Morphological Strata of Tone

这个项目的目标是发展一种新的调性形态音系学，将和声语法版本中的层状形态音系学与最近发展的梯度符号表示理论相结合。在这种方法下，语音表征是语音上的(但不一定是语音上的)梯度，即具有连续的抽象激活。由于语法的层次化组织，这些激活随着越来越大的形态单位的循环构建而反复变化。与大多数以前在层级音系学方面的工作相比，这允许在不同的层级中消除不同的语法(即，不同的约束等级/权重)。这一新的总体方法对可能的形态语音系统做出了高度具体的预测，我们将在该项目中进行系统测试：(A)跨层级的单调性：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层级中相同的约束等级触发的(B)给定层级中的强度一致性：特定的音系单位应该相对于一个层级中的所有语音过程一致地表现为强或弱(结构音系学中的PACE方法不进行这种预测)，(C)合作的普遍性：合作(特殊的语音效应是由多个语素协同触发的事实)在梯度符号表征理论中自然地脱颖而出，它是由几个不同激活水平的语音单位融合而成的。这与之前大多数词汇例外理论形成鲜明对比，在词汇例外理论中，形态语音特质只有一个形态触发因素。具体地说，我们将在四个经验领域考察这些普遍的预测，这些领域的声调给词法和语音理论带来了悬而未决的问题：(1)全球规则和跨层(需要同时获取特定于单个语层的信息的语音过程)，(2)语系间的共谋(相同的语音结构约束在不同的语层中通过不同的修复策略来满足)，(3)重写模式的竞争(不同的从词法上强制的语调模式竞争实现在给定的基词上的实现)，以及(4)声调吸引现象，其中潜在的基调被吸引到不同的线性位置。该项目的经验数据将完全来自非洲语言，这些语言表现出形态句法和声调音位之间特别丰富的互动，特别是来自不同遗传背景的班图语、尼罗撒哈拉和西非语言。这些数据的大部分将来自书面的、出版的资料来源，但将与研究股内玛丽亚·库内利关于东苏丹岛的共同项目合作，对尼罗-撒哈拉地区进行补充实地调查。

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.