation processes are more frequent than distant assimilation processes, because adjacency between indexical signans and signatum facilitates indexicality.

3) The semiotic preference for (bi)uniqueness, in connection with iconicity predictions, helps explain: a)

b)

why processes are general and productive: because productivity automatically falls out of a biunique relation between input and output (i.e., if both /A/ is always pronounced as [a] and if all instances of [a] derive from /A/, then the process /A/ - » [ a ] is totally productive). why allophonic processes are more frequent than phonemic processes or morphonological rules because they are nearly always nonneutralizing, i.e., they do not produce ambiguity.

4) For the semiotic principle of figure vs. ground, see 2 b) above.

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5. Substantive/external evidence Natural Phonology has been a pioneer in the systematic use of external evidence on a par with internal evidence. Progress both within naturalness theory and outside of it (cf. Singh 1988) has set new standards for such use, especially in the following two respects: 5.1. It is no longer adequate to indiscriminately or speculatively use substantive evidence. What is needed now is systematic empirical investigation as shown in work 1) on second language acquisition by Dziubalska-Kolaczy k (this volume) and Hurch (1986a), 2) on foreign-language perception by Hentschel (1986), or 3) in sociophonology by Moosmüller (1988; 1991; cf. Dressler — Moosmüller 1991). Thus the persuasiveness of anecdotal evidence should be at least as minimal with external evidence as it has long been with internal evidence, and even more thoroughly unpersuasive for the following reasons. 5.2. The validity of external evidence hinges on the theoretical underpinnings of a bridge theory integrating phonological theory and the respective theory underlying the empirical investigation supplying the evidence. Thus I have tried to contribute at least explanatory sketches of bridge theories for sociophonology (Dressier — Wodak 1982), for a related scenario of diachronic change (cf. Dressier 1984), and for phonological paraphasias (cf. Dressier 1988c; Kilani-Schoch 1982). Paragraphs 5.1 and 5.2 should be read as caveats against any "naive" use of external evidence, because although such use may be inspirational in the early days of a theory, it is unscientific when the theory has matured. For the same reasons, one should also be skeptical of casual appeals to "psychological reality" (note Darden's 1985 renunciation of the epithet "psychological"). Finally, it is not self-evident which external phenomena (vouching for the "psychological reality" of phonological hypotheses) should be attributed to phonological principles rather than to "metaphonological" principles (in the sense of Sobkowiak 1991). For example, "puns are among such creations which require, on the part of the speaker, conscious attention to linguistic form and its manipulation" (Sobkowiak 1991:24). This allows the speaker to have recourse to all sorts of operations, not just to phonological processes, and the competence of making puns goes well beyond phonological competence. 5.3. Together with phonetic evidence, the most important substantive evidence for Natural Phonology has come from language acquisition, particularly firstlanguage acquisition of phonology. And here I want to draw attention to a new approach, the model of self-organizing processes, which may provide a bridge theory for the weak claim regarding the innateness of phonological processes (cf. Dressier 1984:30, 1988c:15) as opposed to Stampe's (1969 etc.) strong claim (more cautious is Donegan 19856:26, note 5; see also the discussion in Hurch 1988a).

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Stampe (1969) claims that "the phonological system of a language is largely the residue of an innate system of phonological processes, revised in certain ways by linguistic experience". In contrast, the weak claim restricts this hypothesis on first- (and partially, also natural second-)language acquisition to: "children have to systematically inhibit the process types which are (or become by maturation) available to them". Both claims acknowledge the phonetic basis of phonological processes, but (in his publications) Stampe equates the set of universal processes with the language-innocent state of phonology before children start to restrict, order, or suppress universal processes, cf. Stampe (1980:ix): "in its language-innocent state, the innate phonological system expresses the full system of restrictions of speech". There are important empirical problems with such a strong claim (cf. Dressier 1984:47; 1985a:210f, 252f), especially because natural processes have been observed in small children to be first totally absent or to appear first only in a very limited and even irregular way (which recalls casual speech processes or even morphonological rules), e.g., phonological ("surface") palatalization in Polish or final obstruent devoicing in many languages. Moreover, any similar strong claim would be nonsensical in Natural Morphology, Natural Syntax, and Natural Text Linguistics. In contrast, the weak claim that (substance-based) universal preferences when available to a child at a given stage of extralinguistic and linguistic maturation can be taken up by the child even when contradicted by language-specific facts equally available to the child, is compatible, on all levels, with both natural theories and acquisition evidence. Thus universal phonological processes are not innate themselves but universally likely reactions to phonetic (and other phonologyrelated) difficulties to be overcome. The concept of self-organizing processes in language acquisition (see Karpf 1990) assumes an interplay of genetic preprogramming and of selecting and evaluating postnatal information within and among preferentially coupled neuronal assemblies (which develop into interacting modular systems). In contrast to Chomskyan innateness, much less genetic preprogramming is assumed and not necessarily of an autonomously grammatical nature. Thus a radical view would be to assume for phonology only preprogramming of phonetic processors and of general cognitive principles and the emergence of (non-innate!) phonology as the outcome of the organization and reorganization of processing phonetic information. In this way Cavalcante Albano (1989) has interpreted the genesis of deviant phonological forms in small Portuguese/Brazilian children such as transient andora following earlier ando corresponding to adult andou 'has walked': the final -a is claimed to have originated from a deviant interpretation of a schwa-like offglide often following word-final -r and in reaction to the child's own r-dropping. Such an analysis is fully compatible with the Natural Phonology notion of applying a

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universal phonological processes such as weakening and centralizing of [a] to the perception and interpretation of a low schwa and of "rolling back" the natural process of r-dropping. However, the self-organizing processes model predicts, first of all, that such phonological processes are not used (either in production or perception or evaluation) all at once, but arise at different times of maturation. Second, it does not predict that a child's phonological processes must be absolute constraints on production and perception (as largely assumed in Natural Phonology) inasmuch as alternative organizations and reorganizations of processing are possible. Both predictions fit the actual data of language acquisition better than the strong claim of Classical Natural Phonology. On the other hand, the model of self-organizing processes does seem to have the disadvantage of explaining only the divergence in language acquisition rather than convergence. Convergence may seem to be relegated to the learning of languagespecific norms or of language-specific system-adequacy, and thus it seems not to explain one piece of strong evidence for Natural Phonology: the cross-linguistic similarity of early child phonology. But then this impression may be wrong, for if one takes into account the universal limitations of phonetic processors and of the other cognitive etc. bases of phonology (2. above), then the possibilities for organizing phonetic information are limited and can be described as a set of universal processes. Since the phonetic information to be handled always becomes more complex during maturation, many phonological processes are likely to arise or be generalized only at later points of maturation. This is fully compatible with what Seifert (1985) and Karpf (1990) have found in the acquisition of morphology with respect to claims of Natural Morphology. During maturation "phonology grows", not only the language-specific parts of phonology but also universal parts of phonology. Another apparent problem seems to be posed by "latent processes" (see Hurch 1988a for an overview), i.e., those natural processes that have not been suppressed in first-language acquisition, because there had been no occasion for them to be applied, but which may appear in second-language acquisition. One oft-cited example is final devoicing in a language that has no final consonants (or at least obstruents) like Yoruba. If native speakers of such a language apply final devoicing to final voiced obstruents of, e.g., French in second-language acquisition, then this seems to presuppose the presence of final devoicing in the language-innocent stage of, e.g., Yoruba children. If this were a mass phenomenon among early learners of a foreign language, i.e., if many did it generally and many others at least frequently, then this might be a convincing argument—but even then the weak hypothesis of final devoicing being available to them as one "repair" process when encountering the new and difficult task of pronouncing word-final voiced obstruents, would be

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sufficient. However, no such mass phenomenon has been well documented, and such evidence would be needed as support for maintaining the strong hypothesis. Thus the weak claim on the acquisition of phonology fits the data better, is a better match for the acquisition of morphology and syntax (cf. Karpf 1990), and can be integrated into a bridge theory of language acquisition which relates physiology, psychology, and neurology to Natural Phonology. Moreover, as acknowledged by Donegan (19856:30 note 5), "it would not alter the theory of natural phonology substantially to say that processes may be discovered by the child as he learns to use his vocal tract", and in fact this brings Natural Phonology closer to Natural Morphology and, with all probability, to Natural Syntax and Natural Text Linguistics. (For a somewhat different proposal on self-organizing processes in diachrony, relatable to acquisition of phonology, cf. Köhler 1987.) Concluding the discussion of ontogenesis we may say that the primordial distinction between natural processes and learned rules in classical Natural Phonology corresponds to the Roman philosopher Seneca's insight that everything which is innate, is universally homogeneous and immediately available, whereas everything which is learned arises slowly and in heterogeneous ways. But this important insight (cf. Marquardt 1984:124) has revealed itself to be overly simplistic in empirical research. Moreover we must assume a complementary relation between ontogenesis and phylogenesis (cf. Marquardt 1984; Pinker — Bloom 1990). As a consequence, assumptions about the evolution and acquisition of phonology are (reciprocally) related. If we assign a major role to self-organizing processes in phonology, the role of innateness (and the time for its adaptive and exaptive evolution) must diminish, and vice versa.

6. Levels of naturalness Whereas early Natural Phonology assumed a very direct link between universal and language-specific natural processes, work in Natural Morphology (cf. Dressler et al. 1987) and, embryonically, in Natural Text Linguistics (cf. Dressier 1989a) has tried to differentiate three levels of naturalness and to develop three respective subtheories: 6.1. Universale of naturalness are understood as universal preferences based on extralinguistic factors (see above 2-4, 5.2, 5.3). In this way natural processes are also first of all universal preferences with universal preferential hierarchies of application. Most of the more important achievements of Natural Phonology have to be placed on this level of theorizing and analysis. 6.2. On the other hand, typology in Natural Phonology is less developed than in Natural Morphology. Here much more investigation is needed as to how

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universal preferences favor or disfavor one another, and how preferred and dispreferred options may combine into phonological types, and how such phonological types are related to types in morphology and syntax. All this demands more differentiated and less sweeping hypotheses than in Donegan — Stampe's (1983) pioneering article, cf. also Auer (1990), Dressler (1985a:337ff), Hurch (19886, 1989a). 6.3. In respect to language-specific system adequacy, there is nothing in Natural Phonology to compare with Wurzel's (1984) systematic monograph on Natural Morphology, though there are the still rather poorly understood principle of the basis of articulation and the much better studied constraints of phonemic and allophonic space (see Dressier 1985a:348ff). They help explain the language-specific spatial constellations of both phonemes and allophones and also the application of phonological processes, some of them corresponding to auditory enhancement processes as studied by phoneticians (cf. Diehl 1991:124ff; Pinker — Bloom 1990:772). Other pertinent topics are the maintenance of underlying contrasts via counterfeeding (cf. Nathan's and Pensado's contributions to this volume) and "rule conspiracies" in the sense of phonological processes sharing a determinate languagespecific effect.

7. Conclusions As Luschiitzky's (1991) bibliography of naturalism amply demonstrates, contributions to Natural Phonology are numerous and cover many topics, some of which have been dealt with occasionally within other phonological frameworks. One important aspect of the success of Natural Phonology can be seen in the fact that it has stimulated the establishment of the related disciplines of Natural Morphology, Natural Syntax, and Natural Text Linguistics. But these sister disciplines have not been limited to mere peaceful coexistence with Natural Phonology; they have, in fact, had important mutual repercussions. This contribution is an attempt to show how work in Natural Phonology can, and should, profit from advances in other branches of naturalist study.

Natural Phonology without the syllable1 Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kotaczyk

1. Introduction There exists a gross disproportion in Natural Phonology (a model originated by Stampe 1969, 1980) with reference to the number of studies devoted to segmental vs. prosodic issues in favor of the former (but note Auer 1990, Hurch this volume, among the few exceptions). Consequently, the theory is much more elaborate in describing and explaining segmental phenomena at the cost of the suprasegmental ones. Outside Natural Phonology, on the other hand, one finds a vast number of prosody-oriented models, equipped with powerful formalisms, but mostly lacking the explanatory attributes of Natural Phonology. An immediate conclusion from the above could be that one should "marry" the advantages of both to obtain a comprehensive phonological theory. Moreover, this endeavor can be supported by drawing from the rich sources of purely phonetic investigations of speech prosody. Both Natural Phonology and other theories of phonology seem to agree as to the set of universally distinguishable categories (cf., e.g., Dressier 1985a:34), namely: utterance, intonational phrase, phonological phrase, phonological word, foot, syllable and, though disputably, segment (some languages also need a mora). Four of these have even been given the status of "absolute universals" (to signify their existence in all languages), and they are: segment (although disputable), syllable, phonological word (if identical with a phonological foot), and intonational phrase. In this paper I suggest a revision of the category "syllable". More precisely, I suggest an attempt at detaching oneself from a tradition cherished for millennia since the times of the Indian and, later, Greek and Roman grammarians, the tradition to acknowledge some form of a syllable as a useful or indispensable tool in a phonetic/phonological description. When looked at from outside and with a sufficient distance to obtain relative objectivity, what used to be called a syllable may turn out to be an unnecessary and mistaken complication of the already necessarily complex description of the speech chain. It needs to be emphasized at this point that the intention of the paper is to challenge the syllable by means of a hopefully constructive criticism directed against the unit itself, i.e., the nature and functions ascribed to it. This endeavor should be clearly distinguished from simply ignoring the syllable, for instance in a generativist's fashion, which cannot be treated as a positive evidence against the existence of the unit.

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2. Scope In order to discuss the syllable issue one needs to approach a great number of areas of phonological investigation in which the syllable has played a central or auxiliary role (cf., e.g., Murray 1988:1-126). These include, among others: extant theories of the syllable, attempts at experimental phonetic definitions of the syllable, claims of the functionality of the syllable, typological data referring to the syllable, the status of the syllable in a prosodic hierarchy with special reference to rhythm, the interdependence of the syllable and the scales of sonority and consonantal strength, universal tendencies on the foot level (rhythm) and on the word level (accentuation), principles of Natural Phonology pertinent to the syllable (since Natural Phonology constitutes the theoretical framework for the present discussion), substantive evidence for the existence of the syllable, the relationship between the syllable and the morpheme, questions regarding the nature of the syllable—its epistemological or ontological status, and others. In the following I will limit myself to the general presentation of an idea of an alternative organization of speech in which the syllable as understood so far is a superfluous notion. In the course of this presentation, some of the above-mentioned areas of investigation will be touched upon to a varying degree, but, as yet, without an attempt at systematicity. One essential remark of a theoretical nature is due here: whenever terms like "principle", "law", "rule" are used, they are to be understood as universal or language-specific preferences, and not absolute generalizations (cf. Dressier this volume: §§2,3,4,6; 1990α). I constrain the existence of the latter (one consequence of which is avoiding the notion of exception) to certain language-specific intensifications of universal preferences. Finally, I need to clarify a formal issue of using the denotation "syllable" while denying the reality of the unit it denotes. In the following three sections I will use the term without any qualification as it appears in the works I refer to. From section 6 onwards, however, I will qualify the term by means of double quotation marks (thus, the "syllable").

3. Background for criticism It is well known that the most conspicuous neglect of the unit of the syllable within the history of phonology was demonstrated by generative phonology (cf., e.g., the discussion in Vennemann 1986). The grounds for that rejection, however, were very different from the ones I am bringing up as inducive for the invalidation

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of the syllable. Transformational generative phonologists were interested in the morphological structure of words and not the phonological structure. Their phonological descriptions, therefore, had to rely exclusively on feature specifications. Thus, their neglect of the syllable resulted from a wider principle which assigns the morpheme the status of a basic unit of word structure to be described by means of features and rules, rather than from any constructive criticism of the syllable as a phonological unit. As I said above, the reasons I would like to present are different and, I hope, more principled from a phonological point of view. They may be subdivided into three main categories referring to: observational adequacy and logic of argumentation; the role of phonetics in phonological investigations; and the relationship between phonology and morphology. Below follows a short discussion of each, in the above order. J . I . As a unit, the syllable has been claimed to possess determinable boundaries. Boundary placement, or, in other words, division into syllables (of words or longer stretches of speech), however, turns out not to be a straightforward procedure. Available hints come basically from two very different sources: first, the speakers' ability to syllabify, and second, the application of certain phonological processes in the syllable domain. But are they really hints for syllable boundary placement (i.e., is observational adequacy guaranteed)? As for the first source, what speakers are able to do is distinguish in the flow of speech those sounds which are more prominent against the less prominent background, and the chunks they arrive at in this way are produced in a succession parallel to counting (i.e., a succession of numbers). The problem with the second source concerns the circularity of argumentation it introduces, which entails arbitrariness of boundary placement: one and the same process may both condition and be conditioned by the syllable boundary (e.g., a tense vs. lax vowel opposition in English, or the so-called syllable final devoicing in German). On the other hand, one has to admit that the indeterminacy of the boundaries of a unit is not limited specifically to the unit called the syllable. Although it is possible to formulate a phonologically prototypical definition, e.g., of a phoneme, word, foot or phrase, their language-specific phonological realizations could be already more troublesome, while their phonetic identifiability will vary depending on (a) which unit is considered and (b) what kind of identification is meant, i.e., articulatory, acoustic or perceptual. For the purposes of the present discussion it is important that, from the point of view of a language user, both a phoneme and a word are better (less ambiguously) accessible than a syllable. Additionally, even if one does not treat boundaries as a prerequisite of a unit, they still constitute an unavoidable consequence of its identification.

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3.2. Trying to establish a principled phonological account of the speech chain organization within the framework of Natural Phonology, one will definitely look for a phonetic backup to the claims made. There exists a vast array of phonetic studies (some of them to be discussed later in the paper, cf. section 9) which supply evidence for a particular rhythmic and intersegmental (or, alternatively, gestural) organization of speech, but in which no direct evidence for the syllable can be found. If recognized as an identifiable entity, the syllable needs to possess some unity, constituent structure, and boundaries (cf. 3.1.). As to the unity of the syllable, there exists phonetic evidence for a certain stability of consonantal transitions to and from vowels rather than for a stability of the whole (?) syllable (cf. section 9 below). In all types of constituent structures posited for the syllable, constituents tend to get organized according to the scale of sonority. However, the requirement for particular sonority slopes appears to be often violated by the languages of the world (cf., e.g., Ohala 1990b). To retain the syllable, ad hoc rescue strategies are then introduced. For example, Rubach and Booij (1990) would assume that an edge consonant (word-edge, in fact) does not count for a sonority slope. Doesn't this move make sonority useless? To Sievers (cf. Sievers 1901) consonants violating the expected gradation of Schallfülle formed the so-called Nebensilben dominated, however, by Hauptsilben. Two kinds of syllables having a different status—isn't that a complication? Apparently, the status and nature of the sonority scale need to be reconsidered against a phonetic/phonological background (cf., e.g., Dogil — Luschiitzky's [1990] approach). 3.3. The necessity to reconsider the validity and usefulness of the syllable is tightly connected with the necessity to understand well the relationship between phonological and morphological units (cf. Dressier 1985a). Assuming a continuity between phonology and morphology one does not expect every process to be easily identifiable as either phonological or morphological. The insistence on the syllable as a domain for the application of processes may have also resulted from the reluctance to admit at least a morpho-phonological (or even morphological) status to certain putatively phonological phenomena.

