Contrast Preservation in Morphophonology: Diminutive Rime Change in Hong’an Chinese

Earlier analyses of rime change (Lin 1989, 1993) posit subsegmental affixes such as featural or prosodic affixes (e.g. [+back, +round] or a mora/default vowel) and templatic output restrictions (e.g. an open syllable). In some cases of rime change, however, there are puzzling unexpected alternations or exceptions that are difficult to explain and analyze. This study examines Hong’an diminutive rime change and is part of an on-going project aiming to provide a comprehensive account of these challenging cases of Chinese diminutive rime change (e.g. Lin’s (2008b) analysis of Jiyuan and Huojia rime change as described in He (1981, 1989)). The goals of this paper are to (i) examine the morphophonological alternations, allomorph selection, exceptions/unexpected outputs, and gaps in morphological paradigms under Hong’an Chinese diminutive rime change, and (ii) explore a systemic contrast-based approach to show how preservation of phonological/phonetic contrasts serves to preserve morphophonological contrasts within the root-diminutive paradigm. The notion of contrast has been formalized in recent studies to account for phonological, morphophonological and morphological patterns, and there is a growing body of research supporting a systemic approach to contrast preservation in Optimality Theory (OT), e.g. Flemming (2002, 2004), Padgett (1997, 2003), Sanders (2002), Itô and Mester (2004, 2007), Kenstowicz (2005), to name just a few. Examples of systemic contrast-based constraints include those in (2).