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The phonology of Thiyntawese according to Optimality theory.

This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 26 Jan 2021, 20:37.

[comments] stwphonology Thiyntawese (4 articles)

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1. Diachronic Change from Proto-Thiyntawese ? ?

2. Thiyntawese Morphosyntax ? ?

3. Thiyntawese Orthography ? ?

4. Thiyntawese Phonology ? ?

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Menu 1. Phonetic Inventory and Transliteration 2. Phonotactics 3. Allophony, Syllabification, Vowel Harmony, and Infixation 4. Metrical Phonology 5. Constraints 6. Hasse Diagram 7. Sound Symbolism 8. Relation to Middle Chinese Tones 9. Example Tableaux

[edit] [top]Phonetic Inventory and Transliteration

Consonants	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Palatal	Labio-velar	Velar	Glottal
Nasal	/m̥/ /m/ ṃ m			/n/ /n̥/ n ṇ			/ŋ/ /ŋ̥/ ň ń
Plosive	/p/ /pʲ/ /pʰ/ /b/ p ṗ ᵽ b			/t/ /tʲ/ /tʰ/ /d/ t ṫ ŧ d			/k/ /kʲ/ /kʰ/ /g/ k ḳ ꝁ g	/ʔ/ q
Fricative		/v/ v	/θ/ /ð/ ṣ ẓ
Lateral approximant				/l/ l
Lateral fricative				/ɬ/ ł
Approximant					/j/ y	/ʍ/ /w/ ẉ w
Trill				/r/ r
Flap				[ɾ] r

Allophony according to phonotactics, flap is free variation

Vowels	+front -back	-front -back	-front +back
+high -low	/i/ ī	/ɪ/ /ʊ/ i u	/u/ ū
-high -low	/e/ ē	/ə/ ı	/o/ ō
-high +low	/ɛ/ e	/a/ a	/ɔ/ o

[edit] [top]Phonotactics

A Thiyntawese syllable usually has either CV or CVC structure, although in theory the amount of consonant clusters is unlimited. In affixes a C nucleus is permitted, although it must be infixed to satisfy the phonological constraints as it is ill-formed. Note: derivational morphemes differ from inflectional morphemes in that derivational morphemes change the category of a word. In no circumstances can a syllable be without an onset. Diphthongs and vowel hiatuses are not tolerated.

[edit] [top]Allophony, Syllabification, Vowel Harmony, and Infixation

The allophony is best explained in the terms of the constraints posited by Optimality Theory as opposed to the rule-based SPE. Assimilation only occurs in whatever is not the morphological head in a word. Vowel harmony affects the roundedness feature of metrical feet. Infixes are malformed prefixes moved by phonological rules. Relevant generalisations are listed below:

Always have onsets.

Onsets must be consonants.

Diphthongs are banned.

Adjacent vowels are banned.

Metathesis is banned.

Fusion is banned.

Vowel-breaking/unpacking is banned.

The voice feature of an onset cannot change.

The place feature of a segment in a morphological head cannot change

The right-most segment of a word cannot change.

If two adjacent segments not in a morphological head have differing place, the latter segment assimilates to the to the place of the former if possible (dentals, palatals and alveolars are treated as having same place; labio-velars and velars also are treated the same).

Labials and labio-dentals do not assimilate unless to satisfy the above conditions.

Epenthesis is banned unless to satisfy the above conditions.

Elide all high vowels from non-morphological heads, except if elision causes two identical consonants to be adjacent.

After all processes, pick the most sonorant nucleus according to the sonority hierarchy (from least preferred to most preferred):
*NUC/stop ≫ *NUC/fric ≫ *NUC/nasal ≫ *NUC/liquid ≫ *NUC/glide ≫ *NUC/V^HI ≫ *NUC/V^LO

Prefixes must align to the left edge of the stem (stem: root+suffixes). If malformed, then infix to the leftmost location in the stem that allows repair.

After picking the most sonorant nuclei, assign onsets to them.

After assigning onsets, assign codas.

[edit] [top]Metrical Phonology

Thiyntawese is a stress-timed language with trochaic feet (stress-unstressed), a near exhaustive parsing (not every syllable has to be in a foot), and left-to-right directionality (creating feet from left to right). The primary stress falls on the leftmost foot of the morphological head of a word and all other stress is secondary. Relevant generalisations are listed below:

Feet must be binary; all feet must consist of two syllables.

Parse every possible syllable into a foot that is binary.

Feet must be aligned to the left edge of a word.

All segments in a foot must be round if one segment is round. (/ə/ and /a/ are exceptions)

The primary foot must be aligned to the left edge of a morphological head.

The stressed syllable of a foot must be aligned to the left edge of the foot.

[edit] [top]Constraints

Constraints are used in Optimality Theory to pick the most optimal surface candidate out of a variety of inputs. They can either check for faithfulness to the input or markedness in the output. A constraint dominates (≫) another if a violation in the dominating constraint knocks out a candidate and another candidate that violates the dominated constraint is preferred. The ranking of constraints cannot be known (, ) in some cases. Accounting for richness of the base, theoretically any input or loanword can be transformed into a well formed Thiyntawese word.

The ranking of relevant featural constraints is as follows:
ONSET, MHd-IDENT[Place], IDENT[voice], HNuc, MHd-MAX, IO-ANCHOR-R-σ, LINEARITY, UNIFORMITY, INTEGRITY, *ONS/V, *VV, *HETERORGANIC, *DIPHTHONG, IDENT-σ́-IO(round) ≫ IDENT[labial], IDENT[labio-dental], DEP ≫ MAX-C, OCP ≫ *NUC/stop ≫ *NUC/fric ≫ *NUC/nasal ≫ *NUC/liquid ≫ *NUC/glide ≫ *NUC/V^HI ≫ IDENT[Place] ≫ MAX-V ≫ *NUC/V^LO ≫ ALIGN-L(Prefix, Stem) ≫ *COMPLEX ≫ NOCODA, CONTIG

The constraints used are defined below:

ONSET: assign one violation for each syllable without an onset.