4. A short excursus into Generative Phonology Theo Vennemann (1986:1 Iff) points out that the lack of the syllable in a phonological description by the transformational generative grammar had its price. The costs were distributed among the theory of prosody, word level phonology and the level of realization rules. As for prosody, traditionally tones and accents were referred to the syllable while length differences were reflected in the distinction

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between heavy syllables, light syllables and morae. Within word and lower level phonology the syllable also played its role, whether or not the ordering of the socalled syllabification rules or the nature of the syllable structure conditions was at stake. Generative phonology replaced the above mentioned syllable-based explanations with the explanations based on new feature specifications (e.g., [±long], [± accented], [± vocalic]). See Vennemann 1986:17ff for a criticism of their ad hoc character. In the post-generative era a vast array of non-linear theories of the syllable and mora have been originated. Since, however, they are much more distant from Natural Phonology than the Natural Generative model of Theo Vennemann, they are not discussed in the present paper. Those areas of phonological investigation in which explanations without the syllable appear to be costly need to be handled in such a way as to demonstrate a set of general principles which would supply more valid explanations than the ones based on the notion of the syllable.

5. Natural Phonology and the syllable Since the intention of this paper is to account for the preferred patterns of speech organization from within the Natural Phonology framework, a discussion of the Natural Phonology stance with respect to the syllable is due to follow. Most transparently, the views on the syllable are expressed by Donegan and Stampe in their 1978 paper. 5.1. The main assumption of the authors is that syllables are predictable from a segmental phonological representation and grammatical boundaries, i.e., they constitute derived entities. Here are some of their arguments: a) b) c)

d)

e)

syllables are rarely accurately reflected in writing systems; there is evidence of an intermediate syllabification, distinct from either underlying or superficial syllabifications; if rules (which precede processes in speech production) are not sensitive to syllabic and accentual structures, then these structures arise in the phonological processing of speech; "The more prominent values of intensity, duration, and pitch may serve as the nuclei of syllables and measures which are spoken at regular timeintervals, usually in a rhythmic alternation with less prominent elements." (1978:29); syllabification is the mapping of a segmental representation onto a prosodic pattern; this mapping may undergo a change in the course of

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f)

development of a language, e.g., from the one in which syllables with long vowels or consonant clusures are mapped onto a double beat to the one in which they are mapped, like other syllables, onto single beats in the rhythm of speech. (1978:34); "... there is little to recommend any particular internal analysis of syllables: virtually any linear breakdown of a syllable can be found in the evidence of alliteration, rhyme, secret languages, singing Yankee Doodle, etc." (1978:30).

5.2. One finds valuable cues as to the way the mapping of a segmental representation onto a prosodic pattern is done, both in the 1978 paper quoted above, and in other works by Donegan and Stampe (e.g., 1983). What decides the mapping are the following criteria: sonority (paraphrased as intrinsic perceptual prominence) together with the principle of maximal prominence contrast, accent (paraphrased as extrinsic prominence) and quality, also together with the attraction-of-opposites principle. As far as the timing of speech is concerned, "isochrony exists, of course, in the intention and perception of speech rather than in its actuation" (Donegan — Stampe 1978:33), which largely agrees with their interpretation of the mapping. They notice as well, with reference to compensatory lengthening effects, that a vowel is not lengthened to compensate for the deletion of a preceding consonant, which suggests a different relationship holding between a vowel and a consonant preceding it versus a vowel and a consonant following it.^ I suggest that the above mentioned mapping principles as well as the implicit idea of a musical rhythm underlying speech would agree with the general assumptions of Donegan and Stampe's model of phonology even if the syllable were an epiphenomenal structure. The arguments they supply for the derivative nature of the syllable can be extended to argue against the need for any syllabification processes at all. This is exactly the step I propose to take: to deny the necessity for not only the underlying but also derivational (including the surface) syllable.

6. Beats and binding laws instead of the "syllable" Reliably enough, both speakers and phonological processes have access to words, on the one hand, and to feet, on the other. It appears to be a common feature of the languages of the world that words are stored in a set called a lexicon to which speakers of a given language have free access, no matter which method of the lexical search one assumes to be the most plausible. Therefore, a speaker is able to supply the so-called citation form of a lexical item with clear-cut boundaries, which is not

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possible in the case of a "syllable". Access to feet, on the other hand, is guaranteed by the fact that it is generally impossible not to act rhythmically (cf. Allen 1975), i.e., a preference for isochrony is rooted in universal principles of human perceptual and motor behavior. 6.1. There is another functional unit of phonology which is smaller than a word and smaller than a foot, and which shows its accessibility better than a "syllable". Hereafter I will refer to it with a name "beat". I suggest that the notions of "beat", "word", and "foot", as well as "morpheme", are sufficient to account for the functions of the "syllable" without requiring the unit of a "syllable". A basic rhythmic speech skeleton consists of regularly recurring beats. Beats are primary rhythmic entities realized preferably by vocalic figures against a consonantal ground. They do not possess any inherent articulatory characteristics since they are functions rather than units, i.e., they are intentional (in the sense of Baudouin de Courtenay) and perceptual rather than actually articulatorily in nature. Their preferable realization is vocalic due to the saliency potential inherent in vowels, although consonants might bear a beat function under a number of circumstances (to be discussed in section 8 below). 6.2. Inter-relationships between beats and pre-beat and post-beat consonants and consonant sequences are specified by a set of binding laws which look both at a "micro-level"—constituted by a single beat and consonants surrounding it, and at a "macro-level"—constituted by a sequence of beats with consonants interspersed between them, i.e., a level governed by rhythm. Binding laws operate on a phonological level according to the criterion of sonority. The latter is understood as a default intrinsic property of a phonological segment, i.e., belonging to the level of intention. Although sonority is reflected on the phonetic level in the shape of the so-called sonority scale (or, indeed, strength hierarchy) along which phonetic segments are ordered, there is no transparent phonetic criterion (nor a set of them) which would unambiguously line up phonetic segments to match the scale. There exist candidates which could possibly serve as such phonetic criteria, for instance a degree of articulatory opening, acoustic intensity, or auditory distinctiveness. None of these, however, seems to work (cf. Dogil — Luschiitzky 1990:15-17). The most general sonority preferences on the underlying level concerning a sequence of sounds (cf. also Vennemann's 1988a laws for syllable structure) are the preferences for: (1) a rise in sonority towards a beat in a pre-beat position and (2) a fall in sonority from a beat in a post-beat position.

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These basic sonority preferences are responsible for universal word-phono tactics, i.e., from the point of view of sonority preferences, a pre-beat position parallels a word-initial position and a post-beat position a word-final position. Therefore, language-specific violations of these preferences result in language-specific phonotactics (see section Β below). Simultaneous with sonority there is a principle of binary binding (cf. Dressier this volume) applied, in the direction from a beat towards a consonant. There is no binary binding among consonants (within a pre-beat or a post-beat sequence they are bound only by sonority, unless a beat happens to be consonantal). This may explain why we talk about hiatus between vowels but not between consonants, among which sequencing is expected. The binarity of binding is distorted in a VV cluster—the first vowel does not bind any consonant on its right and, more importantly, the second vowel does not bind any consonant on its left. As far as the directionality and hierarchicalization of binding is concerned, a beat binds the preceding consonant more strongly than the one following it by means of a sharper sonority contrast (a steeper slope). The functionality of this difference is explained by the principle of perceptual salience, which, on the one hand, refers to a semiotic criterion of figure and ground, and on the other, to the information load contained in particular members of the speech chain. As to the former, there is a preference for the sharpening of contrast between figure and ground (vowels and consonants) ( cf. Dressier 1985a, ch.10; Stampe 1979) carried out phonetically by means of acoustic signals diversified in the stream of speech (cf., e.g., Ohala — Kawasaki 1984; Lindblom — Maddieson 1988). As to the latter, information is easy to detect in a simple CV sequence (cf. Dogil — Braun 1988). A slope towards a beat extended to more than one consonant, e.g., a CCV is less preferred than a CV, since a principle of maximal perceptual contrast (salience) is not satisfied in a CCV, and it is also less preferred from the point of view of ease of articulation (cf. Stampe 1980 for both notions). So, e.g., in a popular pronunciation of It. psicologia 'psychology', the initial cluster becomes sic- or pi(s)sic-. As has become apparent, other criteria apart from sonority itself play a role in establishing the directionality and hierarchicalization of binding. The ones so far mentioned are: binarity, perceptual salience (based on contrast and interpretable in terms of the semiotic principle of figure and ground), informational load carried by segments (consonants are more informative than vowels), and the ease of articulation principle. However, the second major criterion besides sonority deciding the binding is that of symmetry. Sonority and symmetry may be in conflict, and there exist both preferred and language-specific solutions of that conflict. The following are the detailed preferences for sonority and symmetry (the symbols used below stand for: V - a vowel, Τ - a plosive, F - a fricative, R - a sonorant):

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A. SONORITY I.

A pre-beat rise in sonority (cf. [1] above) is sharper (i.e., a slope is steeper) than any post-beat fall (cf. [2] above); e.g., in a sequence like /V R Τ V/ a TV rise is sharper than either a VR or a VRT fall, while in a sequence like /V Τ F V/ the preference is not satisfied. So, for instance, one can predict that the initial cluster of Lat. psicologia should not become *ipsi- whereas Lat. spiritus 'spirit* is expected to be rendered as in Vulgar Lat. ispiritus, Fr. esprit.

II. If I. is not realized: (a) then the preference for a sharper pre-beat slope may be extended to incorporate more than one consonant, so that the slope is in fact sharper than a post-beat one (since, in this case, there is no postbeat slope at all); e.g., /V Τ R V/ (and not /VT RV/ or /VTR V/). (b) However, the extension in (a) is vacuous in the case of an interbeat geminate, since the pre-beat sequence of the RRV type does not constitute a pure rise (cf. Β II [a] below) and (c) in the case of a single inter-beat consonant, e.g., in a /V Τ V/ sequence, in which a directionality preference takes over, i.e., a consonant is bound by the following beat: /V TV/ (while, at the same time, the preference for a pre-beat rather than a post-beat slope is satisfied). B. SYMMETRY, i.e., symmetrical (proportional) binding of consonants to vocalic beats in an inter-beat position:^ I. If A I. is realized, then the inter-beat consonants are bound symmetrically to the beats, e.g., /VR TV/. II. If A I. is not realized, then: (a) the solution may be as in A II., so that symmetrical binding works only for the case A I (b), i.e., for geminates, like in /VR RV/; (b) symmetrical binding may predominate over the sonority preferences, so that, e.g., an inter-beat /-TR-/ is bound symmetrically to the neighboring beats: /VΤ RV/, even if a language-specific phonotactics allows for /TRV-/ word-initially, and especially if it does not, as in German, e.g., Rodler 'cyclist', Lettner 'choir screen'. 4 Basic sonority preferences for particular pre-beat and post-beat slopes may be violated to give rise to language-specific word phonotactics. For instance, clusters like Polish word-initial /ski-/ sklep 'shop' or /pt-/ ptak 'bird' or /rt-/ rt$c

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'mercury'or /mg-/ mgia 'fog' etc arise. One can find ways to account for some of them, at least partially, e.g., by means of a historical vowel loss ( /mg-/, /rt-/), or by bringing up other principles which may conflict with sonority, e.g., perceptual contrast (/ski-/) (cf. Stampe 1980). The tendency to "correct" the above violations manifests itself post-lexically, i.e., in a low-level phonetic and phonostylistic domain. For instance, in Polish words: mgia 'fog', rt$c 'mercury', or mysl 'thought', a sonorant in a disfavored position (although phonotactically allowed) may either get weakened (in the final position, even elided) or, on the contrary, acquire the function of a beat (alternatively, it may also become unvoiced, as apparently in French livre 'book* and its Breton correspondent, which are rendered as [HVR] or even [IIV(R)]). In a word ηαςίξρςϊΜ [-mpstf] gen. pi. of 'consequences', a final consonant cluster undergoes simplification to [-mst] in accordance with the preference for a post-beat fall in sonority (cf. [2] above). 6.3. The discussion above concentrated on the so-called micro-level of speech organization. A macro-level consists of regularly alternating beats with consonants interspersed between them (consonants, because a vowel cannot be a non-beat in principle). Regularity of beats manifests itself both in proportional distances between beats and in regular recurrence of prominent beats.^ These two manifestations would coincide in an extreme (prototypical) "syllable-timed" language, i.e., a language in which all beats are prominent. The less overlapping the two manifestations become, the closer a language approaches the so-called stress-timing pattern, in which it should be logically easier to get the preferred binary feet. More specifically, the macro-level preference is for trochaic binary feet (cf. Dogil 1981, 1985). A CVCV structure can be accounted for by means of the binding laws and preferences for a particular word structure (e.g., word-initial salience and information-load). As for the two basic macro-level time regularities, regular distances between beats and the regular recurrence of prominent beats, they both find support in the criteria of symmetry and sonority on a micro-level. Therefore, one needs to account for the opposition between the so-called "heavy" and "light syllable" on a micro-level basis as well. Beats are by default unspecified for length. Under specific typological and system adequacy requirements, however, they can be assigned an internal structure (in the case of mora-counting languages) or the length distinction can be mapped on to them and/or the laws binding consonants to beats may acquire an additional functionality (in the case of the so-called quantity-sensitive languages). So, for instance, in mora languages a mora rather than a beat will be the smallest unit of counting, while in quantity-sensitive languages long rather than short beats and/or the beats binding a consonant to their right will be the (preferred) stress-carriers. The question of weight, then, does not refer to "the syllable", but is a question of the

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relative strength of a beat within a foot, which is the result of language-specific micro-level phonotactics.

7. Illustrations 7 . 1 . A general accentuation rule of Italian would say that "a heavy penultimate syllable" prevents accent from moving further to the left.** So, for instance: angolo 'angle', idolo 'idol', capitolo 'chapter' vs. Adolfo, adulto 'adult'; angelo 'angel' vs. Ans$lmo\ albero 'tree' vs. Alberto·, barbaro 'baibaric' vs. bastardo 'bastard'; Cqndido, Stefano vs. Orlando, Rolando; Davide vs. Clotilde etc. As demonstrated by these examples, the accent falls on a beat which binds a consonant to its right or on an antepenultimate beat. In other words, it is a beat binding a consonant to its right that prevents an antepenultimate accent. In all the cases above, the binding is predictable by the sonority preferences, i.e., the relevant clusters of inter-beat consonants consist of a sonorant plus obstruent, or otherwise a more sonorous consonant plus a less sonorous consonant, so that the sonority preference A I is satisfied (cf. 6.2 above). This is especially well demonstrated in bastardo. The above is not, however, a complete picture of Italian accentuation. In the cases of inter-beat consonantal clusters of muta cum liquida, the sonority preferences (see A II [b]) predict that a stop will be bound together with a liquid to the following beat. This accounts for the examples like: Pfricle, Patroclo, Sofocle, anatra 'duck', integro 'integral', multiplo 'multiple', anidro 'anhydric', chilQmetro 'kilometer', pedQmetro 'foot measure' etc. In some words, however, the symmetry preference takes over (see Β II [b]) and a stop is bound to the preceding beat, which then draws the accent to itself, e.g., in: Cleopatra, Meleqgro, psichiqtra 'psychiatrist', poli^dro 'poliadric' etc. There also exists a set of lexical accents of the sort found in ancQra 'still' (with the preference for binary feet observed) vs. qncora 'anchor' (cf. Lichem 1970:126-130). Nonetheless, a formulation of the sort: "a beat that binds a consonant to its right prevents accent from moving to the antepenultimate beat" is valid for Italian, and the binding proceeds according to the order of preferences specified in 6.2.

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7.2. For geminates in Italian the symmetry preference holds as specified in A II (b) and Β I I (a) in 6.2. above. Examples: tarocco 'a card play', midollo 'marrow', bid^llo 'janitor', G$nnaro (and never *CVCVttV)7 7.3. In Latin a long penultimate "syllable" was accented, both when it was "syllaba natura longa" and "syllaba positione longa" (e.g., inimjcus 'hostile', pep?rci 'spared'). If it was short, the antepenult received the accent (e.g., SQlidus 'solid', tacitus 'silent, tacit'); (cf., e.g., W. S. Allen 1973:155). "Long by nature", in our terms, means a long beat; "long by position" means a beat which binds a consonant to its right. In the case of a vowel preceding a muta cum liquida clusters, the accent in classical Latin was predictable by the sonority preferences (see AII [a]), e.g., t?nebrae 'darknesses', integrum 'untouched', multiplex 'multiple'. In Vulgar Latin, however, the preference towards symmetrical binding (see Β II [b]) and binary feet was observed, e.g., int$gru. ^ Interestingly, a placement of a grammatical boundary influenced the binding of muta cum liquida in Latin: a grammatical boundary between two consonants made them bind separately (e.g., ab lenöne 'by the mediation', ab-ripi 'to be taken away', W. S. Allen 1973:140-1). This agrees with the present author's assumption that the only boundaries that can interact with phonology are morphological—there are no "syllable boundaries"; foot boundaries are parasitic on word boundaries via the binding laws. 7.4. In Ancient Greek metrics, the case of a short vowel followed by a muta cum liquida cluster shows that the symmetry of binding preference was stronger than grammatical boundaries. There is an abundance of examples in Homer's Iliad demonstrating this: a stop is bound to the preceding beat so that the latter counts as long although it is directly followed by a morpheme or word boundary. The binding is also always symmetrical within a word, as predictable in this situation (generalization of a principle across morphological boundaries). The exceptions are very rare and occur only in the case of transparent word boundaries (and not before clusters other than muta cum liquida). Cf. the examples below (Iliad I): Binding across a major grammatical boundary: 3

