Existential and Universal Anchoring 1 Existential and Universal Anchoring : A Case Study

Anchoring constraints were originally proposed for explaining the special faithfulness to edges, both in the domain of Input-Output correspondence (e.g. Benua 1998) and Base-Reduplicant correspondence (e.g. Hendricks 1998). In Optimality Theory framework (Prince & Smolensky 1993), this paper proposes two sets of anchoring constraints, Existential and Universal ANCHORING for edges and head, requiring a segment at a particular position (edge/head) of S1 have correspondents at the corresponding position of SOME/EVERY syllable of S2. The proposal is based on a case study of the diminutive affixation in two Chinese dialects. The diminutive morpheme in different Chinese dialects has been extensively studied among Chinese phonologists with different approaches (Duanmu 1990, Chen 1992, Yip 1992, Lin 1993, Wu 1994, Da 1996, Lin 1997, Zhang 2000). The interesting thing about this morpheme is that the surface forms of it vary drastically among the family of Chinese dialects, though historically they are the same morpheme. (Xu, 1981) Following is the data: (1) Anxiang Stem Diminutive Gloss 1. pa pa.p!r claw 2. ke ke.k!r square (2) Jian’ou Stem Diminutive gloss 1. pu pu.lu roll 2. niau niau.liau wind