This paper investigates stress patterns in Breton across speakers of different ages and with different linguistic backgrounds. Centuries of contact with French have led to French influence in Breton lexis, phonology and morphosyntax, and Breton's current status as an endangered minority language makes it vulnerable to further change. Additionally, younger ‘new speakers’ of Breton, who have acquired the language through Breton-medium education, are said to transfer features from French into their Breton. Analysis of stress usage shows that older, traditional speakers use stress largely as expected, while there is a greater degree of interspeaker variation among younger, new speakers. These data are used to form a metrical analysis of stress in Breton, taking into account lexical exceptions, loanwords and the variability of younger speakers. Rather than widespread transfer of French stress patterns into Breton, some younger speakers seem to be using two competing stress systems.

This study explores ongoing lenition of postvocalic /p t k b d g/ in the Spanish of Gran Canaria. Duration, intensity and harmonics-to-noise ratio of 16,454 sounds produced by 44 native speakers were measured, with the latter phonetic parameter used for the first time to investigate lenition. The results show a path of gradual sound shortening and opening from voiceless stops to open approximants, as well as systematic use of six different variants depending on the underlying representation and phonological context: two types of [p t k], two types of [b d g] and two types of [β˕ ð˕ ɣ˕]. We interpret this as continuity lenition that leads to the flattening of the intensity contour and harmonicity of the target segment with respect to the flanking sounds. We argue that a phonological analysis of this process that accounts for its non-neutralising character requires the use of a scalar [aperture] feature.

Fungwa marks the diminutive by fronting non-high vowels of nominal roots and the augmentative by backing non-high vowels of nominal roots. The root-vowel mutation is considered to be an effect of diminutive and augmentative morphemes which have [―back] and [+back] features as their phonetic exponents. The form–meaning association of the morphemes is consistent with the pattern of sound-size symbolism in various languages. Thus Fungwa presents categorical and deterministic evidence for sound-size symbolism. To account for the realisation of the featural affixes, I assume featural correspondence constraints. Given that the featural affixes are not realised on high vowels, I argue that the realisation of the featural affixes involves a prominence-based licensing condition.

Previous research has found that different syllabic (particularly simplex vs. complex onset) organisations have different temporal stability signatures in articulations – this observation is based entirely on articulatory measurements. In this article, we present the results of three production experiments which show that similar correlations between onset organisation and temporal stability metrics are observable in an analysis of acoustic measurements in American English and Jazani Arabic. The results that we present show stability across speakers and test items for both language groups, and highlight the possibility of using acoustic techniques to help to investigate the organisation of onsets in other languages.

This paper presents the results of a corpus study and an online loanword adaptation experiment examining the tonal adaptation of English loanwords in Mandarin. Using maximum entropy models, I control for the substantial influences of lexical tone distributions and standardisation, and uncover phonological determinants of tone beyond these lexical and conventional factors. The most important phonological determinant of tone in the corpus was English voicing, while in the experiment it was English stress-aligned pitch contours. I argue that these distinct tonal adaptation patterns constitute two different perceptual mappings, one from F0 perturbations to tone and the other from English intonation to tone, both arising due to particular borrowing contexts. I suggest that increasingly close contact between English and Mandarin may lead to more intonation-driven tonal adaptation in the latest wave of borrowing. The maximum entropy approach holds promise for the analysis of complex cases of tonal adaptation in other languages.

This paper provides a description and an Optimality Theory analysis of the Japanese language game sakasa kotoba. This analysis contributes to the phonological study of language games, as sakasa kotoba constitutes a novel language game type: total mora reversal. In addition, our analysis contributes to the study of Japanese phonology, by providing evidence (i) for the mora, (ii) on the internal structure of the syllable in Japanese and (iii) on the representation of moras occurring in complex syllables, namely coda nasals, geminates and long vowels. The patterning of these moras suggests that the game manipulates intermediate representations, rather than underlying or surface forms. We propose a formal analysis within the framework of Stratal OT. The analysis uses a game-specific constraint to motivate reversal, with other aspects of game form shape determined through the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints.