Aidi

## proidpsen

83

dd ##phräsai

- I - ## 49

di Μ klänge

- ## - I -

-

55

# #

epi # phrest w

I-

#

w

--

Natural Phonology without the syllable 56 70

ra ## thneiskontas - I- : ##

73

essömena # # prö _ v v I_

17

# #

eü # phroniön -

w

65

w

ew + knimides -I-+ - I - -

Binding within a word: 7

23,111

Atreides

φΛτα

128

aglaä — ν

42

82,118,158

trip l£i te trap lei

ν

146

dakrya

ekpaglotat' —

I >

w w

Binding of muta cum liquida to the right: 97

geffiprin

XVI662

etdrtyssemKronwn I— I

W W

W

W

W

·

In post-Homeric Greek up to the classical Attic Greek, however, muta cum liquida binds (both a stop and a liquid) to the right beat, in accordance with the sonority preferences and word-initial phonotactics of Greek (cf. E. Schwyzer 1953:237). So, in Greek tragedy, e.g., in Euripides Medea, one finds the following relevant examples (both across morpheme boundaries and within words): 1248

pitros V

1242,1249

teknon W

1252

w

Μ

tiknois w

—

1225

έ+blastenMC-

1222

gynaika prin

66

Dziubalska-Kolaczyk

Looking at Latin and Greek one may observe that the symmetry preference seems to predominate in metrics and casual speech (phonostylistics), as if to satisfy the macro-level requirements for isochrony. The sonority preference, on the other hand, seems to predominate on the intentional-lexical level, as if to satisfy the micro-level requirements for a preferred word phonotactics. 7.5. Obstruent devoicing is a natural process type. As a context-free process it is responsible for the priority of voiceless obstruents over voiced ones in the systems of the languages of the world. As a context-sensitive process it is a phonetically motivated coarticulatory phenomenon (assimilation to a pause or a voiceless sound) driven by the ease-of-articulation principle. It has been traditionally assumed (e.g., Siebs 1969) that in prescriptive German standard obstruent devoicing has quite a general context of application, i.e., not only in word-final position (as in many other languages, e.g., Polish or Russian), but also "syllable-final" position, e.g., in: täglich 'daily', Redner 'speaker', Wedler 'a skier', Lobmeyer 'a name', Bildnis 'a portrait', löblich 'laudible', etc. As can be observed in these words, a context for the devoicing of an obstruent is phonetically unmotivated: the following consonant is voiced. The function of the devoicing must, then, be of a different kind: it is morphological. The process applies in the context of a morpheme boundary to enhance its transparency (in general, consonantinitial morphemes seem to be less transparent than vowel-initial ones, due to the preference for CV). The morphological function of the process is especially welldemonstrated by pairs like, e.g., erb + lieh 'hereditary' vs. er + blich 'paled'; folg + lieh 'so, therefore' vs. ver + glich 'compared'. The above considerations imply that obstruent devoicing is not a purely phonological process: additional evidence comes from the observation that it is suppressive (cf. an example of abbreviations (as well as acronyms) in Russian: Log [log] for 'logarithm' vs. Lok [lok] for 'locomotive' in Dressier 1985a:93). Also according to Stampe (1979:29) the devoicing process in German is "morphophonemic", i.e., it neutralizes an underlying distinction. Additionally, there exists no straightforward phonetic evidence (at least for Northern Standard German) for a possibly non-neutralizing nature of the process. This qualifies it as a candidate for a morphophonological process (cf. Dressier 1985a for the criteria). 7.6. There is a vast area of phonological, morphological, and other phenomena that are accountable for within the present framework, but are traditionally handled using the "syllable". To these belong, for instance, various kinds of clippings occurring in diminutive-formation or abbreviation strategies (cf., e.g., a discussion of abbreviations in French by Marianne Kilani-Schoch in the present volume). The name "syllabic" was given to the pre-alphabetic writing systems like, e.g., Japanese katakana and hiragana, Akkadian or Hittite cuneiform. On closer inspection,

Natural Phonology without the syllable

67

however, it turns out to be doubtful whether these systems in fact involve the concept of the "syllable" (cf. Dressier — Dziubalska-Kofaczyk forthcoming). A more comprehensive discussion of the relevant phenomena will appear in Dziubalska-Koiaczyk (in preparation).

8. Consonantal beats At least a short discussion of the so-called "syllabic" consonants is due in a paper dispensing with the "syllable". A universal preference is not to have consonantal beats in a language. This preference may be overridden in a languagespecific fashion already on a pre-lexical level, or post-lexically. So, for example, in Czech or Serbo-Croatian, consonants function as beats pre-lexically (e.g., /r/ in Cz./prst/ 'finger', /krst/ 'baptism'; S-Cr. /krk/ the name of an island, /vrt/ 'garden', as well as other consonants: fi/, /m/, /n/, /q/). In English, consonantal beats might get lexicalized as a result of a generalization of a post-lexical process, e.g., /I/ in /litl/ < [litl]. Post-lexically, a function of a beat may get shifted to a neighboring consonant if a vowel is lost, in order to preserve the rhythmic structure as well as the phonotactics of a sequence, e.g., English [haepm], Polish /f/istko/ [f/stko] 'everything', and the like.

9. An excursus to phonetics Fowler (1983:403) claims that "identification of popular systematic properties of the phonologies of languages can contribute to direct study of articulation...". Most importantly, "it can serve as converging evidence for hypothetical organizing principles, such as that of cyclic vowel production, that may have emerged, perhaps, dimly, from articulatory or perceptual investigations of speech" (1983:403). As much as it is desirable that phoneticians approach phonology in the fashion just quoted, it is also desirable that phonology find converging evidence for the claimed preferences of speech organization in the study of articulation. In order to supply a phonetic back-up to the beats-and-binding-laws principle proposed in the present paper, a number of relevant phenomena need to be at least mentioned. These are: isochrony, the differences in the transitional characteristics of CV and VC sequences (including vowel-length variations like the so-called compensatory lengthening), "closed syllable" vowel shortening, and length adjustments in the context of voiced or voiceless consonants.

68

Dziubalska-Kolaczyk

It is generally agreed, both by naive speakers/hearers and linguists, that speech, like other manifestations of human behavior, is rhythmical. There is no agreement, however, as to the basis for this intuition, or, in other words, how rhythm is realized phonetically (cf. note 5). It is known that the basis is not acoustic isochrony (see Fowler 1983:387ff.), and it is not likely that "any units of naturally produced speech are realized isochronously" (p. 387). In her view it is the vowels that are rhythmically timed in sequences of monosyllables, and the latter are believed by speakers and listeners to be isochronous (cf. also Fowler 1981). More specifically, it is neither the timing of vowel onsets, nor the timing of syllableinitial consonants, but the timed sequencing of the vowels as produced that corresponds to perceived syllable timing (Fowler 1983). For instance, she has shown that the sequences of digits with acoustically isochronous intervals between onsets do not sound isochronous to listeners (p. 388). On the basis of experimental evidence for bidirectional coarticulation and shortening effects in CVC and VCV sequences, she argues that it is possible that "vowels do not change their produced durations in consonantal contexts; rather, the consonants overlap them more or less" (p. 392). In other words, she claims that vowels are produced as a separate cyclic stream, while consonants are overlaid on their leading and trailing edges. Since in this way vowel and consonant lengths are compensatory, durational variations of both are accounted for (e.g., one would talk of compensatory lenghtening when a consonant loss uncovers part of a vowel's produced extent, so that its measured duration is longer; p. 405). In this model, speakers produce evenly timed vowels when they intend a rhythmic sequence of stressed monosyllables, but they relax that cyclicity to give an impression of either stress- or syllable-timed language (p. 407). Listeners, on the other hand, hear what speakers intend them to, so they have to be able to hear through coarticulatory overlap of segments (p. 409). There have been attempts to answer the question of why speech is produced in such a manner (summarized by Fowler 1983:408-9). Firstly, coarticulation potentially facilitates the perceptibility of serially ordered speech sequences (a sequence of discrete units would be difficult to recover). Secondly, vowels constitute a natural articulatory class, yielding approximately the same global vocal tract shape. So, for instance, they can be produced even with a perturbation (e.g., with a jaw fixed by clenching a bite block). In a later paper, Fowler et al. (1986) observe that some changes of vowel and consonant coordination do not appear to require the previously described vowel cycle on which consonants are superimposed, but they do require "the interaction or blending of consonants and vowels within a single articulator and between articulators" (Fowler et al. 1986:6). Summarizing what has been said so far in this section for the purposes of the present paper, one can say that the above studies give support to the idea of a primarily vocalic and regular beat sequence with consonants bound to them; to the

Natural Phonology without the syllable

69

idea of intentional level of representation of speech expressed by Natural Phonology; to the idea of micro- and macro-levels of speech representation (cf. blending and timing); to the idea that durational effects can be expressed without recourse to the syllable as a unit. Simultaneously, they do not give any direct evidence for the existence of the syllable as a unit. Support for the preferably stronger binding of a consonant to the following rather than to the preceding beat comes, for instance, from the X-ray microbeam studies of temporal relationships in VCV sequences in Japanese (cf., e.g., Kiritani et al. 1977) which demonstrate that the left-to-right effect of the consonant on the following vowel is greater than that of the right-to-left effect of the consonant on the preceding vowel. Articulatory phonology also seems to support the present author's idea of characteristic binding of consonants to vowels, although the notion "syllable" is used in the model and "syllable structure" is specifically discussed (cf. Browman — Goldstein 1988). However, whenever the terms "syllable-initial" or "syllable-final" occur, they seem to refer, in fact, to word-initial or prevocalic and word-final or postvocalic respectively. On the basis of experimental articulatory evidence from American English, Browman and Goldstein (1988) observe that postvocalic consonants behave differently than prevocalic ones: "while initial consonants are related to their words in terms of a single global metric for the entire cluster, the Oocenter, final consonants appear to be related to their words in terms of the local metric of achievement of target" (149). Thus, they conclude that "postvocalic consonants are organized on the basis of their sequential relation to the vowel rather than on the basis of their syllabic affiliation" (148), i.e., they are organized "with respect to their left edges (achievement of target)" (148). They notice that this difference may account for some of the different phonological properties of initial and final consonant sequences. So, for example, the differing sonority preferences for pre-beat vs. post-beat sequences are reflected in the fact that C-center coordinates the initial consonant cluster with the vowel, while the achievement of target of the left-most consonant only is coordinated with the vowel (cf. 1988:150). In other words, the target portion of initial consonants overlaps the time frame for the vowel, while final consonants are produced in their own time frame (cf. 1988:152). This correlates with the phenomenon of phonological weight as affected by "syllable"-final but not "syllable"-initial consonants and could account as well for the coarticulatory differences between word-initial and word-final position (though not for compensatory lengthening — cf. Fowler's model above). As for other durational properties, experimental data show that voicing-related variations in vowel length occur no matter whether there is an intervening "syllable boundary" or not (cf. Maddieson 1985:216). However, the so-called "closed syllable vowel shortening" is considered to be evidence for the rhyme of a "syllable" (cf. Maddieson 1985). Still, firstly, the shortening is most common in the languages

70

Dziubalska-Kolaczyk

having geminate consonants, and then it affects a vowel which binds a first constituent of a geminate to itself according to the preference for symmetrical binding. Secondly, in other languages in which the shortening is observed, it is demonstrated by a contrast between a CV and a CVC sequence: in a word-final position a consonant is inevitably bound to a vowel. A phonetic explanation of a shortening of a vowel in context of a consonant bound to it (whether the process phonologizes in a language or not) may be sought in Fowler's model (cf. 1981, 1983, 1986): namely that a separation of vowel production from consonant production allows for an overlap between the two, and thus for a complementarity of length. This relation needs to be dynamic, and would probably depend on the degree of blending between vowels and consonants, a phenomenon still to be investigated (cf. Fowler et al. 1986:6).

10. Summary In the above I have attempted to present an outline of the model which would account for phonological phenomena without recourse to the notion "syllable". It has been suggested that the phonological representation of speech ( the level of intention in Natural Phonology) consists of regularly recurring beats and consonants interspersed between them according to a set of binding laws, which, in turn, rely on the principles of sonority and symmetry. Phonological argumentation for the suggested model has been followed by exemplification from a number of languages and discussion of a plausible phonetic background for the model.

Notes 1.

2.

I would like to express my gratitude to Wolfgang U. Dressier for his thorough and constructive criticism of this paper. I also appreciate the comments made by M. Kilani-Schoch, C. Fowler and C. Browman, as well as by the participants of the Bern Natural Phonology Workshop and the editors of the present volume. In fact, there exists evidence for complementary durational effects between initials and finals of "syllables" in Chinese and Sui (cf. Feng 1991). However, even if one takes this evidence for granted, notwithstanding the possible reservations (e.g., the relevance of tone, or isolated "syllables" used in the experimentation), still the author observes a difference between initial vs. final consonants in their susceptibility to change (finals change more easily).

Natural Phonology without the syllable

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

71

Note that the criterion of symmetry as understood here does not go counter to the generally acknowledged priority of CV over VC. The latter concerns the directionality of binding (and is accounted for on a macro-level of speech organization, i.e. on the level of word and foot) while symmetry constitutes one of the criteria in the hierarchy of binding preferences, and as such is interrelated with the other criteria. The directionality of binding coexists with the hierarchy of binding, and the potential conflicts between them are resolved on a language-specific basis. This principle does not yield the same results as the so called Maximum Onset Principle (e.g. Kahn 1976, Selkirk 1982, Hooper 1972—as referred to by Treiman 1992), which states that the onsets of "syllables" are as long as possible given the phonological constraints of the language. Whether the intervocalic consonants in the words like English Patrick, patrol, estate, or Madrid are bound to the preceding or following beat, depends on the binding principles: sonority and symmetry would predict pa.trick, pa.trol, ma.drid vs. es.täte bindings. There are, however, some additional factors. In the first two words a stress pattern indicates the binding of the first consonant of the cluster to the left beat while, on the other hand, low-level phonetics would rather bind both consonants to the right beat. In es.tate, /s/ blocks aspiration although it is not bound to the same beat as III (there is, however, a very small articulatory distance between the two). There exists independent evidence against the Maximum Onset Principle (or at least evidence for weakening it) based on experimental studies of syllabification (cf. Treiman 1992). Her experimental results show a predominance of ma.drid and es.tate syllabifications in these two words. She suggests, thus, either to replace the Maximum Onset Principle with the Sonority Contour Principle, or, at least, to add the latter to the former. I assume the existence of a phonological principle of isochrony as a primary principle governing the intentional level of speech. Its realization on the level of phonetics has been widely discussed in the recent literature (cf. the Proceedings of the 12th International Congress on the Phonetic Sciences, especially Nooteboom 1991) with a predominant conclusion that isochrony manifests itself in perception rather than in articulation or acoustics of speech. There are also morphological accents, so, e.g., suffixes may be accented or not (Hurch this volume). Cf. the discussion of the "syllabification" of geminates in Italian: according to Hurch and Tonelli (1982) geminates "syllabify" to the right (this interpretation is apparently due to the fact that they approach geminates

72

8.

Dziubalska-Kolaczyk long consonants); according to Loporcaro, this volume, they are "ambisyllabic". In Vulgar Latin, the symmetry preference shows up also in vowel syncope e.g. Latin frigidus > Vulg. Lat. frigdus (> Ital. freddo)\ calidus > caldus (> caldo) (cf. also W. S. Allen 1973: 152).

Accentuations Bernhard Hurch «Natürlich», sagte Klara lachend und zog ihn weiter. «Sie haben merkwürdige Begriffe von Amerika.» «Sie sollen mich nicht auslachen», sagte er ärgerlich. Schließlich kannte er schon Europa und Amerika, sie aber nur Amerika. F. Kafka, Der Verschollene

1. Introduction 1 In the area of segmental phonology, processes reflect some kind of natural restrictions on what can be pronounced and perceived. We also have to assume that there exist natural restrictions on what we perceive and produce as rhythmically even. The fairly extensive recent literature on prosodic phonology essentially does not show far-reaching differences with respect to the basic principles of rhythmic organization. The Metrical Tree and the Grid approaches (e.g., Hayes 1984, Selkirk 1984) and other proposals within the more recent generative framework reproduce a hierarchical model which, just as the architectonic principle in the rhythmic structure of music, has been well known and studied for over a century. In these approaches the accentuation of a single word is basically a linear restructuring of general principles, eventually in their language-specific ordering and formulation. The present contribution will focus on non-prosodic types of accentuation, on principles of accentuation in Natural Phonology, and will discuss the crucial differences among the competing theories and thus the important shortcomings of the recent generative approaches to prosody. It will, moreover, sketch a model of accentuation in which the hierarchical structure of accent patterns reflects both deeply rooted principles of (paradigmatic) natural prosodic patterns and (derivationally late) syntagmatic prosodic processes but in which the simple parallelism of hierarchy and derivation is considered to be only apparent and will thus be rejected.

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Hurch

2. Prosody and Morphoprosody Any actual accent pattern is a matter of prosody, in the sense that its actualization is subject to the prosodic part of phonology. But this does not necessarily imply that all accent locations are prosodically governed. For reasons that have been shown to be based on questionable premises, generative phonology has given up the distinction between phonology and morphophonemics (Donegan — Stampe 1979). Only in Lexical Phonology has there been a distinction reintroduced between lexical and postlexical rules, but which does not exactly match the distinction between phonologically- and grammatically-governed alternations. The difference between the natural aspect of phonology and the conventional aspect of morphonology has been emphasized as one of the fundamental as well as one of the traditional characteristics of Natural Phonology. An analogous conceptualization has to be introduced to the analysis of prosodic phenomena. In addition to sound alternations, either the grammaticalized use of various suprasegmental phenomena may systematically show up among the means expressing morphological formations, or there may be morphologically governed restrictions on the application of prosodic alternations. These latter two aspects are systematically ignored in the recent literature on stress phenomena. In these studies exclusively prosodic principles (syllable weight, foot-construction rules, branching limitations, branching direction, etc.) are applied in order to account for accent locations. Instances of deviations from the basic principles are solved by rather arbitrary mechanisms like extrametricality. This view of possible non-prosodic functions of word accent locations is well known in traditional phonological theory. Trubetzkoy (1924: 362) states Vom Standpunkte des Sprachgefühls des redenden Subjekts betrachtet ist eine Sprache mit gebundenem Akzent (wie das Tschechische oder Polnische) eigentlich akzentlos; dagegen ist der freie Akzent in jeder Sprache, die einen solchen kennt, ein für das Sprachgefühl ganz reeller bedeutungsbildender Faktor. Dieser Gegensatz ist so prinzipiell, daß er durch die Annahme partieller Akzentverschiebungen und analogischer Ausgleiche nicht überbrückt werden kann. [From the point of view of the linguistic intuition of the speaker, a language with bound accent (like Czech or Polish) is essentially lacking accent; a free accent, to the contrary, is for any language which makes use of it, a real semantic factor. This contrast is so basic that it cannot be mediated by assuming local accent shifts and analogical leveling.]

Accentuations

75

Italian forms like virtiI or telefonano show prosodically "deviant" accentual structures. But this deviancy is meaningful; i.e., there is no need to assume a branching rime for the last syllable of the first word or an extrametrical final vowel of the second one just in order to make a binary foot structure rule (and consequently an analogous word structure rule) work with respect to a primary word stress which is not prosodically governed. Moreover, morpho(phono)logical accentuation is not simply ignoring prosody but it is, in its ideal form, a negation of prosody, hence, morpho(phono)logical accentuation creates accent locations which, in its ideal case, indicate morphologically-marked behavior or categories. All inherited Italian nouns in (co-)signal feminine gender and, especially, irregular morphological inflection. Those forms in which the accentuation positively (co-)signals a morphological category (or form) have to be considered as instances of "morphological accent", i.e., of morphoprosody. The concept of morphoprosodic accentuations proposed here is based primarily on Wurzel's (19806) "principle of morphological accent" which states that we are dealing with morphological accent if the conditions for the location of the accent are morphological in nature and if the accentuation depends on morphological classes. He further adds that the function of the morphological accent is to signal a specific morpheme class. This proposal not only is formulated in more detail than the traditional ones, but, moreover, it is different in important respects. Most of the instances which, for example, Garde (1965) describes as morphological accent in Russian, Italian and German are rather to be considered lexicalizations, as in his examples single (even if grammatical) morphemes attract or shift accent. And Garde does not systematically distinguish between lexical and morphological accentuations.

