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SUMMARY:French adjectival liaison: evidence for underlying representations
  - Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero (University of Manchester)
DTSTART:20140213T160000Z
DTEND:20140213T173000Z
UID:TALK50113@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Madeleine Forbes
DESCRIPTION:The abuse of opaque derivations and diacritic features in The 
 sound pattern of English (Chomsky & Halle 1968) has led many phonologists 
 and morphologists to regard underlying representations with deep suspicion
 . Non-standard patterns of adjectival liaison in French\, however\, sugges
 t that underlying representations have an indispensable role to perform in
  a suitably constrained theory of morphophonology.\n\nSteriade (1999) obse
 rves that a non-normative masculine liaison form like [pʁəmjeʁ] in mon 
 premi[eʁ] ami 'my first friend' combines phonological features that surfa
 ce separately in the citation forms premier [pʁəmje] (m) and première [
 pʁəmjɛʁ] (f). Crucially\, this type of split-base formation never aris
 es in adjectives whose masculine and feminine forms are synchronically sup
 pletive: thus\, the liaison form of nouveau [nuvo] 'new' is exactly homoph
 onous with the feminine.\n        \nAppropriately constrained theories of 
 morphophonology incorporating underlying representations explain this fact
 : the liaison realization of an adjective can blend properties of alternat
 ing masculine and feminine citation forms only if generated from an underl
 ying representation reflecting features of both alternants\; this\, in tur
 n\, is possible only if the grammar contains productive phonological rules
  capable of deriving the alternation from a single shared underlier. In th
 e paradigm of premier\, the relevant phonological processes are the loi de
  position\, which controls the alternation between [e] and [ɛ]\, and stra
 y erasure\, which deletes the latent /ʁ/ if it remains floating at the ph
 rase level. In cases of gender suppletion like nouveau~nouvelle\, in contr
 ast\, the masculine and feminine citation forms fail to share a single und
 erlier\, and split-base liaison realizations are consequently predicted to
  be impossible.\n\nTheories that trade off underlying representations for 
 optimality-theoretic constraints monitoring an expanded network of corresp
 ondence relationships among surface forms (Burzio 1996\, Steriade 1999) mi
 ss this insight: they incorrectly predict the existence of grammars that a
 utomatically generate new split-base allomorphs by blending submorphemic p
 roperties from different cells in suppletive paradigms.\n\n* Burzio\, Luig
 i. 1996. Surface constraints versus underlying representation. In Jacques 
 Durand & Bernard Laks (eds.)\, Current trends in phonology: models and met
 hods\, vol. 1\, 123-41. Salford: European Studies Research Institute\, Uni
 versity of Salford.\n* Chomsky\, Noam & Morris Halle. 1968. The sound patt
 ern of English. New York: Harper & Row.\n* Steriade\, Donca. 1999. Lexical
  conservatism in French adjectival liaison. In J.-Marc Authier\, Barbara E
 . Bullock & Lisa Reid (eds.)\, Formal perspectives on Romance linguistics\
 , 243-70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.\n
LOCATION:Room GR06/07\, Faculty of English\, Sidgwick Site\, West Road\, C
 ambridge
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