Morphological Strata of Tone

本项目的目标是将谐音语法版本的层音素与最近发展的梯度符号表征理论相结合，发展一种新的音调音素。在这种方法下，语音表征是语音（但不一定是语音）梯度的，即具有连续的抽象激活。由于语法的分层组织，这些激活随着越来越大的形态单位的循环结构而迭代变化。与以前在地层音系学方面的大多数工作相反，这允许在不同的地层中消除不同的语法（即不同的约束排名/权重）。这种新的整体方法对可能的形态音素系统进行了高度具体的预测，我们将在项目中系统地测试：(a)跨地层的单调性：激活的变化应该是单向的（单调增加或单调减少），因为这些变化是由所有地层中相同的约束等级触发的(b)给定地层中强度的一致性；特定的音系单位应该在一个阶层的所有音系过程中表现出一致的“强”或“弱”（建构音系的步伐方法没有做出这种预测）。(c)合作的普遍性：在梯度符号表示理论中，合作（由多个语素共同触发特殊音系效应的事实）通过融合几个不同激活水平的音系单位而自然地脱落。这与之前大多数关于词汇异常的理论形成鲜明对比，在这些理论中，词音特质只有一个单一的形态学触发因素。具体而言，我们将在四个经验领域研究这些一般预测，其中声调对形态学和音系理论提出了尚未解决的问题：(1)全球规则和跨层（需要同时访问单个地层特定信息的语音过程），(2)层间共谋（不同地层的不同修复策略满足相同的语音格式良好性约束），(3)覆盖模式竞争（不同形态学强制的音调模式竞争实现给定的基本词），以及(4)音调吸引现象。在这里，底层的基色被吸引到不同的线性位置。该项目的经验数据将专门取自非洲语言，特别是班图语、尼罗-撒哈拉语和不同遗传关系的西非语言，这些语言在词法和音调音系之间表现出特别丰富的相互作用。这些数据大部分将来自书面和出版的资料，但将与研究股的Maria Kouneli关于东苏丹的合作项目合作，进行关于尼罗-撒哈拉的补充实地工作。

The goal of this project is to develop a new take on tonal morphophonology combining stratal morphophonology in a Harmonic Grammar version with the recently developed theory of Gradient Symbolic Representations. Under this approach, phonological representations are phonologically (but not necessarily phonetically) gradient, i.e., have continuous abstract activation. Due to the stratal organization of grammar, these activations change iteratively in tandem with the cyclic construction of increasingly bigger morphological units. In contrast to most previous work in stratal phonology, this allows for eliminating different grammars (i.e., different constraint rankings/weightings) in different strata. This new overall approach makes highly specific predictions on possible morphophonological systems which we will systematically test in the project: (a) Monotonicity across Strata: Changes of activation should be unidirectional (monotonically increasing or monotonically decreasing) since these changes are triggered by the same constraint ranking in all strata (b) Consistency of Strength in a Given Stratum: Specific phonological units should behave consistently ’strong’ or ‘weak’ with respect to all phonological processes at a stratum (pace approaches in construction phonology which do not make this prediction), (c) Pervasiveness of Cooperation: Cooperation (the fact that idiosyncratic phonological effects are triggered cooperatively by multiple morphemes) falls out naturally in Gradient Symbolic Representation Theory by the fusion of several phonological units with different activation levels. This is in stark contrast with most previous theories to lexical exceptions, where morphophonological idiosyncrasies have a single morphological trigger. Concretely, we will investigate these general predictions in four empirical areas where tone poses unsolved problems for morphological and phonological theories: (1) global rules and strata straddling (phonological processes which require simultaneous access to information specific to single strata), (2) inter-stratal conspiracies (the same phonological well-formedness constraint is satisfied by different repair strategies in different strata ), (3) competition of overwriting patterns (different morphologically enforced tone patterns compete for realization on a given base word), and (4) tonal attraction phenomena, where underlying base tones are attracted to different linear positions. Empirical data for the project will be taken exclusively from African languages, which exhibit especially rich interactions between morphosyntax and tonal phonology, especially from Bantu, Nilo-Saharan, and West-African languages of different genetic affiliations. The majority of these data will be drawn from written, published sources, but there will be supplementary fieldwork on Nilo-Saharan in cooperation with Maria Kouneli’s co-project on Eastern Sudanic in the Research Unit.