3. The gradual character of morphoprosodic accentuations In Stampe's theory of Natural Phonology morphophonemic rules are considered purely conventional and, no doubt, they are conventional from a phonological point of view. Dressier (1985a), on the contrary, draws a model of Natural Grammar in which morphophonological rules are "natural" to differing degrees and he elaborates a scale of criteria that allow us to consider systematically the "scores of naturalness". I follow the traditional view of Natural Phonology that emphasizes the difference in essence between phonology and morphophonemics. Morphophonological rules certainly may show differences with respect to their phonetic plausibility and this may have some influence upon the strategy of their aquisition. But arguments of this type are built mostly on appearances and do not justify the

76

Hurch

alignment of morphophonemic rules with phonological processes in the interaction of phonology and morphology. What I understand here as the graduality of morphoprosodic rules will reflect a rather functional view of the gradual fulfilment of morphological requirements by accent rules which are inherently prosodically deviant. The functionality of this deviancy, moreover, points to the fact that prosodic processes, like segmental ones, are not applied only as a set of changes in a chronologically "last" component of grammar but, as has been held throughout classical Natural Phonology, work during the whole grammatical derivation. The parameters in which morphoprosodic accentuations may vary are the following: • fulfilment of morphological function(s); • system-specific relations between prosodic and morphoprosodic accentuations; • derivational parameters such as interaction with segmental criteria; and • context-dependent and domain-dependent restrictions on accentuations. In the Suletin dialect of Basque (Michelena 1957-58) the accentual difference between aldba 'girl, young woman' and alabd '[the] girl, [the] young woman, det.' seems to be a quite systematic one. Suletin is reported to be the only variety of Basque (besides the extinct variety of Roncal) which possesses a regular accent rule (probably borrowed from Romance neighbors) assigning main stress to the penultimate syllable of the word. The accentual difference mentioned here reflects the two nominal declension types, undetermined vs. determined. Hence, aldba is the undetermined absolutive form whereas alabd is derived through the base-inflectional procedure from alaba plus the determiner -a. Obviously this derived form receives penultimate word stress and is later reduced to alabd through the contraction of the final sequence [a+a] without reaccentuation. This contraction (deletion) takes place also among other vowel sequences like buru "head" vs. bum "the head, det.". In this example a segmental phonological process creates the prerequisite for the morphological functioning of a prosodic pattern. This is a case of the most marginal interaction in morphoprosody—the location of the primary word accent is not governed by morphological principles but by prosodic ones, yet the deviant ultimate accent signals a specific morphological category. This interaction can only logically arise if the segmental phonological process itself is morphophonemic. This is a typical instance of what Donegan — Stampe (1979) call a "morphophonemic process", i.e., a neutralizing lenition which is general in the derivational direction but it is not fully recoverable perceptually. From a single final vowel we can detect an underlying sequence V+V just in case the phonetically final vowel carries primary accent; otherwise, reversing the application of the processes requires morphological knowledge. As long as we are dealing with words in isolation recoverability is, grosso modo, fulfilled and more so if we consider higher level

Accentuations

77

constituents, as, for example, in a noun phrase (e.g., noun + adjective) only the last word receives main stress, but it is also the case that only the last word receives the declensional endings. The prosodic structure of ultimate accent thus provides us with the context of vowel contraction and it provides us with information on the morphological category of determinacy. This example is instructive for various reasons. It shows that segmental lenitions are ordered after prosodic accentuations. As both are applied in a purely phonological context, we do not deal with a morphoprosodic rule in the strict sense, but we should probably coin the term "morphoprosodic process" in analogy to the above-mentioned segmental type. The Suletin example does not fit Wurzel's (1980b) requirement since the conditions of the location of the accent are not morphological but, nevertheless, it does signal a specific morpheme class. It shows, moreover, that we have to distinguish neatly between the regularity of an accent placement and the actual place of the accent. The morphological impact here consists exactly in the non-branchingness of the last foot in the determinate declension. But this example nicely illustrates how natural processes, following different principles of (sub-)components, increase the complexity of grammar. The accent location follows perfectly natural prosodic regularities. The segmental vowel contraction again follows perfectly natural segmental principles but the interaction of the two creates the basis for the grammaticalization of the former. In Samoan, Pratt (1960) and Condax (1990) describe a specific accent pattern for the locative. According to the canonical prosodic accent, fäle 'house' carries stress on the penult; in a form fali: 'in the (specific) house', on the contrary, the accent falls on the last syllable. The prosodic accent, as far as we are concerned in the present example, falls on the last bimoraic vowel (if there is one, otherwise on the penult—Hovdhaugen 1985). The accent shift to the last syllable is thus probably due to the lengthening of the last vowel in the locative and a subsequent prosodic accentuation. Nevertheless, the accent patterns of the two forms cited above, together with vowel length, synchronically (co-)signal the locative. In the Italian verb inflection those forms which are not stem-derived but infinitive-derived (future and conditional) carry word accent on the inflectional ending, as shown in the following chart: Future: am-er-ό am-er-άΐ am-er-ά am-er-emo am-er-ite am-er-άηηο

tac-er-ό tac-er-äi tac-er-ά tac-er-imo tac-er-ete tac-er-άηηο

legg-er-ό legg-er-άί legg-er-ά legg-er-imo legg-er-4te legg-er-άηηο

part-ir-6 part-ir-öi part-ir-ά part-ir-imo part-ir-ite part-ir-άηηο

78

Hwch

Conditional: am-er-έΐ am-er-isti am-er-ebbe am-er-immo am-er-iste am-er-0bbero

tac-er-ii tac-er-isti tac-er-ebbe tac-er-emmo tac-er-hte tac-er^bbero

legg-er-έϊ legg-er-isti legg-er-ibbe legg-er-immo legg-er-iste legg-er-ebbero

part-ir-ei part-ir-isti part-ir-ibbe part-ir-emmo part-ir-iste part-ir-ebbero

In order to explain these formations we have to assume a morphoprosodic rule which locates the primary word accent on the first syllable of the inflectional suffix. The stress assignment thus is governed by a morphological domain, but the indexing of the specific grammatical categories is not guaranteed, as Italian inflectional suffixes may be bisyllabic and polysyllabic and the resulting accent pattern may thus converge with a prosodically regular assignment. Moreover, accent location in these forms is not the only morphological device for the marking of the categories; on the contrary, the future and the conditional inflections show a fully varied paradigm. The morphological function of co-signalling the specific category is fulfilled only partially. Another example which comes from the other side of the borderline between prosody and morphology is the following noun declension from the Southern Gipuzcoan Basque dialect of Zegama (data based on a course paper by Inaki Amundarain Arana):

absolutive ergative dative genitive associative destinative

singular

plural

ardie ardüc ardin ardin ardQiin ardintzat

ardik ardik άτΰ: drdin ärdikin ardintzat

In this example the accent location systematically allows one to distinguish the (determined) singular from the plural. Whereas in the singular the accent lies on the last syllable of the base form (ardi), in the plural the accent regularly falls on the first syllable of this domain. The dative plural is probably reduced by a later process. But the main point this example should illustrate is that the location of the accent is the only systematic feature which distinguishes the morphological categories in question. In the destinative case, for example, we have no indicator other than the accent to signal the difference between ardintzat and drdintzat. From this we must assume that at least one of the functions of accent location here is

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morphological. As the Guipuzcoan dialects do not possess a prosodic process of initial accentuation, I assume the accent location in the plural to be morphologically rule-governed, insofar as it is prosodically marked. This rule obviously holds only for inflectional forms derived from bi- and polysyllabic base forms. A similar situation holds for the definitive accent in Tongan where the accent difference in the following examples signals a difference of grammatical definiteness (Condax 1989: 425ff): ' omai ha papa 'omai 'a e papd 'omai hoku papd 'omai eραρά ni

bring a mat bring the mat bring my mat bring this mat

The first example expresses the unmarked accent location of the word papa 'mat1 (penult). The definiteness of the second and third examples moves the accent to the last syllable; the final example then is somewhat different as the last element ni is clitic and the accent is assigned to the phonological word. Condax (1989: 426) indirectly puts forward the hypothesis that the definitive accent of Tongan might be analyzed together with clitization. The synchronic situation clearly shows an alternation of accent locations parallel to the grammatical alternation. Whereas in the Suletin and the Samoan examples the placement of the word accent itself follows prosodic principles, in Gipuzcoan declensional accent is actually accounted for by a morphological rule as is the Tongan definitive accent. The degree of morphologization in the examples cited so far varies according to a) the morphological vs. prosodic content of the accent location and b) the degree of its morphological functionality.

4. Morphological domains of accentuation A very different type of morphologization of word accent is to be found in those languages in which the word is further divided into morphological subparts which function as the domain of accentuation. Checking through a large database of prosodic systems, like the Stanford Phonology Archive, one finds that a rather large number of languages use morphological domains for accentuation that are only secondarily prosodic. For example, in Maori (Hohepa 1967) stress is usually assigned to the first long vowel, diphthong, or first syllable (in that order) of the stem. The phonological word with unaccented inflectional syllables does not alter the stem accentuation. Similar conditions seem to hold for a variety of Oceanic languages.

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Usually the accent domain is constituted by the stem (or the respective basic lexical morpheme). From this we can tentatively deduce a morphoprosodic preference which states: As the domain of paradigmatic accentuation, a stem syllable is preferred over a derivational morpheme and the latter over an inflectional ending. The paradigmatic function of accent here only apparently contradicts the syntagmatic function. Whereas the domain of the latter is the word, the preference stated here acts over the possible morphological domains. There are no languages which systematically stress affixes, but there are languages which only stress stems. Obviously, this does not mean to exclude the accentuation of suffixes in languages with final accent. The motivation for this preference is rather to be seen as a result of the lexical and semantic load of stems as compared to affixes. Stems, in addition, show a more complex phonological form and are subject to fewer morphotactic restrictions than affixes. Derivational affixes are prototypically a) more transparent morphosemantically, b) more varied in sound structure, and c) more easily allow an internal prosodic structure than grammatical affixes. Besides the purely morphologized stem accentuation as in Pomo, where the word stress falls on the last stem vowel, we can find various types of interaction with other morphological or with phonological variables. In Chukchi (Skorik 1968) the location of the stem accent interacts with the syllabic quality of the suffix vowel. In Maori, as mentioned above, as well as in Mixtec, we find interactions with other prosodic phenomena, in the former with moraic structure and in the latter with tone patterns (Hunter — Pike 1969:25).

5. The origin of morphologizations of prosody In this section I follow the interpretation of Wurzel (1984) that in historical development each (sub-)component of grammar tends to increase its specific naturalness. The relatively high complexity of morphoprosodic accentuations basically is due to the interaction, or changes in the interaction, between the respective components involved. In the Guipuzcoan example above the accent location functions purely morphologically, in the sense that the marking of a morphological category through accent should appropriately be compared to other morphological devices, especially to stem alternations like metaphony.

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A prosodic accentuation may become grammaticalized or lexicalized whenever one of the crucial phonological or prosodic conditions disappears. For example, segmental length, especially consonantal length, is not very stable in the history of Latin. But when vocalic length ceased to be a reliable prosodic unit in Postclassical Latin, the whole accent system lost its prosodic basis. In such a situation different reactions can manifest themselves to offset this type of change. An accent system can be reinterpreted and restructured prosodically, e.g., by reanalyzing a new type of syllable quantity, or it can trigger a series of prosodically-induced segmental processes like syncopation or apocopation in proparoxytones, in order to build up a new accent system. If the differing accent location in Lat. nominative universitas vs. genitive universitdtis is no longer prosodically governed, the accent placement rule may, moreover, either be marked as a property of a specific morpheme (lexicalization) or as a grammatical (morphological) regularity. If we assume that phonological naturalness improves through context-free historical change, we also have to deal with the consequence that any non-segmental phonological or other grammatical regularity which relies on a specific natural condition of the former state of development becomes more complex in the latter state, where the interacting phonological condition is changed. In other words, the loss of vowel length is due to a context-free natural process according to which short segments are less highly marked than long ones. The interaction of vowel length with prosodic phonology for accent location in Latin loses part of its crucial context and leads to a more complex accent system. The naturalness of the single components is thus not unitary but conflicting, as Wurzel points out. The suffix accentuation in the Italian verb inflection (cf. the examples above) arises through the interaction of phrase stress and word stress in univerbation. The Late Latin *cantare + habeo, which substitutes for the Classical synthetic future cantabo, through univerbation becomes It. canterd, Sp. cantare, etc., and thus the compounded auxiliary becomes an inflectional ending, keeping its accentual structure. Univerbation of analytical formations of inflectional categories increases morphosyntactic naturalness, but in the present example it also renders the prosodic system of Italian and Spanish phonologically more complex.

6. Morphoprosody, prosody, and hierarchical organization The claim that any accent structure is prosodic is based on the assumption that the output of earlier components in the derivation is input for the phonological components. In other words, the output of morphoprosodic processing is still assigned to prosodic structures through natural prosodic processes. The mere placement of a primary word accent does not by itself build up a prosodic pattern.

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For an Italian form like first person singular future abbandonerd Ί will give up' we thus assume the only primary accent location to be morphoprosodic, but we assume the overall accentual pattern of the word to follow the regular prosody. We thus have äbbanddnerö or (less preferred) abbändonerö. Examples like this are rather illuminating as regards the limitations to which recent works in generative theory on prosody are subject, and as regards the claim that stress is organized hierarchically, a fundamental basis of both the grid-model and the tree-model of generative phonology. This unidirectional bottom-up analysis of all prosodic structures is formulated in the clearest and most widely accepted way in Selkirk's (1984) "Strict Layering Hypothesis" which states that if a string of units is properly contained within a prosodic unit ρ, then it will also be properly contained in the prosodic unit p+1, one level up in the implicational scale of the prosodic hierarchy. Only a very few scholars have questioned the overall validity of this hierarchy; e.g., Inkelas (1989) adduces the ordering paradox of morification ("Morification feeds parsing into larger constituents but the construction of larger constituents feeds morification", Inkelas 1989:47) and presents some examples of mismatches between the levels. Various instances of secondary accentuation (and thus of a construction of an overall word-accent pattern) present one more piece of evidence against this strict formulation of hierarchical organization. Both the grid and tree theories of generative prosodic phonology presuppose a type of foot construction rule which operates on the basis of moras or syllables and that the foot level itself is the input for the phonological word. In other words: The rule or rules that establish metrical structure at this second level— ranking the relative prominence of feet within the word—are separate from those which create the foot structure in the first place, and which, in principle, would be specified in the same way as the foot-level structure creation rule(s). (Goldsmith 1990:184) These models exclude many traditional formulations of stress rules. One of the classic examples of secondary stressing is the Czech system as quoted in Jakobson (1926), where primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word and secondary or echo stress occurs on each successive odd-numbered syllable (with some further details in words with an uneven number of syllables). But the principle in a formulation like the one employed by Jakobson, and implicit in the term "echo stress", is that there is a primary stress and starting from the location of the primary stress a word can build up a prosodic structure of secondary stresses. Many of the traditional formulations of stress rules (e.g., Classical Latin where "traditionally" accent falls on the penult if it is long, otherwise on the antepenult) follow this

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direction. But this concept is turned upside down in tree and grid phonology: there we deal with foot structures and only the prominence relations among the feet establish which of these feet represents on the word level primary stress and which represent secondary stresses. My aim here is not to question the existence of global prosodic patterns of a word or the architectonic character of these patterns. Instead, what I intend to discuss is the relation between primary and secondary stresses in order to see whether the mapping of the hierarchical structure of the pattern on the hierarchically organized derivation is really the only plausible way of describing the pattern. If we admit that words possess an architectonic overall prosodic structure it will be difficult to falsify the equating of structure and derivation directly. Languages with a purely phonological and prosodic accent system will not help to clarify this issue. We thus have to examine languages like Italian which, in the classical sense and in the argument presented above, show accentuations that differ from a canonical prosodic pattern, at least in part. According to the Stanford Phonology Archive (Crothers et al. 1979) this latter type of language constitutes a large majority of the languages of the world. Coming back to the above example that I call an instance of morphoprosodic accentuation (It. abbandonerd), the generative approaches mentioned here would analyze the example as purely prosodic, without reference to grammatical information. According to these theories the only indication there is which prevents the string /ab:andonero/ from being stressed as abbandonero or abbandoniro (the second would especially fit Italian prosody), is that the final vowel builds up a branching foot following the "Rime Projection Principle". This final vowel thus has to be marked somehow. There are reasons to assume that it is not long (cf. Bertinetto 1981); moreover it triggers rafforzamento sintattico of a following initial consonant which indicates that it does not represent quantity (Vogel 1982; see also the discussion in Loporcaro 1988b). In addition, I would claim that marking the final vowel in order to fit the rime projection is tantamount to marking it directly for accent. The explanation presented in recent generative models thus is circular: the derivation is prosodic; but in order to fit the prosody the final vowel has to carry a mark which in other theories is the consequence of accentuation. In addition, the overall accentual pattern of abbandonerd varies: we can have secondary stresses on the first and the third, besides the primary stress on the fifth (last) vowel (äbbandönerö), or one secondary stress on the second vowel of the word (iabbändonerö). The traditional studies like Malagoli (1946) and Camilli (1941) suggest that secondary accentuations obey some general prosodic principles, e.g., secondary stresses do not clash with the primary stress, intervals of more than two unaccented syllables between secondary stresses or between the secondary and the primary stress should be avoided, and they state a general rule which assigns secondary stress to the first syllable of the word unless the second syllable carries an

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unremovable accentual prominence. This is just about the same regularity proposed in a generative framework by Vogel — Scalise (1982). Without discussing at the moment the descriptive adequacy of this proposal in detail, we notice here that a) secondary stressing indirectly, via general prosodic constraints, is oriented on the place of the primary accent and b) also proponents of a metrical approach do have to refer to what they call "unremovable prominence", i.e., a property which is not assigned through hierarchically-organized prosodic rules. Moreover, secondary stressing departs from a regularity which is not the same regularity that is responsible for what happens—in a generativist perspective—one level higher in primary stressing. Vogel — Scalise (1982) admit a series of words with more than one possible secondary stress pattern and Bertinetto (1976 and 1981)—probably the most exhaustive study of secondary accentuation in Italian—enlarges this list considerably with examples like cärattärizzäbile vs. carätterizzäbile, ilettricitä vs. eUttricitä, ginericamente vs. geniricamente. A ready explanation in the light of tree or grid models would be that one accentual unit might have different foot structures and, therefore, different overall prosodic patterns. This argument basically holds true for Spanish as well, despite Harris' (1983) largely ignoring analogous facts. There is nothing to say against this assumption. Words like abbandonerd with varying secondary stress patterns in reality show different tree or grid structures. And both these tree and grid structures possess their own plausibility, as both patterns exist. But, combining this assumption with the strict layering of prosody, we should wonder why the location of the primary accent does not oscillate in even a single Italian word. If we really assume that foot-structure rules work independently of primary word-stress rules and the latter entirely depend on prominence relationships among the former, and if, moreover, we have inconsistent structuring at the foot level, then we should expect inconsistencies also on the word level, as the word level is, in the framework quoted above, nothing other than the relation of the units of the foot level plus additional structural principles. That is, we should expect inconsistencies not only regarding secondary accentuations but also regarding the location of the primary accent. But this is exactly what does not happen. In all examples quoted for inconsistent overall prosodic patterns the word accent always is stable. In other words, the consistency of the primary accent versus the inconsistency of the secondary accent makes us conclude the exact reverse from what hierarchical models assume: it is the primary accent which, if we have a dependency relation at all, determines (or at least influences) the location of secondary stress and not vice versa. In a model of natural prosodic phonology accent patterns may be assigned by different procedures. In words like abbandonerd and elettricitä the mapping of accent structures is governed morphoprosodically as the result of diachronic grammaticalization; in caratterizzabile it is determined by the (still historically plausible)

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lexicalization of the word accent pattern in the derivational suffix—'Vbile\ and, finally, in genericamente, where the penult is closed by a consonant, the whole process of accentuation follows prosodic principles alone. At a first glance this analysis seems to fit the data arbitrarily but there is more evidence for it. If we assume that phonology is natural, and thus also prosody, and, moreover, that grammaticalizations and lexicalizations of sound patterns are phonologically conventional, then we should expect only the prosodic word accentuation to be prosodically "unremovable" in the sense that the production of a primary stress pattern deviating from the actual one would require a conscious effort. In fact, accentuations like abbandoniro (or even abbandonero) and caratterizzabtte would be perfectly acceptable prosodic forms, whereas genericdmente is unpronounceable as it contradicts a basic prosodic principle of Italian which says that there cannot be a heavy syllable in the unaccented part of the last foot.