MHd-IDENT[Place]: assign one violation when a segment in the input of a morphological head has a different place feature in the output.

IDENT[voice]: assign one violation for each segment that differs in voicing from input to output.

HNuc: assign one violation for each syllable nucleus that is less sonorant than its other parts.

MHd-MAX: assign one violation for each segment in the morphological head that is there in the input but missing in the output.

IO-ANCHOR-R-σ: assign one violation for each rightmost segment in a non-reduplicant word that is changed or missing.

LINEARITY: assign one violation when the order of some segments change.

UNIFORMITY: assign one violation when two or more segments are realised as one.

INTEGRITY: assign one violation when a segment is realised as multiple segments.

*ONS/V: assign one violation when an onset is a vowel

*VV: assign one violation when two vowels are adjacent.

*HETERORGANIC: assign one violation when two adjacent segments have differing place features.

*DIPHTHONG: assign one violation when a diphthong occurs.

IDENT-σ́-IO(round): assign one violation if a stressed vowel in the input has a differing roundedness feature in the output.

IDENT[labial]/[labio-dental]: assign one violation for each segment that was labial/labio-dental in the input but changed place feature in the output.

DEP: assign one violation when epenthesis occurs.

MAX-C: assign one violation when a consonant in the input is missing in the output.

OCP: assign one violation for every pair of adjacent identical segments.

*NUC/x: assign one violation when a nucleus is x manner feature.

IDENT[Place]: assign one violation when a segment in the input has a different place feature in the output.

MAX-V: assign one violation when a vowel in the input is missing in the output.

ALIGN-L(Prefix, Stem): assign one violation for every segment from the left edge of the stem (stem: root+suffixes) the closest edge of a prefix is away from. This allows infixing to repair malformed prefixes.

*COMPLEX: assign one violation when an onset or coda has more than one segment.

NOCODA: assign one violation for every syllable with a coda.

CONTIG: assign one violation if two segments are adjacent in the input but not in the output.

The ranking of relevant metrical constraints (FTBIN is dominated by the featural constraints) is as follows:
PARSE-σ ≫ FTBIN ≫ ALIGN-L(Ft, Word) ≫ SPREAD([round], Ft) ≫ ALIGN-R(Ft, Word)
ALIGN-L(Ft́, MHd) ≫ ALIGN-R(Ft́, MHd)
ALIGN-L(σ́, Ft) ≫ ALIGN-R(σ́, Ft)

The constraints used are defined below:

PARSE-σ: assign one violation for every syllable that is not in a foot.

FTBIN: assign one violation for every foot that is not binary.

ALIGN-L(Ft, Word): assign a violation for each syllable away from the left-most edge of a word, starting from the left edge of the foot.

SPREAD([round], Ft): assign a violation for each segment in a foot that has at least one round segment that is not round.

ALIGN-R(Ft, Word): assign a violation for each syllable away a foot is from the right-most edge of a word, starting from the right edge of the foot.

ALIGN-L(Ft́, MHd): assign a violation for each syllable away a foot with primary stress is from the left-most edge of a morphological head, starting from the left edge of the foot.

ALIGN-R(Ft́, MHd): assign a violation for each syllable away a foot with primary stress is from the right-most edge of a morphological head, starting from the right edge of the foot.

ALIGN-L(σ́, Ft): assign a violation for each syllable away a syllable with stress is from the left-most edge of a foot, starting from the left edge of the syllable.

ALIGN-R(σ́, Ft): assign a violation for each syllable away a syllable with stress is from the right-most edge of a foot, starting from the right edge of the syllable.

[edit] [top]Hasse Diagram

[edit] [top]Sound Symbolism

[edit] [top]Relation to Middle Chinese Tones

As there are a good amount of Sino-Xenic loanwords in Thiyntawese, Middle Chinese tones and diphthongs have traces when borrowed. Borrowed compounds have the coda or last syllable elided of the first head to make one syllable. X=l H=w, ping=y, ru=q

[edit] [top]Example Tableaux

Here is an example tableau showing the syllabification and allophony of the word ṣiyntawňulo from its Middle Chinese sourde /θɪjntawŋʊlɔ/. All affixes in this word are not derivational. (Imagine dotted lines separating columns that have unknown ranking)

/√tana-θe-kini-bini/	ONSET	IDENT[labial]	IO-ANCHOR-R-σ	*HETERORGANIC	*NUC/V^HI	DEP	IDENT[Place]	MAX-V	*NUC/V^LO	NOCODA
☞ (a) .ta.na.θek.ŋab.mi.					*	*	* *	* * *	* * *	* *
(b) .ta.na.θe.ki.ni.bi.ni.					* ! *			* *	* *
(c) .ta.na.θe.kŋb.mi.				*!			* *	* * *	* *	*
(d) .ta.na.θek.ŋa.bm.			*!			*	* *	* * * *	* * *	*
(e) .ta.na.θek.ŋad.ni.		*!				*	*	* * *	* * *	* *
(f) .ta.na.θe.kn.bn.			*!	* * *				* * * *	* *
(g) .ta.na.θe.k.n.b.n.	! * *		*	* * *				* * * *	* *

√ = root
- = morpheme boundary
. = syllable boundary
* = violation
! = fatal violation
☞ = winning candidate

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