Systemic Markedness and Faithfulness

Markedness, Faithfulness, and the Typology of Two-Height Tone Systems

In this paper, I explore the possibility of typologizing two-height tone systems based on markedness. Drawing from a current database of 650 tone systems (of which over 400 are twoheight), I will first confirm that two-height systems may be “equipollent” /H, L/, “privative” /H/ or /L/ vs. Ø — or both, /H, L/ vs. Ø. I demonstrate that “markedness as faithfulness” (Pulleyblank 2004) and “faithful...

The Optimal Initial State

2 ABSTRACT The 'initial state' of a child's phonology has been much discussed but rarely empirically investigated within an Optimality Theory framework. The most common assumption has been that, at the onset of word production, all markedness constraints strictly dominate all faithfulness constraints. In this paper, the early phonologies of 20 children, five each learning one of four languages ...

On the convergence of positional markedness and positional faithfulness in vowel harmony

(To appear in Southwest Journal of Linguistics 25.1) Contrast and Markedness in Complex Onset Phonotactics

In many languages that permit coronal laterals to follow labial and velar stops in complex onsets, sequences of a coronal stop followed by a coronal lateral are prohibited. Standard accounts rule out coronal-lateral clusters as an effect of the Obligatory Contour Principle, but this approach cannot explain languages such as Mong Njua and Katu, which neutralize the coronal-velar place contrast b...

The (non)interaction of lenition and reduplication

The Correspondence model of base-reduplicant identity (McCarthy & Prince 1995, to appear) makes the prediction that any kind of segmental phonological process may result in any of these situations through ranking of phonological constraints with faithfulness constraints on the input and output and the basereduplicant relationship. Normal application arises when base-reduplicant faithfulness con...

Forthcoming in Plag, Ingo (ed.): The phonology and morphology of creole languages. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Syllable structure and lexical markedness in creole morphophonology: Determiner allomorphy in Haitian and elsewhere

The postposed definite determiner (DET) in French-lexified Antillean Creoles such as Haitian and St. Lucian displays an unexpected pattern of allomorphy. Its C-initial form la appears after consonantand glide-final stems (pitit la 'the child') whereas a vocoid-initial form appears after stems ending in vowels. Glides are inserted after non-low vowels (rua 'the wheel'), but a is used after low v...