It has long been observed that languages tend to preserve contrast, either by introducing sound changes or by inhibiting them. However, it is not clear if any instances of so-called homophony avoidance reported to date constitute an active synchronic restriction in the grammar. This paper presents an instance of homophony avoidance in Russian masculine nouns. A perception experiment shows that the trends observed in the corpus are only partially extended to nonce words. I argue that the asymmetry observed in the experimental results can only be attributed to a synchronic restriction against homophonous forms in the same paradigm. Thus this paper presents strong evidence in favour of a synchronic anti-homophony constraint.

In this work, we address structural, iconic and social dimensions of the emergence of phonological systems in two emerging sign languages. A comparative analysis is conducted of data from a village sign language (Central Taurus Sign Language; CTSL) and a community sign language (Nicaraguan Sign Language; NSL). Both languages are approximately 50 years old, but the sizes and social structures of their respective communities are quite different. We find important differences between the two languages’ handshape inventories. CTSL's handshape inventory has changed more slowly than NSL's across the same time period. In addition, while the inventories of the two languages are of similar size, handshape complexity is higher in NSL than in CTSL. This work provides an example of the unique and important perspective that emerging sign languages offer regarding longstanding questions about how phonological systems emerge.

A'ingae (or Cofán) is a language isolate spoken in the Ecuadorian and Colombian Amazon. This study presents a description and analysis of the language's morphologically conditioned verbal stress assignment. Specifically, I show that A'ingae verbal morphemes can be classified with two binary parameters: the presence or absence of prestressing and the presence or absence of stress deletion (i.e. dominance), which vary independently. I formalise my analysis in Cophonology Theory, a non-representational theory of the phonology–morphology interface, which captures morpheme-specific phonology with constraint rankings particularised to morphological constructions. I argue that while non-representational approaches such as Cophonology Theory can handle the facts of A'ingae stress deletion straightforwardly, representational approaches lack the expressive power necessary to capture the stress facts of the language.

This paper investigates the nature of native Mandarin Chinese speakers’ phonotactic knowledge via an experimental study and formal modelling of the experimental results. Results from a phonological well-formedness judgement experiment suggest that Mandarin speakers’ phonotactic knowledge is sensitive not only to lexical statistics, but also to grammatical principles such as systematic and accidental phonotactic constraints, allophonic restrictions and segment–tone co-occurrence restrictions. We employ the UCLA Phonotactic Learner to model Mandarin speakers’ phonotactic knowledge, and compare the model's well-formedness predictions with speakers’ judgements. The disparity between the model's predictions and the well-formedness ratings from the experiment indicates that grammatical principles and the lexicon are still not sufficient to explain all of the variations in the speakers’ judgements. We argue that multiple biases, such as naturalness bias, allophony bias and suprasegmental bias, are effective during phonotactic learning.

During acquisition children internalise adult-based phonological patterns and alternately adopt and discard child-specific patterns reflecting their unskilled production. The child-specific patterns are often assumed to be low-level phonetic effects, and so, in a classical modular feedforward grammar, they should not interfere with the higher-level adult-based phonology. This paper reports an interaction in which the application of a categorical adult-based process (Voice Assimilation) is conditioned by a gradient child-specific process (fricative devoicing). Acoustic analyses of longitudinal data from a Polish-speaking child reveal variable Voice Assimilation effects in target voiced fricative–stop/stop–fricative clusters (voicing and devoicing), correlated with the extent of voicing in fricatives in non-assimilatory contexts. I analyse this phonology–phonetics trade-off by appealing to symbol-like dynamical representations, expressed in the language of non-linear mathematics. Such representations offer a non-derivational link between the qualitative and quantitative aspects of speech. Variability ensues as a natural consequence of grammar change.

Phonological patterning motivates a distinction between complex segments and segment sequences, although it has also been suggested that there might be reliable phonetic differences. We develop the hypothesis that, in addition to their distinct phonological patterning, complex segments differ from segment sequences in how constituent articulatory gestures are coordinated in time. Through computational simulation, we illustrate predictions that follow from hypothesised coordination differences, showing as well how coordination is conceptually independent of temporal duration. We test predictions with kinematic data collected using electromagnetic articulography. Electromagnetic articulography data comparing labial-palatal gestures in Russian, which we argue on the basis of phonological facts to constitute complex segments, and similar labial-palatal gestures in English, which we argue constitute segment sequences, show distinct patterns of coordination, providing robust support for our main hypothesis. At least in this case, gestural coordination conditions patterns of kinematic variation that clearly distinguish complex segments from segment sequences.