7. Primary versus secondary stress — a reprise There is more general evidence contradicting the assumption that the hierarchy present in the overall accentual pattern reflects the prosodic derivation. As counterevidence we have to accept all those systems in which the secondary accentuation either is located at the position of the primary stress or follows regularities essentially different from those which assign the primary accent. Again it is difficult to prove the primacy in systems where all accent phenomena are purely prosodic, like Polish and Czech (cf. Madelska — Dressier this volume), as such systems by themselves lead to no conclusive argumentation. But still for Czech Jakobson (1926) mentions variation in five-syllable words, where the secondary accent tends to fall on the fourth syllable and not on the third, next to the primary accent on the initial syllable. Since the primary accent remains stable on the first syllable and only the secondary pattern varies, we may safely postulate a structural primacy of the primary word accent over the secondary accent. But, as the overall pattern of Czech is exclusively prosody-governed, the whole pattern may be derived simultaneously. In Zoque (Knudson 1975, cf. also Wonderly 1951) main stress predominantly falls on the penultimate syllable of the stress group and secondary stress (which is only assigned in words with three or more syllables) on the initial, ?a:wat 'louse', hö:ho 'palm tree', ?ä:nä:sa 'orange', hi?epikpa 'he is breathing' (Knudson 1975:10 ff.) This prosodic regularity is subject to some limitations in the case of monosyllabic stems etc., which we will not discuss here, and, moreover, it is subject to syntagmatic segmental processes which can morphologize the prosodic accent location (vowel lengthening as in the first three examples and rearticulation

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of the secondary stressed vowel as in the fourth). The crucial point for Zoque is that primary accents and secondary accents seem to be located independently of each other, i.e., they do not show a hierarchical derivation. Finally, as examples like ?ä:nä:sa illustrate, these accents may also appear in contiguous positions. In pitch accent languages such situations are not exceptional. A similar class of counterexamples comprises those languages in which the assignment of a secondary stress obeys different projection principles than the assignment of the primary stress, i.e., where primary and secondary accentuation follow different interactions with other prosodic or segmental units. In Azerbaijani (Householder 1965) the main stress falls on the last vowel but the secondary stress tends to avoid high vowels and seems to be preferably located on heavy syllables. Thus the main stress follows a principle of peripherality (see below), a principle of "End Rule" in the grid model or of right heading and left-to-right application of foot structuring in the tree model. But secondary stress follows qualitative and quantitative projections, both of which are irrelevant for the location of the primary stress. In such a stress system it would hardly be possible to derive both positions by the same foot structuring principles and assign the main stress according to the prominence relations among them. Finally, there are languages like French without a distinct secondary accent pattern. For these systems the recent generative approaches again propose a rather ad hoc solution, oriented primarily on structural considerations in order to maintain the derivation. In French the main stress regularly falls on the last syllable of the stress group (phonological word) and a secondary stress (emphatic) may be assigned to its first or second syllable. A strictly hierarchical model has to postulate a foot structure one level below the word accentuation with some kind of subsequent destressing. Indeed, this is what in that framework is subsumed under the term "suppression of non-primary stress". Goldsmith (1990:185) states in this context that "the phonetic effects [of secondary stress] are only indirect, in that the secondary stress system is used in order to determine location of primary stress". It is hardly possible to seriously discuss fiction in science, but that this proposal cannot hold for French, for example, is shown by the fact that again locations of primary and secondary accent (if the latter is present at all) follow different prosodic principles, which are only weakly related to each other. If some theories postulate a hierarchical organization of the prosodic derivation as a mapping of the hierarchical organization of an overall prosodic pattern then the causal analysis of the single-stress positions within one word should be the same, independent of their specific weight. The aim of the next section is to show that this is not necessarily the case.

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8. Overall accentual patterns Arguing against the strict hierarchy of derivation does not imply a denial of the existence of a hierarchical organization of accent patterns. The existence of primary accent and secondary accent implies a hierarchical structure among accents. In Natural Phonology we assume, and here I follow a suggestion by David Stampe (p.c., see also Donegan — Stampe 1983), that these metrical figures are themselves perceived and are thus the "primes" of prosody. By this we mean that in overall prosodic patterning "we do not put accents on words but rather words on accents" (Stampe). Because of limitations of space the description of the model of accentuation must be rather sketchy here; the reader is referred to the more detailed presentation in Hurch (1992) and forthcoming. Rhythmic structures like the Italian (όοοόο), (όοό), (οόο), {όοόο}, or (όοδοόο] onto which words can be mapped, like generalmente 'generally', civiltä 'civilization', caduto 'fallen', parafango 'fender', or oreficeria 'goldsmith's shop' respectively, are perceived as rhythmically even. Such patterns are also perceived as rhythmically even by speakers of languages with fixed accent, like French or Czech. In the memorization of words rhythm seems to be an independent factor in the sense that a rhythm can be recovered faster than a related word can. Rhythmic patterns can also be seen to preserve stability in certain cases of phonological change. Thus, for example, in Postclassical Latin the segmental and prosodic basis for the Classical accent rule was lost, but the patterns remained stable for a period before "repair" mechanisms came into play. Pattern changes, on the other hand, are mainly changes of position within a given pattern, like the exchange of primary and secondary accents in the development of {όοοόο) from {όοοόο) in West Slavic. Further evidence in favor of the existence of overall patterns is provided by those languages in which accent placement depends on a prior analysis of the whole word, e.g., when the accent goes on the penultimate syllable of words with an even number of syllables but on the antepenult of words with an odd number (for references see also van der Hulst — Kooj 1992). A remnant of such a system can be found in Czech, where the secondary accent falls on every even syllable counted from the primary stress on the first syllable, with the exception of pentasyllables, where it falls on the fourth instead of the third and fifth syllables. Overall accent patterns thus display an existence prior to the accentuation of any specific word. Besides linguistic units (words, stress groups) they can be filled with non-linguistic material or associated with melodic strings. Such rhythmic patterns are produced by context-free and domain-independent paradigmatic processes

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which are reflections of the context-sensitive preferences which will be presented in the following section, especially those in 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, and 9.5. These processes, their interaction, and their application vs. non-application, all produce different rhythmic patterns. The less-marked pattern is constituted by a simple trochee—the sequence of an accented and unaccented syllable which requires the most preferred application of all context-free paradigmatic accent processes. On independent grounds Riemann (1903) argues that the uneven musical times 3/4, 3/8, etc. constitute the simplest musical rhythms, because they allow for a heavier reliance on the ictus note. The syntagmatic process of accentuation is essentially just the mapping of accent units onto the language specific patterns established paradigmatically. This mapping may be governed by different strategies. In a language with fixed primary accent, the mapping follows only prosodic principles which again are reflections of the (context-free and context-sensitive) preferences. (These will be described in the following section.) Thus, in Czech a trisyllabic is necessarily mapped onto {όοο], a pentasyllable onto {όοοόο}, a hexasyllabic onto {όοδοόο}, etc. In systems like that of Latin, interaction with quantity defines the patterns available for the mapping of a given word. A word like Lat. natura 'birth, essence' is mapped onto {οόο} by quantity preference. In systems with free accent, lexical, morphological, and syntagmatic prosodic factors govern the mapping process.

9. Prosodic processes The role of prosodic processes is to compose and decompose patterns. They may relate to different levels of an overall pattern. They have to be divided into domain-dependent and domain-free processes and within both groups there are context-dependent and context-free variants. The most general processes are those which create rhythmic patterns without reference to specific prosodic or phonological restrictions, i.e., the domain-free and context-free processes. In the following sections I will distinguish primarily between context-free and contextdependent processes. In the present study accent processes will be presented under the heading of preferences. I do not assume that preferences themselves are grammatical concepts but they illustrate preferred states and patterns either under the absence of or under constant contextual influences. The preferences below may themselves work as prosodic processes or they simply represent the "unmarked" vs. "marked" context of other prosodic or segmental processes.

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9.1 Rising and falling patterns Falling patterns of the trochaic-dactylic structure are preferred over rising patterns of the iambic-anapaestic structure. There is some experimental evidence which supports a view of the equivalence of the two shapes, like Allen (1975), where the preference seems to depend on a sensitivity towards quantity and intensity. However, Allen's results are based on non-speech material and, if we allow that they parallel accent systems, we should expect quantity-sensitive languages to have rising foot structures and simple intensity-accent systems to tend towards falling ones. Such parallelisms are too simplistic to warrant discussion. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence for the first preference proposed above: • A falling pattern cannot be divided into smaller units on the very same prosodic level, but a rising one can, i.e., a sequence of an accented syllable plus an unaccented syllable constitutes a single foot, but a sequence containing the reverse accentual pattern can consist of an anacrusis plus foot, and the remaining monosyllabic foot even allows a binary interpretation as one possible foot structure as in the Italian example above, abbandonerd, which possesses a branching final foot, of which the last weak element segmentally is not extra represented. • A series of observations suggests that the relation between tonic and posttonic syllables is stronger than the relation between pretonic and tonic syllables. Quantitative adaptations like the "iambic shortening" in Latin (mihi: > mihi) are much better known from falling structures than from rising ones. Pretonic vowels are not subject to the same segmental reduction processes as posttonic syllables (like syncopations and/or apocopations). • In languages with a rising main accent foot the secondary accent foot is frequently falling; the reverse is rare. In the case of accent clash, i.e., in a situation of adjacent intensity peaks (cf. the more subtle definitions in Selkirk 1984), the restructuring processes tend to create falling and not rising patterns. In other words, in a four syllable sequence like New Yörk City, the sequence of a iambic plus a trochaic foot is remodelled as a sequence of two trochees, namely as Νέ\ν York City. The recent generative literature basically agrees on the directionality of this sort of restructuring, cf. the "iambic reversal" rule in Liberman — Prince (1977:319) or the beat movement in Selkirk (1984:169), but without drawing a conclusion on preferences. All cases of accent clash in different languages brought up in the literature show this tendency. If stress shift is not possible in English, as noted by Gimson (1962), destressing of the second of the adjacent intensity peaks will be the result. What is crucial for the present discussion is that these different

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Hurch strategies avoiding accent clashes all tend to create falling patterns out of rising ones. • In language acquisition falling foot structures seem to be preferred over rising feet (Allen — Hawkins 1979, 1980; Dogil 1981). Children avoid complex accentual structures through a series of rhythmically-induced segmental processes, like deletion of unstressed initial syllables rather than through accent shifts. Allen — Hawkins (1978:176) generally state that "the natural metric form of children's words is trochaic". In English "thus we get /"naena/ or /"baena/, for banana, but never /ba 'naen/, Aeto/ or /"peto/ for potato, but never/pa'tet/, /laktek/ or /"waktuak /, but never /a'lak/" (Allen — Hawkins 1979:928).

But the equivalence of falling and rising structures within a model of prosody was advocated not only by phoneticians, as mentioned at the beginning of this section, but also in the grid and tree approches of generative phonology. In particular the concept of "headedness of foot structures" provides no indication of a preferred directionality.

9.2 The size of foot structures A second principle, which will engender less controversy, is that trochaic and iambic structures are preferred over dactylic and anapaestic ones, in other words, that binary foot structures are preferred over ternary ones, ignoring for the moment their directionality. No doubt this preference is expandable to quaternary structures, which are less preferred than ternary. Most of the prosodic theories have principles that correspond to at least a version of this relation, cf. Hayes* (1985) binary type, which constitutes a basic distinction in binary and unbound foot structure types; a series of restrictions in Selkirk (1984) like the Anti Lapse Filter, the Alternation Maintenance Condition, the Beat Movement Rule (Rhythm Rule), etc.; or Prince's (1983) Perfect Grid Rule. The basis of these principles is primarily rhythmic in nature, and other perceptual principles (like "figure/ground", see also Madelska — Dressier this volume) converge with it. In child phonology binary prosodic patterns come up earlier than other structures. Vihman et al. (1985) attribute the crucial word character in infant speech to the disyllabic structure of frequently reduplicated monosyllabic, reduced polysyllabic, or even reduced bisyllabic and then reduplicated forms. According to Vihman et al. the development from non-words to words, from babbling to speech, is rooted in disyllabicity. Disyllabic words not only come up before trisyllables but also before monosyllables. Disyllabic words seem to have the best length for

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processing. As Dressier (1985b) points out, the ideal word length lies between 2 and 3 syllables; agglutinating languages have a higher medium, isolating languages a lower one. One argument for his considerations on length is that in this shape one word may correspond to one foot. Another argument for the preference under discussion comes from crosslanguage comparison: there are languages which allow only binary-foot structures (cf. Hayes' above-mentioned binary type) but there are no languages which exclude them. Correspondingly there are at least two process types, the scope of which, other things being equal, is to reduce trisyllabic into bisyllabic feet: syncopation and apocopation. Besides rather sporadic stress shifts from Latin proparoxytones to the penultimate in Romance languages, there are systematic diachronic examples like Lat. generu > Span, yerno, cömite > conde, Lat. domina > Ital. donna, speculum > specchio, Lat. mdnicu > Prov. manje, etc. Moreover, examples of this sort are quite frequent in synchronic phonologies of stress-timed languages like English, e.g., family >famly, interest > intrest, etc. Finally, secondary accentuation has to be mentioned in connection with the preference for binary feet. A large number of languages show effects of some kind of echoing of the primary stress, either like Czech from left to right or like Italian (and many Italian dialects) from right to left. Dogil (1981) proposes a 'trochaic projection principle' that applies in his model at the right edge of the word and upon which, in languages with penultima accent, a Halle-Vergnaud-like tree is constructed. Some of the arguments found here are also adduced by Dogil. His principle is a convergence of these first two preferences and as such it is not limited to the end of the word. However, Dogil's proposal only incidentally reflects a primacy of main accent through the "trochaic projection principle", but not for all other accent systems.

9.3 Structural depth The structural depth of accentual patterns heavily depends on the size of the domain (for postlexical realizations cf. Madelska — Dressier this volume). As in other aspects of phonology in analyzing preferred patterns we have to resolve two conflicting tendencies: the more complex a given accent pattern is, the less reliable is its perception, but on the other hand an overall accentual pattern should be as little monotonous as possible in order to facilitate perception. Simplicity of a matrix heightens monotony and the increase in complexity renders processing more difficult. A simple distinction between accented and unaccented is basic and preferred over structures which contain three distinctions (thus at least four elements) like

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primary, secondary and unaccented, and the latter is preferred over a four-way distinction (like the former plus a tertiary accent), etc. Paradigmatic prosodic processes in general and paradigmatic accent processes in particular are fortitive (Donegan — Stampe 1979) which means, ceteris paribus, that they aim at rendering structures perceptible. But the perceptual reliability of a phonetic parameter decreases the more subtle its internal distinctions are. This is also one of the reasons for the preferred binarity of segmental features. Only rarely will a secondary accent be phonologically relevant. Examples like It. cdva tdppi "he screws corks" vs. cävatäppi "cork-screw" seem rather artificial and, moreover, are based on different accent domains. The rhythmic-phonological presentation of overall patterns in tree-structures either of the Halle-Vergnaud-type or of the Hayes-type frequently express intensity relations among and within nonprimary accented feet which are rather taxonomic. Not only are there frequent fluctuations in the placement but the deeper we go into the structure the more disagreements we encounter about intensity relations between secondary accents. In syntagmatic prosody especially flat structures become more usual under stylistic influences (cf. Madelska — Dressier this volume).

9.4 Quantity

sensitivity

There are languages which stress preferably or only long vowels or syllables but there are no languages which preferably or only stress short vowels or syllables. Segmental and/or syllabic quantity thus is what I call here a contextual property in structuring accents. But the way in which this observation is integrated into the single prosodic theories is quite different. As a preference I will simply state that a potential primary accentual unit in a position of possible accentuation will more readily exhibit stress if it exhibits quantity. In recent generative theories the relation between quantity and accent is linearily unidirectional. In Hayes' (1985) approach, for example, there are two basic types of languages, quantity-sensitive and quantity-insensitive, and moraic structure is projected higher up on the foot level. There are various shortcomings to this proposal. First, not all languages which exhibit quantity make use of quantity in the structuring of feet. It is thus not clear up to what point his principle can really constitute a prosodic type. This criticism gains still more plausibility if we consider that quantity-sensitive prosodies are probably only a subtype of syllable-timed (mora-timed) languages. Accent-timed languages like German or English, for example, show more complex rime structures than syllable-timed languages, basically as a result of diachronic reductions, but no sensitivity to these rime structures plays any role in foot structures.

