Sonority variation in Stochastic Optimality Theory: Implications for markedness hierarchies
نویسندگان
چکیده
Constraints based on the sonority scale and other markedness hierarchies have been formalized in two different ways: as scale-partition constraint families, with a universally fixed ranking, and as stringency constraint families, where the constraints stand in subset relations and their ranking is not universal. We identify a new empirical domain where these two approaches make different predictions: within-speaker variation. Namely, in the framework of Stochastic Optimality Theory (Boersma and Hayes 2001), the scale-partition approach predicts harmony reversals in the presence of variation (i.e., sometimes a more marked form should be chosen in preference to a less marked form), while the stringency approach does not. We further demonstrate that the pattern of harmony reversals predicted by the scale-partition approach can be numerically quantified, based on the constraints’ ranking values; this allows true harmony reversals to be efficiently distinguished from cases where an unrelated constraint causes apparent harmonyreversal behavior. Known cases of variation involving markedness hierarchies have not been described at the level of detail necessary to distinguish true harmony reversals from apparent ones, but we have identified empirical conditions that would strongly support the scale-partition approach to markedness hierarchies if they were to be uncovered in future work.
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