The mismatching of morphosyntactic and phonological domains inside words provides a testing ground for models of the morphosyntax–phonology interface. This paper describes a pattern of morphosyntax–phonology mismatches in Muskogee. Muskogee verbs are spelled out at two phases, vP and CP, resulting in two phonological domains, which this paper models as ω-recursion. The vP phase and ωmin are mismatched: either vP-phase material is parsed outside ωmin – an undermatch – or CP-phase material is parsed inside ωmin – an overmatch. The mismatch pattern requires a parallel model of morphosyntax–phonology mapping to distinguish mismatches using gradient Align constraints, rather than categorial Match constraints. Additionally, a phase-based model must allow earlier cycles to be altered in later cycles, ruling out strict phase inalterability in phonology, while a Stratal OT analysis must send a word's first phase through the stem-level phonology, regardless of its ultimate phasal structure.

This paper develops a model of lenition in Campidanese Sardinian. The model treats lenition (and its inverse, fortition) as a predictable consequence of gradient changes in duration associated with prosodic structure. A more typical approach to lenition processes in Campidanese and other languages is to treat them as changes in phonological features. I show here that a phonetic model operating on the output of phonological computations avoids some of the analytical problems associated with such phonological analyses, unifies the phonetic and phonological description of lenition, and captures the relationship between prosody, lenition and duration. While the detailed simulations here are specific to Campidanese, I suggest that the model is broadly applicable to languages with intervocalic lenition processes such as voicing, spirantisation and tapping.

This paper reports a new kind of tone polarity, where the phenomenon is seen in a language with four level tones, Tenyidie (also known as Angami). I show that the polarity is in the features of the tones, i.e. at a subtonal level. The data also provide evidence that tones themselves can be broken down into smaller features. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the polarity pattern observed in the language is an epiphenomenon, a reflex of the Obligatory Contour Principle, not a phonological process in its own right. I show this with the help of a new type of tonal representation. Theoretical discussions of tone polarity have so far been almost entirely restricted to African tone systems, and to languages with just two tones. This paper brings into the discussion a Tibeto-Burman language with four tones.

Modern Japanese has a set of morphophonemic alternations known collectively as rendaku that involve initial consonants in second elements of compounds, as in /jama+dera/ ‘mountain temple’ (cf. /tera/ ‘temple’). An alternating element like /tera/ ~ /dera/ has an initial voiced obstruent in its rendaku allomorph and an initial voiceless obstruent in its non-rendaku allomorph. Lyman's Law blocks rendaku in a second element containing a medial voiced obstruent. This paper gives three arguments that Lyman's Law originated as a constraint prohibiting prenasalisation in consecutive syllables. First, constraints on similar consonants in close proximity generally apply not to voicing but to features with phonetic cues that are more spread out, such as prenasalisation. Second, in some Japanese dialects with prenasalised voiced obstruents, rendaku cannot occur if it would result in adjacent syllables containing these marked consonants. Third, phonographically attested Old Japanese compounds are consistent with a constraint on adjacent syllables.

An acoustic experiment on final devoicing in Polish, aimed at providing new data on incomplete neutralisation, is described. The experiment was modelled on a study of German by Roettger et al. (2014), who mitigated possible effects of orthography by employing a word-formation task based on auditory stimuli, eliciting stop-final nonce words with underlying final voiced or voiceless stops. Our results provide some evidence for incomplete neutralisation in Polish, with an effect on closure duration, but not on preceding vowel duration, as well as interspeaker variation in the reliability of contrast maintenance. Considered against the background of studies from other languages, the results point to implementational differences in incomplete neutralisation effects as a function of laryngeal typology, which are accounted for in the Onset Prominence representational model.

In this paper, I develop an analysis of the Italian syntax–prosody interface in Match Theory, revisiting three φ-diagnostics from previous work: word-final vowel deletion, stress retraction and final lengthening. I show that these processes sometimes diverge in their distribution, supporting the existence of two phrasal domains in Italian. These domains are analysed using prosodic recursion. I then develop a novel formulation of MatchXP, according to which only syntactic XPs with phonologically overt heads, whether lexical or functional, are visible to the syntax–prosody mapping. This formulation is argued to be superior to versions of MatchXP that only match lexical XPs or that attempt to match all XPs, at least in Italian, suggesting that implementation of syntax–prosody mapping constraints may be subject to cross-linguistic variation.