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Second—and this is the much more crucial counterargument against the generative conceptualization of quantity—in nearly all cases of quantity-sensitive languages the quantity sensitivity is limited to only those feet which contain the word accent and secondary accentuation is only very rarely sensitive to quantity. This is another important point against the strict hierarchicalization of prosodic levels, because then the argumentation becomes circular: quantity is effective just on feet which receive their properties of word accentuation two levels higher in the hierarchy. In Latin, for example, the main stress foot is constructed taking into account quantity, but quantity is rather unimportant for establishing secondary accentuations. We thus cannot conceptualize quantity linearly for foot-structuring but only for establishing primary accent feet. The foundation of the preference proposed here lies in the fact that a syllable which already possesses higher intrinsic prominence in one representation is more likely also to receive prominence in a different representation in order not to create distinctions which might overload the perceptual capacity of humans. In fact, in most accent systems phonetic quantity is one of the correlates, and in some the most reliable (e.g., Italian, Bertinetto 1981), correlate of the production of accent. It would thus be counterproductive to put a prominence which is co-expressed with a certain phonetic property in contradiction to those entities which underlyingly possess this very same property. Correspondingly we observe prosodically-induced segmental processes neutralizing quantitative distinctions in unstressed position; cf. the lex mamilla in diachronic Romance phonology. The domains in which this preference operates may vary. It is morphologized in languages like Maori where the domain of quantity sensitivity is constituted by the stem.

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The demarcative function, which plays a central role in Jakobsonian phonology, will receive in the course of the present proposal a contextually somewhat restricted interpretation, especially because most of the instances described as demarcative by Jakobson are accent localizations oriented at a boundary, but which themselves do not clearly indicate the respective boundary. Accent location rules as in Latin or Ancient Greek are oriented at the word boundary, but a given accentuation does not unequivocally indicate the word boundary. A long accented vowel in Latin may be part of the penult- or of the antepenult-syllable; only further morphological or lexical information will unambiguously clarify the boundary. Other demarcative functions, like the "negative boundary signal" (Jakobson 1937), express rather superfluous concepts.

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The preference shall be stated as follows: the accentuation of a syllable at the boundary of the accent domain or of a syllable which bidirectionally marks this boundary is preferred over the accentuation of a syllable which does not fulfill this requirement. The fortitive function of accent processes requires, ceteris paribus, that the accent domain should be recognizable as such; this requirement gains particular importance in languages with a higher average domain length; therefore it is not surprising that agglutinating languages like the Finno-Ugric or the Turkic languages nearly exclusively show accent systems with primary accent at one of the word boundaries. The demarcative function within a given accent domain is not the only justification of this preference. Hyman (1977) describes three preferred accent positions within the word, all of them related to one or the other edge of the word: initial, penult, and final. And all three positions are, other things being equal, favored by somewhat distinct plausibilities according to different rhythmic patterns (as, for example, in music different patterns in a meter).

9.6 Accent and tone The typologies of tone languages are not satisfyingly uniform but all of them seem to point to a possible relationship between tone and accent. As for other vocalic and prosodic parameters (tenseness, quantity, etc.) the accented syllable proves to be the favorite position for the realization of tone. Many tone languages neutralize tonal structures in unstressed syllables. In order to establish an accentual preference in relation to tone structures, the derivational primacy of accent or tone has to be fixed. Hyman (1978) indicates two possibilities of systematic interaction: accent superimposed on tone and tone superimposed on accent. He exemplifies this distinction on the basis of Chinese and Fasu, but in spite of the notion of primacy his discussion does not allow conclusions to be drawn regarding dependencies between the location of accent and tonal structures. McCawley's (1978) distinction obviously characterizes the pitchaccent languages as languages in which the syntagmatic tone structures depend heavily on the position of accent. But the reverse is true for 'real' tone languages only in different respects. Some tone languages (like Chinese) neutralize tone structures in unstressed position. But this again does not express any relation which could possibly establish a preference. Still there remains a series of tone languages in which the location of the primary word accent crucially depends on tonal structures. In Hausa (Kraft — Kraft 1973:37) the accent usually falls on a syllable carrying high tone, and in a sequence of more than one high tone syllable, the last one is stressed. In Akan (Schachter — Fromkin 1968), besides frequent

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lexicalizations, the prosodic main accent lies on the first high tone (interestingly the first low tone carries secondary accent). A rather complex interaction of tone and accent holds in Mixtec (Hunter — Pike 1969:25). Ignoring morphologizations, like the accentuation of the first stem syllable in words with only low tones or rising tone sequences, the prosodic accent is assigned to the last high tone followed by a lower tone, with some more details of less importance for our discussion. A preference which has to be put forward cautiously here is that within a given tone structure the most salient tone syllable preferably also receives accent.

9.7 The interaction of the preferences The preferences illustrated under 9.1.-9.6. interact in composing foot structures and overall prosodic patterns. They may work in a context-sensitive way in the sense that they may relate either to other phonological or to prosodic entities, or they may relate to each other in interactions; paradigmatically the processes involving the preferences are context-free. Madelska — Dressier (this volume) compare the functioning and interaction of paradigmatic and syntagmatic prosodic processes on the basis of two prosodically regular languages, Czech and Polish. The preferences stated here may interact in various ways. For instance, the preference for falling structures (9.1.) together with the preference for binary organization generates trochaic feet as the latter fit both the preferences. It also implies that anapaestic foot structures are more marked than the other simple falling or rising types; but this interaction itself makes no statement about the hierarchical relation of iambs and dactyls. The common effect of the binarity preference (9.2.) and the preference dealing with structural depth (9.3.) will create minimal prosodic patterns which may ideally correspond to word size.

10. Summary The aim of the present paper is at least three-fold. 1) It intends to show that recent generative approaches are wrong in attempting to deduce from overall prosodic patterns that the derivation of these patterns is a direct mapping of their structure. Alternatively I propose that primary accent is primary not only with respect to intensity relations but also in derivation. The origin of primary accentuations may be lexical, grammatical (morphological), or prosodic; so primary accentuations are the input to further prosodic processing. The primacy of foot structures over main accents, however, is a structural phenomenon;

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the reality it seems to have is due to the deceptive appearance of overall patterns. For this reason approaches like Hayes' Metrical Theory can "function" but at the cost of failing to recognize the systematicity of deviations by marking them on every single item. 2) It intends to clarify the different aspects of morphoprosody, i.e., the intricate relationship between accentual factors and morphological procedures and categories. 3) Finally it aims at outlining the general principles of Natural Prosody. It presents a series of preferences and corresponding processes which paradigmatically derive and language-specifically select main accent patterns and overall rhythmic structures as "primes". Moreover, it argues that a concrete accentuation is nothing more than the syntagmatic (lexicalized, morphologized or prosodic) mapping of a given word onto such pre-established patterns.

Notes 1.

Earlier versions and ideas of this paper have been presented on various occasions. I would like to express my gratitude to the audiences at the Arbeitstagung Österreichischer Linguisten, Vienna, at lectures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, in addition to the Workshop at Bern. Most of the ideas presented here are part of my Habilitationsschrift (Hurch 1991). I would like to thank especially the following colleagues for written or oral comments: P. Donegan, W.U. Dressier, A. di Luzio, G. Nathan, L. Onederra, R. Singh, and D. Stampe. One more remark is perhaps necessary to explain the use of graphic signs for accents: acute accents indicate main stress, grave accents secondary stresses; in words which carry only a grave accent, it indicates main accent and its use corresponds then to the orthographic form of Italian.

Can weakening processes start in initial position? The case of aspiration of Is/ and Ifl Julian Mendez Dosuna 'Mmmmmmner your own?' Masters replied. This habit of swallowing the first part of his sentences made communication with him a stressful proceeding. David Lodge, Changing Places.

1. As far as the domain of application of processes is concerned, strengthening (fortition, foregrounding) processes are characterized in standard presentations of Natural Phonology as being "particularly favored in 'strong' positions, applying especially to [...] consonants in syllable onsets" (Donegan — Stampe 1989:142; cf. also Dressier 1985a:44; Hurch 1988:13). Cf. Lat. /r-/> Sp. /r-/: e.g. multirracial 'multiracial'. Sp. /j-, w-/ [j-, gw-]: hierro [jero ] 'iron', huevo -»[gw6ßo] 'egg', E. /p-1- k-/ [ph th kh]: tea [t^]. 1 In contrast to the above, weakening (lenition, backgrounding) processes tend to apply "especially in 'weak' positions, e.g. to consonants in 'blocked' and syllablefinal positions" (Donegan — Stampe 1989:142-143). Under identical circumstances, a weakening process is expected to apply in strong positions (utterance-, word-, and syllable-initial position in that order) only after it has applied in "weaker" positions: i.e., syllable-final, word-final, and utterance-final position. In the case of finals, the strength hierarchy seems to me less clear and probably depends on each universal process type.^ The resistance to weakening of syllable initial, and particularly utterance- and word-initial consonants would follow from their greater perceptional salience, for which there is compelling evidence of different types: clippings, acronyms and abbreviations, stenographic systems, the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, psycholinguistic experiments of word-recognition, etc. (cf. Dressier 1987:116-117). Speakers, being aware of the importance which word-onsets have for listeners, try as much as possible not to distort them. 2. The tenet that initial position is most resistant to weakening seems to be contradicted by the evolutions /s/ > [h] and /f/ > [h] as attested in some languages.^ In his well-known handbook, Lass (1984:181-182) suggests that intervocalic and word-initial prevocalic position are preferred environments for aspiration (lenition in general) as against preconsonantal position which would constitute a

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protected environment. Among other processes, he cites /s/-aspiration in Ancient Greek as evidence for his assertion. According to Ferguson (1978:416) and especially (1990), the process of /s/aspiration may be implemented according to two different patterns of diffusion: a "Greek type" and a "Spanish type". For the "Greek type" consider the following data: (1)

a.

b.

IE *septrri *genh1esos *osdos *misdhos *h1esti

Greek heptä *genehos > (Horn.) geneos 6zos (z = [zd]) misth0s esti

'seven' 'race (gen.)' 'branch' 'wages' 'is'

In the examples under (la), IE */s/ has been weakened in syllable and word initial position. In (lb) it is retained syllable-finally.^ Other languages of the "Greek type" would be Old Iranian, Armenian, and modern Yakut. The course of the change in Spanish dialects is outlined in (2): (2) i. ii. iii. iv. v.

/Vs$C/ /Vs##/ /Vs # V/ /VsV/ / # # sV/

las moscas las moscas las alas zique pasa? si, senor

[Iah möhkas] [Iah möhkah] [Iah älah] [kipäha] [hi hejiö]

'the flies' 'the wings' 'what's up?' 'yes, sir'

Stages (iv) and (v) occur only in most casual speech styles in most radical aspirating dialects (e.g. Andalusian, Extremeno, Caribbean Spanish), but parallels to the Spanish evolution can be found in French and other Romance languages, as well as in Sanskrit. As Ferguson himself (1990:65) points out, "it is only the Spanish type that fits fully into Donegan and Stampe's characterization of weakening processes". He fails, however, to break the impasse created by the "Greek type", and seems to be content with the conclusion (p. 74) that "what seems to be a single pattern of sound change may actually be two or more different patterns that cut across various proposed dichotomies, such as strengthening vs weakening processes, [etc.]". In the framework of Natural Phonology the problem has been tackled by Hurch (1988:126-128), who concludes that /s/- and /f/-aspiration apply preferentially in (word and syllable) initial position. He bases this conclusion on the testimony of Ancient Greek, (Goidelic and British) Celtic, Bergamask Italian, Armenian, Ainu,

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Cham, and Polynesian languages for /s/-aspiration and that of Calabrese, Gascon, Old Spanish, Latin, and Etruscan for /f/-aspiration. Certainly, Hurch is also aware of the evidence provided by languages of the "Spanish type" like Sanskrit, where /s/-aspiration takes place only (or preferentially) in syllable-final position. This diffusion pattern, allegedly less frequent, is to be expected due to the lenitive character of the change ("gerade weil es sich dabei um eine Lenition handelt", p. 127). The diffusion pattern of the Greek type could be connected with the fact that final position is "less marked" with regard to /h/ deletion (i.e. /h/ resists deletion in syllable initial position better than in syllable- and word-final positions). Speakers would avoid aspirating /s/ in weak positions where the resulting [h] might be jeopardized by the universal process of /h/ deletion. However, this line of argumentation is hardly convincing if only because it presupposes an incredible clairvoyance on the part of human speakers (after all, Ancient Gk. heptd > MnGk. eftä 'seven', VLat. fumu > MnSp. humo [umo] 'smoke'). Admittedly, the goal of phonological change is to eliminate a conflicting sound, not to create a stable output immune to phonetic erosion. Speakers do not seem to worry much about taking a step which in the long run (maybe many generations afterwards) may end in complete deletion. In addition, the fact that /h/ is unstable syllable- and/or wordfinally does not entitle us to conclude that /h/ is less likely to appear in these positions.

3. Taking into account the apparently contradictory hierarchies of implementation of the change in Greek and Spanish, one could be tempted to draw the conclusion that the changes at issue confront us with a contingency which, in my opinion, must be rejected as logically absurd, viz. the possibility that one and the same change would be a fortition in one language and a lenition in another one. Fortunately, nobody has proposed such a hypothesis, which would be, to say the least, counterintuitive and paradoxical.5 There is little doubt that /s/ > [h] and /f/ > [h] are instances of weakening with a clear articulatory motivation.

4. But is it true that the initial position is the preferred environment for the weakening of /s/ and /f/ in some languages? In point of fact, the evidence produced by Ferguson and Hurch is not as compelling as it looks at first glance.

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4.1. Let us first deal with two specious cases of aspiration: those of Ainu and Cham. As to Ainu (language isolate; Hokkaido and Sakhalin Islands), neither Piisudski (1912), the authority to whom Hurch refers, nor Simeon (1969) report the existence of any /s/-aspiration process whatsoever, either in word-initial or in syllable-initial position. Although Pilsudski's and Simeon's accounts differ from one another in some details, what both authors describe is a process which changes a domed postalveolar [J], one of the several allophones of /s/, into a palatal fricative [ς]. This change entails a partial merger with /h/, which can also be realized as [9] in some environments. In Cham (West Indonesian; Vietnam, Cambodia), a true /s/-aspiration process seems to apply in syllable-final position before /r/, which, incidentally, is cross-linguistically the most favorable environment for /s/ —> [h]. Having said this, it should be noted that, in spite of Hurch's indication to the contrary, no reference whatever to such a process in syllable-initial position is made by Crothers et al. (1979:520), who cite Blood (1967) as their source. What they actually describe, is a process—not dissimilar to that of Ainu—which turns word-final / J / (which they call "s-hacek") into [9] (which they call "h-palatalized"). The phonological processes of Ainu and Cham are radically different from /s/-aspiration proper: in the case of / J / — » [ 9 ] it is not loss of oral constriction that is involved, but raising and subsequent flattening of the dorsum.

4.2. Having discarded these two instances of fake /s/-aspiration, let us now turn to the evidence of languages with genuine aspiration processes. In Ancient Greek, Celtic, and Armenian, /s/-aspiration is not restricted to syllable-initial position. It occurs in syllable-final position as well (albeit only before most sonorous consonants).

*musjh2 *naswos * tfesl*hjesmi

> > > >

*muhja *nahwos *khehl*ehmi

Lesbian muia naüos khillioi emmi

Doric mu\a na:(w)os l^e.iioi e:mi

'fly' 'temple' 'thousand' ' φ am'

The Greek data under (3), where the weakening of syllable-final /s/ before semivowels, liquids, and nasals is exemplified, complete the partial and somewhat distorted picture presented in (1). Now, since the environment before most sonorous consonants (glides, liquids, nasals) is known to be most conducive to /s/-aspiration

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in other languages (e.g. French, Spanish, Latin), we can safely hypothesize that, pace Ferguson (1990:66), /s/-aspiration in Greek started in precisely this environment. As to the Bergamask vernaculars, the data in (4), where the Italian cognates are given for comparison, demonstrate that neither /s/ —> [h] nor /f/ —» [h] applies only in initial position.

/V $c/ /v_#/ /v_v/ /(V)#_v/

Bergamask mohka nah kroh kaha kahä Iahe hänte a hai hümigä

Italian mosca naso corvo cassa οφ [ella] si sente a farli affumicare

'fly' 'nose' 'raven' 'cash-box' 'coffee' 'she feels' 'to fumigate them'

Let us note in passing that /s/ is quite resistant utterance-initially and that aspiration of syllable-initial postconsonantal /s/ is attested only in very restricted areas: e.g. in some varieties of Italian spoken in the Val Cavallina (Bonfadini 1987, esp. 365-366): ferha 'measles' (< dial. G. Fersse),falh 'false' (lt. falso), marh 'March' (It. marzo), ol hal 'the salt' (It. il sale), dulh 'sweet' (It. dolce), credenha 'sideboard, buffet' (It. credenza).

4.3. The evidence from other languages does not fare any better. As to /s/ [h], Hurch's Polynesian languages would be another case in point. Ferguson (1990:65) cites Tongan and Tahitian (Polynesian), Lomongo (NW Bantu), and Kpelle (SW Mande; Liberia, Guinea) as instances of languages of the "Greek type". However, this type of evidence demonstrates little, since in languages with a CV syllable structure, /s/-aspiration simply stands no chance of applying in syllablefinal position. Similarly, for historical reasons /f/ in Latin was virtually confined to wordinitial position. This defective distribution was inherited by Romance languages like Gascon and Spanish, where the weakening of /f/ could not apply—or alternatively applied vacuously—in syllable-final position. Consider now the data under (5):

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a. f->h-

b.

-/- > -b-, -v(MnSp. [β])

c.

-/- > -A- > 0

V. Latin farina filiu facere re+facere dis+facere de+fe(n)sa Stephanu raphanu defe(n)sa *baf- > bafo bufo *muf-

MnSp. harina hijo hacer rehacer deshacer dehesa Esteban rabano devesa (dial.) vaho buho moho

•flour' 'son' 'to do' 'to remake' 'to undo' 'estate (in W Spain)' 'Stephen' 'radish'. 'estate (in W Spain)' 'vapor' 'eagle-owl' 'mould'

The data under (5a) could lead us to believe that in Medieval Spanish the change /f/ —»[h] was confined to word- and morpheme-initial position. Indeed, Hispanists usually refer to this change as "aspiration of initial/'.^ On closer inspection, this picture turns out to be an illusion. As shown in (5b), in syllable-initial intervocalic position, where /f/ had managed to assert itself in late Greek loanwords and in compounds which were no longer morphosemantically transparent, aspiration had been "bled" by the earlier process of voicing. As a consequence, /f/ -»[h] seems to apply only in the positions which in principle would be least conducive to weakening. Still, the evidence of a few onomatopoeic words where intervocalic /f/ had escaped voicing, (5c), demonstrates that, had it not been for the complete absence of syllable-final /f/ and the voicing of intervocalic /f/, the change /f/ —»[h] would have shown a normal pattern of diffusion (see Pensado, 1993). Owing to the severe difficulties in interpreting the texts of a language which remains largely unintelligible, one must be extraordinarily cautious in analyzing the Etruscan evidence. It is true that the inscriptions provide numerous instances showing vacillation between the spellings and in syllable-initial position: Fasti ~ Hasti (woman's name), safirt- > sahin-,fastntru ~ hastntru, faltu > haltu. However, as far as I can judge, Pfiffig's (1969: §§17, 18.2) data seem to indicate that syllable-final /f/ is always secondary and results from the weakening of /p/: cf. hupni ~hufni, hapna ~ hafna, huplha ~ huf(u)lha. This means that, as in Latin, the distribution of primary /f/ was defective in Etruscan. For whatever reason, aspiration did not affect secondary syllable-final /f/. So much for the evidence produced by Ferguson and Hurch. I shall now touch upon two further possible exceptions to the general rule of the priority of final over initial position in weakening processes.

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4.4. In Bavarian-Austrian German dialects, the variants [han], [ho:] occur for standard sind [zint] '[they] are' and so [zo:] 4 so'. 7 Hurch (1988:136, nl), who quite correctly does not cite these forms among the potential instances of /s/-weakening starting in initial position, states convincingly that [han] was originally a casual speech variant of a familiar word which has been lexicalized into normal speech. Resnick (1975:13) reports "an unusual phenomenon" for the city of Cartago (SW Colombia), where "syllable- and word-final /s/ are retained with a high degree of consistency while word-initial /s/ is frequently aspirated". However Resnick's example la sefiora [la hejiöra] 'the lady, Madam* is in all likelihood just another instance of a variant lexicalized out of casual speech, which cannot be put on a par with lexical items subject to a "normal" phonetic evolution. Needless to say, address-forms and titles universally display a strong tendency to phonetic reduction: cf Anc. Gk kyrios 'lord' > MnGk. kir 'Mr.', E. mistress > missis, Lat. meum seniorem > MnFr. monsieur [m(a)sj0] 'sir', Lat. dom(i)num > MnSp. Don 'Mr.' (beside dueno 'lord, master'); Sp. vuestra merced 'your mercy' > usted 'you (honorific)'; senor 'Sir' > se6r > seo > MnSp. so (used to intensify derogatory words); MnSp. senor 'Sir' —> [sep prendi quelle call... 'take that wrapping paper' (Miranda 1989:116), confessßre cid che provi —» confeszare cid che prosi 'to confess what you feel', ma&sa inegua[e —» malsa ineguasfi 'uneven mass' (Miranda 1989:121)6 Note, besides, that geminates normally substitute for and are substituted by both single consonants and consonant clusters, so that their behavior cannot be straightforwardly equated with that of either category. The (tendency towards the) inalterability of geminates may simply be due to closer coarticulation since, obviously, in no other consonant cluster are the segments involved so articulatorily near. I do not think, however, that a phonological analysis of type (lb) can be justified on these grounds o n l y j

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Loporearo

2.1.2.1. A note on inalterability The inalterability of geminates with respect to sound change (and synchronic phonological processes) is a widespread cross-linguistic phenomenon and has been used as an argument for monosegmental analyses—as seen in the preceding section. While the inalterability of geminates is the rule in Italian and Italian dialects (as it is also across languages), there are however some interesting exceptions. Zamboni (1976:330), who produces arguments in favor of (la), mentions some cases in which the first half of a geminate /ll/ has undergone vocalization (/l/ > /u/ /_$) whereas the second has been preserved. For instance, Zamboni follows A. Prati and G.B. Pellegrini in reconstructing the following diachronic development for the form [•pjola] 'plane', today found in the dialects of Veneto, Emilia and Lombardia: *PLANULA (derived from PLANA) > *['planla] > fpjalla] (cf. SI pialla) > fpjaula] (this intermediate stage is still attested in some dialects of the Marche) > ['pjola ]. Other cases of similar developments are attested in place names like Zola Predosa (prov. Bologna) < Ceula (attested in medieval Latin texts) < CELL A, or Roncoleulo, Sarmeola (near Padova), Vanzoleulo (near Monselice), all originally containing the suffix -6LLU/-A.8 Comparable cases of non-inalterability are found in synchronic rules also. In some varieties of Italian spoken in Veneto (cf. Canepari 1979:83, 209; 1984:97f), an IM in a syllable coda is pronounced as a voiced monolateral fricative (/I/ - > [ ! $ ] / whether it is followed by another /l/ or some other consonant: ['kwa^ke] 'some', ['moljto] 'much', ['kweljlo] 'that'. A similar rule, differing only as to the phonetic output ([lj] rather than [1$]), is reported by Canepari (1979:206) for the Piedmontese variety of Italian: /l/ [lj]/ as in [ paljla] 'ball', ["f?ljtro ] 'felt (n.)\ [fal'so] 'false'. These data are difficult to handle under the assumption that geminates are monosegmental (let alone tautosyllabic, as in [lb]). This provides an argument to discriminate between analysis (la) and non-linear analyses, since the rules discussed could hardly be expressed in a non-linear framework, under standard assumptions (see n2). Schein — Steriade (1986:693), for instance, distinguish between two complementary classes of rules: a) structure-dependent rules (which are skeleton- or syllable-structure sensitive) and b) segmental rules (which are sensitive to segmental information only, not to syllable structure). Now, a rule mentioning "/l/ in coda position" by definition belongs to the former type and will be allowed to apply to structures such as (2a):

Geminates in Italian

(2)

a.

X X 1 C /1C/ cluster

b.

X X \ / 1[0 true geminate

c.

157

X X 1 1 fake geminate

Under the standard non-linear representation of geminates (as shown in [2b]), it is predicted that the first half of a geminate [1:] is not affected by such a rule because of Hayes' (1986:331) Linking Constraint ("Association lines in structural descriptions are interpreted as exhaustive."): Μ in /*palla/ 'ball', if represented as in (2b)t is associated to both a coda and an onset position at the same time, hence it does not satisfy the structural description of the rule. On the other hand, under a bisegmental, linear representation of geminates (see [la]), we have no difficulty in deriving the correct result (/"palla/ ["paljla ]) since the first half of the geminate is in coda position like any other preconsonantal /l/. Note further that geminate Λ1/ in the varieties of Italian spoken in Veneto and Piemonte has to be considered as a "true" geminate (just like any geminate in Italian and Italian dialects: see, e.g., Trumper — Romito — Maddalon 1991:331ff), according to the standard criteria of non-linear frameworks. Naturally, if it were represented as a "fake" geminate (as in [2c]), the problem posed by the statement of the rules under discussion would disappear. That kind of representation, however, is only available "where a geminate arises through morpheme concatenation" (Hayes 1986:326), whereas a lexical representation containing a fake geminate is inconceivable, since it would violate the Obligatory Contour Principle (Leben 1973, McCarthy 1986, etc.). On the other hand, Schein — Steriade (1986:736) "expect that all moipheme-internal geminates will obey the principles developed here." [seil., principles based on the assumption of representation (2b)]. /11/ in the cases here taken into consideration occurs morpheme-internally (/kwell+o/, /pall+a/), hence cannot be represented as in (2c), and in spite of this does not obey such principles. The existence of exceptions of this kind shows that cross-linguistic properties of geminates, such as inalterability, cannot be regarded as following from the format of a (multi-linear) phonological representation—more specifically, from double linking. The reason for the (prototypical; no less, no more) inalterability of geminates must be sought in phonetic rather than formal constraints.

2.1.3. The diachronic development of geminates Hurch — Tonelli (1982: §3) have drawn attention to the fact that Italian geminates have arisen, in some cases, from strengthening processes conditioned by

158

Loporcaro

primary (or, sometimes, secondary) stress position, rather than from insertion of a new segment. This should warn us—in their view—against analyzing the geminates in, e.g., [*fem:ina] 'female' (< FEMINA), [, sep:e'l:i:re] 'to bury' (< SEPELIRE) as bisegmental. However, it must be noted that geminate consonants previously existed in the Latin phonological system (e.g., fiSSE(*-RE) > ['esiere ] 'to be', TtRRAM > [tena] ' earth'),^ and that they were demonstrably heterosyllabic in that, as is well-known, the syllable preceding them counted as heavy (for metrics, stress assignment, and other syllable-related prosodic rules) even if containing a short vowel. The same goes for those Latin consonant clusters which resulted in Italian geminates through assimilation (e.g., NÖCTEM > ['not:e] 'night', SEPTEM > ['set:e ] 'seven'). As for the other main source of Italian geminates, i.e., lengthening of Cj in C J C J clusters with C 2 = non-nasal sonorant, there are good reasons to assume that the clusters were heterosyllabic before gemination (see Vennemann 1988:46). If gemination in, say, ['sapija] 'know (subj., 3rd sg.)' (from classical Latin SAHAT) is explained as a syllable contact readjustment (through onset strengthening: Vsap.jat/ > /"sap.pja/), the output of this change must be assumed to be the phonological representation of today's Standard Italian sappia, unless evidence to the contrary is provided. Geminates in forms like femmina, ättimo, legittimo etc., while admittedly resulting from strengthening rather than epenthesis, have probably been analyzed in the same way as previously existing ones. I would like to stress, in this connection, that since the bisegmental and heterosyllabic status of Latin geminates is certain, the burden of proof lies entirely on proponents of analysis (lb) when they claim that things have changed in the course of the diachronic development from Latin to Italian. 1 ® However, no account of such implicitly assumed reanalysis (e.g., /'es.se.re/ > /'e.sie.re / or /"sap.pja/ > /"sa.pija/) has ever been provided by those scholars who based their claims on synchronic evidence only. 11

2.1.4. Euphemistic

substitutions

A further argument by Hurch — Tonelli (1982: §7) is drawn from euphemistic substitutions, applying to curses or other taboo phrases. The authors assume that, when curses are modified in this way, the first syllable of the taboo word is always left unchanged. Given this premise, they argue that the pattern of replacement in cases like (3a-b) supports their claim, in that geminates occurring in the input of substitutions are never split (see [3b]), and in that C:V sequences in euphemisms can replace CV sequences as in (3 a):

Geminates in Italian 159

mddorm. 'katiso 'kristo ma dorm 'miqgja 'soda g· 'merda h. 'kat:s9

a. b. c. d. e. f.

— >

— •

— >

— >

— »

— >

ma'tn:m 'kawolo 'krib:jo mddoska 'mitsiga 'sorbole

— >

— >

'ats/'it:s/'uts

(Sicilian) (Bolognese) (Bolognese) (Apulian)

'ferda

As already pointed out by Bertinetto (1985:605-7), however, there are also substitutions in Standard Italian which do not fit Hurch — Tonelli's (1982) generalization. The forms in (3c-d) (cf. also ['kaspita ], used instead of the taboo form [3b]), have geminates alternating with consonant clusters. One might object that the syllabification of /sC/ clusters is a matter of debate, and that, if they are analyzed as complex onsets, examples like (3c-d) do not counterindicate Hurch — Tonelli's (1982) argument, although I think the evidence against this analysis is overwhelming: see 2.2.3., 2.2.4. and 3. for some of this evidence. However this may be, Italian dialects present euphemistic substitutions in which geminates alternate with unquestionably heterosyllabic clusters: in (3e) the nasal in the coda of the initial syllable is not preserved, and the first half of a geminate [t:s] substitutes for it; the first syllable of the substitute in (3f) contains a coda trill, unlike the taboo ['soCa] 'suck'. Thus, an account of the phonology of geminates which aims at a comprehensive characterization of Italo-Romance cannot maintain Hurch — Tonelli's (1982) generalization. The requirements to be fulfilled by euphemistic substitutions seem to be somewhat looser: substitutes must preserve some of the segments of the taboo words—preferably the initial segments, to help identification, but not necessarily so, as shown by (3g-h) where the initial segment is deleted or replaced (the example [3g] comes from Menarini 1942:73).^

2.2. Internal evidence 2.2.1. Input-output

correspondence

A further argument adduced by proponents of (lb) concerns the relationship between phonological and phonetic representation. Hurch — Tonelli (1982) point out that a bisegmental analysis, unlike a monosegmental one, assumes a difference between the representations at the two levels which requires an explicit motivation.

160 Loporcaro This is correct, and the evidence to be presented in 2.2.3. and 3. is meant to reply to this challenge. Note, however, that what is needed to derive the phone [Cji] from a phonological representation /CjCj/ is simply the application of a fusion rule (a very natural one, as Luschützky observes) of the form /CjCj/-» [C|i], which is required independently to derive the sandhi geminates in con noi 'with us' [ko"n:o:i], or per ridere '(in order) to laugh' [pet:i:dere ], since these obviously cannot be regarded as single segments at the phonological level.13

2.2.2. Syllable structure typology A direct implication of (lb) is that the syllable preceding a geminate consonant must be an open syllable at the phonological level (or, depending on theoretical options, at that intermediate level of derivation at which segment strings are parsed into syllables). In Hurch — Tonelli's (1982:398) view, this is a welcome consequence of the analysis they advocate, in that it is consistent with the strong tendency towards CV syllable structure otherwise displayed by Italian. If geminates are not heterosyllabic, then only sonorants and /s/ can occur in syllable codas (or even only sonorants, if internal /sC/ clusters are analyzed as complex onsets). This approach has the following implication (schematically represented in [4b]): we should expect to observe phonological rules which apply to vowels before geminates and before single consonants, but not to vowels preceding heterosyllabic consonant clusters. (4) single C a. b. 'CV$CV

I =

geminate CC 'CVjC^CjV 'CV|$C:V

I CC cluster = 'CVCjSCjV

3 3

'V. is in closed syllable 'Vj is in open syllable

On the other hand, the opposite prediction (i.e., [4a]) is made by the heterosyllabic analysis, under which it is expected that geminates will pattern together with consonant clusters rather than with single consonants, in the environments of phonological rules. ^ In the following sections we will check these predictions against data from several varieties of Italo-Romance.

Geminates in Italian

161

2.2.2.1. A note on the diachronic development of Italian syllable structure From a diachronic perspective, it is interesting to observe how the process leading to the loss of syllable final stops has interwoven with that process which created Romance geminates from Latin clusters (see 2.1.3. above, and Hall 1964, Loporcaro 1988b). At a given stage, coda stops assimilated to the following consonants, both word-internally and in sandhi. Subsequently, the clusters in the former context underwent restructuring (e.g., /pt/ —• [U] sette). At word boundary, on the other hand, a final consonant which was assimilated to a following initial consonant ceased to constitute a recoverable phonemic input, after it had been lost in prepausal and eventually also in prevocalic positions. As an effect of this restructuring, sandhi geminates, formerly resulting from final consonant assimilation (e.g., /ad#me/ -> [a *m:e] 'to me'), were reanalyzed as resulting from a strengthening effect of the preceding word (raddoppiamento fonosintattico\ see Hurch 1986ft). Although many details are omitted here, the point is that the diachronic process responsible for the non-occurrence of word final stops in modern Italian cannot be simply construed—at its outset, at least—as a conspiracy to create a CV syllable structure. Rather, it was part of a larger pattern of assimilation and, in particular, it paralleled, rather than conflicted with, the assimilatory process which created many new word-internal geminates (and hence resulted in the occurrence of the first halves of these geminates in syllable codas).

2.2.3. Stress placement No proponent of approach (lb) has ever drawn attention to Italian stress in connection with the phonological representation of geminates. This is easily understood if one considers that the claim that geminates belong entirely to the following syllable would prevent us from recognizing the (almost) only clear phonological regularity constraining Italian stress assignment, viz. the one which says that a heavy penult bears stress, as is illustrated by the examples in (5): 15 (5) a. CVCVCV b. CV'CVC 1 C 2 V c. C V ' C V C J C J V

senile 'senile' dipinto 'painting* compätto 'compact'

an! but but

'CVCVCV dbile 'skillful' •CVCVC^V •CVCVCJCJV

(5) simplifies actual data for the sake of exposition. Italian, in fact, also has ultimate-stressed polysyllables, whose stress is (morpho-)lexically specified and

162

Loporcaro

does not obey any phonological conditions. Furthermore, while the constraint (5b-c) holds for the whole of the vocabulary of Latin origin, there are, as is well known, a few isolated exceptions to it in loanwords which have preserved their original nonLatin stress pattern, such as Täranto, Lipanto, dtranto, Agordo (place names), dfanto (a river's name), mändorla 'almond', pdlizza 'policy'.1*' Under the analysis of geminates in (lb), we should expect (5c) to pattern with (5a) rather than (5b), as far as stress assignment is concerned; we should expect, in other words, the stress in pdlizza to be the rule rather than an exception. This is obviously not true. Thus, we have a neat confirmation of prediction (4a) (and of analysis [la], from which it follows). Under (lb) this generalization would be missed not only with respect to Standard Italian, but also for many of the dialects of Italy. As the phonological constraint on stress under discussion is a remnant of the Latin stress r u l e , it is shared by all Italo-Romance varieties due to their common origin. In the dialects of Apulia, for instance, the constraint illustrated in (5b-c) is even stronger than in Standard Italian 1 ^ in that it does not admit of any exceptions at all, not even in loanwords: for instance, Greek αμύγδαλα has been adapted, through late Latin amyndala) as /a'mensla/ (contrast the Standard Italian counterpart mändorla, with irregular stress). The name of the Apulian town Täranto (Standard Italian form), is /"tartu/ in the local dialect (< */taran tu / < Greek Tdpavxa, accus, case of Τάρας), /"tarda/ (from an earlier */'taranda /) in the Apulian dialects spoken further north (e.g., in Bari), and /taTantu/ (< */'tarantu/) in the dialects of Salento, spoken southeast of Taranto. In the last variety stress has simply shifted rightwards to eliminate the exceptional accent pattern, whereas in the former two the same effect has been obtained through syncope. Similarly, the river Öfanto (Standard Italian form) is called /"ofta/ in Bari, and the name of the town Ötranto (Standard Italian form) is [uttantu] in the local Salentino dialect (see Rohlfs 1966:173, 445). 19

2.2.4. Stressed vowel length The claim about syllable structure entailed in monosegmental analyses (i.e., (4b), 2.2.2) is clearly at odds with a traditional argument in favor of (la), viz. that concerning the distribution of allophonic vowel length in stressed syllables. Derived vowel length in Italian is usually accounted for by the allophonic rule in (6) (where $ is a syllable boundary not coinciding with a word boundary): (6)

V

[+long] / [ — ]

$

A vowel is lengthened in an open stressed non-final syllable (/'kasa /

['kas:a]

Geminates in Italian

163

'house', /ladro/-> ['laidro ] 'thief'), and remains short elsewhere. 20 As regards stressed vowels, the excluded environments are two: a) word-final position (/man'jfc>/ [man'go] '(he) ate'), and b) closed syllable (e.g., Ananga/ ['manga] '(he) eats'). The shortness of stressed vowels before geminates (e.g., /"fatto/ -> [fat:o ] 'done') is straightforwardly accounted for under a heterosyllabic analysis (as there is a segment in coda position), whereas it constitutes a problem under the alternative view. In order to overcome this difficulty, both Hurch — Tonelli (1982: §2) and Luschützky (1984: §§10-11) have maintained that (6) is not descriptively correct. Luschützky, in particular, presents a challenging discussion of stressed vowel duration measurements by Fava — Magno Caldognetto (1976) which deserves considerable attention. Fava — Magno Caldognetto's (1976) results are summarized in (7): (The first row represents segmental patterns: C = consonant, V = vowel, Ρ = plosive, S = sibilant, Ν = nasal, R = trill, L = lateral. The second row contains the average values in milliseconds for stressed vowel durations in each environment.)2 ^ (7) CVCV 'CVPRV 'CVRPV 'CVLPV 'CVSPV CVNPV 'CVC:V 208.4 > 184.1 > 177.6 > 121.7 > 112.7 > 98.6 > 85.3 As can be observed, duration values decrease monotonically from 'CVCV to 'CVC:V forming a continuum. From this fact Luschützky (1984:115) concludes that an allophonic rule such as (6) "does not seem to be a valid generalization" and that vowel length depends "on the nature of the following consonant(s) rather than on syllable structure". Note that Luschiitzky's observation is at odds with the conclusion that Fava — Magno Caldognetto (1976:62) themselves drew from their own experimental results. In fact they regarded the data as confirming, rather than contradicting, the existence of rule (6).22 I would rather adhere to this latter view, although Luschiitzky's argument is subtle and constitutes an important caveat against any simplistic statements on this matter. I think that there is no real contradiction between the phonetic gradience documented by (7) and the phonological rule (6). There can be little doubt that every aspect of linguistic sounds is ultimately amenable to phonetic continua, and that one major aim of phonology—understood both as a component of language and as an analytical discipline—is to individuate discrete categories on such phonetic continua. Consider for instance the English phonological process aspirating voiceless stops in non-complex onsets of stressed syllables. This is no doubt a valid generalization, and we are justified in giving it a synthetic expression (C Ch/$_[+stress], where C = [-son, -cont, -voice]) in spite of the fact that aspiration has a different phonetic implementation depending on environments. The place at which it is articulated moves gradually along the vocal tract as a function of

164

Loporcaro

the place of articulation of the stressed vowel, as aspiration is phonetically an unvoiced version of the latter. Its duration also varies systematically, depending on the point of articulation of the voiceless stop ([k h ] > [t h ] > [p h ]; (see Lehiste 1970:22). Italian stressed vowel length, as shown by the data in (7), is determined by the interaction of phonetic and phonological factors, which have to be carefully distinguished. To begin with, Italian has no phonemic vowel length (see η 2,3): in other words, vowels lack any length specification underlyingly, so that their duration, relative and absolute, is determined in the course of phonological derivation and phonetic implementation. As for low-level phonetic facts affecting vowel duration, it is beyond doubt that coarticulation with the following consonant plays a role. Farnetani — Kori's (1986:25) experimental study of stressed vowel duration in Italian shows that there is a gradual decrease in stressed vowel length in environments like those in (8a) and (8b): (8)

a. 'lara (209 ms) b. 'larto (156 ms)

> >

'lala (190 ms) 'lalta (140 ms)

> Ίαηα (185 ms) > 'lanta (136 ms)

'CV$CV CVC$CV

(The values in milliseconds reproduced in [8] refer to Farnetani — Kori's subject 2; the remaining two subjects show a comparable pattern.)^ However, as is apparent even from the few data quoted in (8), the average duration of stressed vowels in open syllables is remarkably higher. The detailed analysis performed by the authors on their corpus leads them to the conclusion that stressed vowel length, while being "very little affected by the complexity of the syllable onset" (3.1.2), displays a clear correlation with the presence vs. absence of a syllable coda, as "there is a highly significant reduction of vowel duration in closed syllables" (3.2.1). Geminates "have the same shortening effect on stressed vowels as the presence of a syllable offset" [scil., the first member of a CjC 2 cluster] (3.2.2). (These results are summarized in the tables on p.24.) Thus Farnetani — Kori's measurements, like Fava — Magno Caldognetto's and, in general, experimental work carried out so far in Italian phonetics, confirm that both syllable structure and the phonetic specification of the following segments affect the length of stressed vowels. In other words, we do need a rule specifying that vowels in stressed open syllables are long (i.e., in the first two environments from the left in (7)). The output of this rule is then modified by coarticulation effects (or microprosodic timing rules, cf. Salza — Sandri 1986) which translate the allophonic specification [±long] into actual durational values. As regards open syllables, the hierarchy in (7) could be refined by further analyzing the first context from the left: 'CVCV -» 'CVRV > 'CVLV > 'CVNV > 'CVPV, approximately. Moreover, the shorter duration of the stressed vowels of

Geminates in Italian

165

open syllables in the environment 'CV$PRV, with respect to 'CV$CV, has a straightforward phonetic explanation as well. It depends on an effect of temporal compensation. Clear evidence for this effect is provided by Farnetani — Kori's (1986:27) results: "a significant shortening of stressed vowels in open syllables occurs with an increase in the size of the following syllable onset."^ Stressed vowels in closed syllables, on the other hand, have a shorter average duration than stressed vowels in open syllables (as rule [6] does not apply to them). As is apparent in (7), they are shortest before geminates; when stressed vowels are followed by heterosyllabic clusters, a systematic variation in length is observed, depending on the kind of coda consonant (cf. also [8b]). Indeed, the sequence in which postvocalic consonants appear in (7)-(8) corresponds to a great extent to their ordering on a sonority/consonantal strength scale.^ Thus, one may venture the generalization that the more sonorous a postvocalic consonant, the stronger its lengthening effect on the preceding vowel.26 From the foregoing discussion we must conclude that the microprosodic timing rules affecting stressed vowel duration as a function of the number and/or type of following segments operate within the limits established by the allophonic rule (6)27 Consequently, the fact that this rule does not apply to stressed vowels before geminates stands as an argument for the heterosyllabicity of geminates.

3. Sound changes in Italo-Romance and their environments as diagnostics of syllable structure Up to this point our discussion has been limited to Standard Italian, with only a few minor remarks on Italian dialects. We will now take a closer look at the latter, since the phonologies of Italo-Romance varieties provide us with a rich set of processes sensitive to syllable structure, constituting a favorable testing ground for the divergent predictions ([4a] vs. [4b]) made by the competing analyses of geminates. A detailed examination of the evidence in the following sections unambiguously supports analysis (la). As was noted at the outset, evidence from Italian dialects is not usually brought to bear in the theoretical literature concerned with the analysis of Italian geminates (Tramper — Romito — Maddalon 1991 is a remarkable exception, however). This is why I think it may be useful to deal with it at some length in this context, even though the fact that geminates close the preceding syllable is in itself quite an obvious notion for anybody who has even an elementary experience of Italian dialects.

166 Loporcaro 3.1. Central Italian dialects 3.1.1. Tuscan diphthongization The diphthongization of lower-mid stressed vowels in Tuscan (hence in Standard Italian) affected /ε/ and /D / only in open syllables. Vowels followed by geminates, as vowels followed by consonant clusters, remained u n a f f e c t e d : ^ open svllable cvcv CVPRV

CVRPV

closed svllable 'CVSPV CVNPV

'CVC:V

'vjeme

'djexro

'εώα

'veste

'vento

'pet:o

'comes'

'behind'

'grass'

'dress'

'wind'

'chest'

In order to schematically display data pertaining to sound changes in the Italian varieties under discussion, I adopt the following convention in (9) and all similar subsequent examples. At the far left between slashes, the diachronic source (late Latin/early Romance) of the vowel nucleus in question is presented, and in that row I include a single word in each column representative of the development of that vowel in the dialects being cited. The top row schematically represents the relevant syllabic/segmental structures, following the conventions illustrated in (7) above. The ordering of the environments is not random. It coincides with the scale of stressed vowel duration values in (7). As will become apparent from a comparison of (9)-(ll), (13)-(16) and (22)-(23), this happens to constitute an implicational scale by means of which the different options in syllabification found in various Italian dialects can be represented—a point that exceeds the scope of the present paper and is discussed in Loporcaro (forthcoming). Crucial to our present concern is the comparison, for each row, of the first column from the right, where the reflexes of vowels followed by Latin or Romance geminates are reported, with all the preceding ones, referring to vowels followed by single consonants or consonant clusters. Note that the first row states that the diachronic source had that structure (e.g., 'CVC:V), at the time the sound change focused on took place: as is apparent from the quoted data, such a structure has often been dramatically modified as a consequence of subsequent changes (such as diphthongization, degemination, final vowel deletion, etc.). Given the relevant parameters, the examples I adduce are as exhaustive as possible: in case a given slot is left unfilled, this is because no relevant data is found in the sources (which I cite in brackets on top of each table, preceded by an approximate geographical localization of the variety at issue). Furthermore, as I am interested in syllable sensitive processes, I have included in brackets those items in which changes of a different nature have taken place (i.e., assimilatory changes caused by neighboring segments; this is typically the case for vowels followed by

Geminates in Italian 167 tautosyllabic nasals: see [10], [11] and n29). These items are quoted only for the sake of completeness, but should not be taken into account.

3.1.2. Raising of lower-mid vowels in the dialects ofLunigiana and Garfagnana In some dialects spoken on the north-western border of Tuscany, early Romance /ε/ and /o/ were raised in open syllables. As can be seen in (10) and (11), vowels followed by geminates did not undergo raising, paralleling the fate of vowels followed by heterosyllabic consonant c l u s t e r s . ^ (10)

Castelnuovo Magra (Lunigiana; Bottiglioni 1911, Masetti 1972-73) open syllable CVCV CVPRV /ε/

'meo

'erba

'honey'

h!

CVRPV

closed syllable CVSPV CVNPV

'res to

('dento)

'grass' 'string of onions' 'tooth'

'foko

'komi

'posta

(fronte)

'horns' 'handful of hay "forehead'

' f i r e '

CVC:V 'iron'

'fjoko 'bow'

Sillano (Garfagnana; Pieri 1893) open syllable 'CVCV CVPRV

/ε/ Ν

'jjela

'pjetr

CVRPV

closed syllable 'CVSPV CVNPV

CVC:V

•erba

'feSta ('sempr)

'set 13

'gall'

'stone'

'grass'

'feast'

'always'

'seven'

'kor

'kobra

'marts

'noStra ('monto)

'os:o

'(I) cover'

'death*

'heart'

'our'

'mountain'

'bone'

3.1.3. Tensing and laxing in the dialect of Borgo San Sepolcro In the dialect of Borgo San Sepolcro (near Arezzo, on the eastern border of Tuscany) three successive changes have radically altered the phonological system. They were first analyzed by Merlo (1929) (see also Zanchi Alberti 1937-39, Weinrich 1958: §185, Nocentini 1985, Tuttle 1991: §4.3.1) and are summarized here in (12a-c):

168 Loporcaro

(12) a.

V

[+tense]

b.

CjC j

ct

c.

V

—>

[-tense]

/

[

+

- J

$

[+stress~| -tense J /

ΓL+stressJ - 1 c$

The statement of this diachronic development is only possible under the assumption that geminates are (and were throughout) heterosyllabic, as is apparent from the exemplification below. First ((12a)), lax vowels, including the diphthongs */je wo/ (< /ε of), were tensed in open non-final stressed syllables ('CVCV and 'CVPRV): ['«ειρο] 'bee' < APEM, [lo:go] 'place' < *[lwo:go] < *["lwD:go] < LöCUM, ['dje:Si ] 'ten' < *['dje:Si] < DECEM, ["pjeitra] 'stone' < *['pje:tra] < P6TRAM; original [a], [ε] and [o] were preserved in closed syllables (['palmo] 'palm', [Jiaspo] 'reel', ['an Jöo] 'breath', [^lente] 'nothing', ['jiespalo] 'medlar', [ka'torCo] 'bolt') as well as before geminates: ['ka:pa] 'cape', ['se:te] 'seven', ['ko:to] 'cooked'. As these examples show, geminates were subsequently degeminated (by rule [12b]) after lax vowels, with degemination then feeding open syllable lengthening: CAPPA > fkapa / -» ['kaipa] (stressed vowels in non-final open syllables are non-distinctively long, as in Standard Italian).^ After degemination, tense vowels became lax in closed syllables (i.e., when followed by consonant clusters—except /CR/—or geminates): ['visto] 'seen', ['Ciqkwe] 'five', ['tripia] 'tripe' (vs. ['ni:do] 'nest'), ['busto] 'bust', [*frut:o] 'fruit' (vs. ['lu:na] 'moon'); ['fermo] 'steady', ['venti] 'twenty', ['δεριο] 'stump' (all with original */e/, preserved in [*ρβφβ] 'pepper', ['ve:tro] 'glass'); ['moska] 'fly', ['korto] 'short' (with original */o/, preserved in [ni'poite] 'nephew').

3.2. The dialects of South-Eastern Italy The dialects of Abruzzi, Molise, Apulia, and Lucania display a number of processes sensitive to syllable structure, both in their diachronic development and in their synchronic grammars. Stressed vowels in penultimate and final open syllables have undergone, in these varieties, dramatic changes (mainly through coloring and/or diphthongization) which represent—according to the standard view (see, e.g., Weinrich 1958: chaps. 8-9)—the further, extreme and divergent development of a

Geminates in Italian

169

rule of open syllable lengthening like the one presently observed in Standard Italian (cf. (6)) and reconstructible for early Romance.31 In what follows I will quote only some selected data (but as similar processes are found in all of the dialects spoken in the area, the list of relevant evidence could be virtually endless), in order to illustrate that vowels followed by geminates were/are never affected by these processes. Consequently, prediction (4a) is borne out for these varieties as well. In the tables (13) to (15), the diachronic sources specified in the first column must be interpreted as follows: a word occurring in the row beginning with the symbol /i/ (or fuf) derives either from a Latin form with /i:/ (or A»:/) or, when no such examples were given in the quoted literature, a form containing a secondary Ν (Jnf) (derived by metaphonic raising of /e/ (Jof) taking place in these dialects prior to open syllable diphthongization/coloring etc.). In the 'CVSPV column words containing /SC/ clusters (found in these varieties, unlike in Standard Italian: see also [11] above) show up as well. Under 'CVRPVI have also included words containing /LC/ clusters, both because of phonetic/phonological similarity and because the two classes never display any significant difference in the diachronic development of the varieties under discussion. In the dialect of Agnone, all stressed vowels in open syllables have undergone (different kinds of) diphthongization. The exemplification in (13) is limited to the reflexes of late Latin /a/ and M: (13)

Agnone (prov. Isernia, Molise; Ziccardi 1910) open syllable CVCV /a/ 'sgana 'whole' /i/ vs'doins 'near'

closed syllable CVPRV CVRPV CVSPV CVNPV CVC:V 'lairs 'kwafa 'maids 'm:a$te 'kwancte 'thief 'mortar* 'pack-saddle' 'how much* 'rennet' 'Citrd s9rtdirls 'lisks 'ft'/jgs 'boy' 'to hear him' 'bait' 'five' 'son'

As is apparent from (13), /a/ -> [ga] and Μ -> [o|] failed to affect stressed vowels except in the environment 'CVCV. (13) also makes apparent another interesting fact: unlike Standard Italian, stressed vowels in 'CVPRV did not take part in open syllable diphthongization, from which we can conclude that obstruent+r clusters are (or were, by the time the changes took place) heterosyllabic in this variety. This is a common feature of all the dialects discussed in the present section, spoken all over southeastern Italy, as shown by (14)-(16) as well. I will not dwell on this point any longer here (see discussion in Loporcaro forthcoming). In the northern Apulian dialect of Cerignola /a/-fronting, /u/-centralization and the diphthongization processes which modified all the remaining stressed vowels— as shown in (14)—have applied in 'CVCV environments but never to vowels

170

Loporcaro

preceding geminates: (14)

Cerignola (prov. Foggia, Northern Apulia; Zingarelli 1901) open syllable CVCV /i/ 'spoiks 'spike' /e/ 'seirs 'evening' /ε/ 'meils 'honey* 'ruets /a/ '(I) swim' h !

'VOUVS

'ox' /o/ 'skroufs 'sow' /u/ 'SH'JcS 'sauce'

closed syllable 'CVPRV 'CVRPV 'CVSPV 'CVNPV CVC:V ps'dntrs 'firms 'visto 'tiqgs 'figfc 'seen' 'colt' 'steady' 'son' 'five' ps'cbetrs 'eqgjs 'sted:s 'verds 'mudxsks 'green' 'slack' (f.sg.) 'to fill' 'star' 'filly' ps'tsend fs'nests Zsfved:s lebvs 'verms 'worm' 'beggar' 'brain' 'hare* 'window' 'kwatrs 'alto 'raSks 'jaggs 'aggs 'high' '(he) scrapes' 'white' 'picture' 'garlic' Oprs 'forts 'g:ostrs 'loqgs foggs 'work' 'strong' 'ink' 'long (f.)' 'vegetables' 'otrs 'forks 'kosts 'vok:s 'tombs 'leather bag' 'fork' 'mouth' '(it) costs' 'tomb' 'surgs 'muSks 'numbrs 'nud:s 'mice' 'humerus' 'number' 'nothing'

Although the processes involved differ considerably in their segmental consequences from dialect to dialect, the guidelines of the diachronic development remain constant all over the area and, as for the aspect which concerns us, trace a unified design. I next give, in (15), an overview of the vowel system of the dialect of Bisceglie (central Apulia). In this dialect as well, various diphthongization processes (/i/ > /0i/, ft/ > /ai/, /o/ > /au/, /u/ > fiuf) have affected stressed vowels only in the environment 'CVCV, leaving vowels preceding geminates and consonant clusters (including muta cum liquida) unchanged: (The same goes for /a/ > /of; the diachronic developments of /ε / and /o/ are too complex to be dealt with here: cf. Lüdtke 1956:162, Papa 1981:97ff, Loporcaro 1988a:68ff.)

Geminates in Italian

(15)

171

Bisceglie (prov. Bari, Apulia; De Gregorio 1939, Cocola 1925) open syllable CVPRV 'CVCV 'vitro 'foikd Ν 'glass' 'fig' dlifgrs 'ραψ9 /e/ •pepper' 'happy' 'pekrd dE(9 /ε/ 'ten' 'sheep' 'latra 'kopa /a/ 'head' 'thief 'QPra 'VOV9 h! 'work' 'ox' 'otr9 /ο/ 'krauÖQ 'cross' 'leather bottle' 'futro /u/ 'miuts 'funnel' 'damps'

closed syllable CVNPV CVRPV •CVSPV 'spirjgwa 'kristd 'spirch pin 'spirit' 'crest' 'strings 'pfsks 'vfrcte •peach' 'to clasp' 'green' 'dencte 'erv9 fg'nestro 'window' 'tooth' 'grass' 'mbjastrs ('StETJgS) 'varvQ 'bar' 'poultice' 'beard' •iQggs 't