This dissertation is a grammatical description of several features of the morphology and phonology of the Mocho' language. Mocho' (Motozintleco) is a moribund Mayan language spoken in the Chiapas region of Mexico near the border of Guatemala. This dissertation, based on data collected during several field trips and supplemented with unpublished…

Theories of English phonology regard syllable onset patterns as irrelevant to the assignment of lexical stress. This paper describes three studies that challenge this position. Study 1 tested whether stress patterns on a large sample of disyllabic English words varied as a function of word onset. The incidence of trochaic stress increased…

A discussion of autosegmental phonology (AP), a theory of phonological representation that uses graphs rather than strings as the central data structure, considers its principal constraint, the "No Crossing Constraint" (NCC). The NCC is the statement that in a well-formed autosegmental diagram, lines of association may not cross. After…

Analyzes the near-complementary distribution of the German palatal fricative [c] and velar fricative [x] as a counterexample to Structural Preservation because the rule of Fricative Assimilation (FA) introduces the nondistinctive feature [back] lexically. The analysis presented derives both [x] and [c] from the archiphoneme /X/ via FA and a…

Examines claims and assumptions of theory of "government phonology," using as a starting point a monograph on phonological government in Japanese, in which the theory is applied to a range of phonological and morphological data. Main theoretical concepts in the theory are introduced and critically discussed, and connections to other theories of…

Based on a morpho-phonological study of about 800 French adjectives ending in "-esque," this article suggests that the patterns found derive from several partially contradictory surface constraints, with the processes that would tend to eliminate dysphonic configurations (hiatus, repetition) sometimes being blocked by the need to conserve a…

This study explores sound-symbolic, or mimetic, words in the Japanese language, the majority of which are never entered in Japanese dictionaries, and which may not be fully understood in all their nuances by native speakers. The extensiveness of the sound-symbolic system is related to the semantic under-differentiation of Japanese verbs. An…

A study of Karok, an American Indian language spoken in northern California, provides an argument for CV theory over moraic theory from compensatory lengthening. In a previous study, moraic theory is argued to be superior to CV phonology in accounting for compensatory lengthening; it is shown here that compensatory lengthening in Karok cannot be…

Considers the metrical foot in Diyari, a South Australian Language, and concludes that, on the basis of stress alone, an argument can be made for the constituency of the metrical stress foot under certain theoretical assumptions. This conclusion is reinforced by the occupance in Diyari of other less theory-dependant phenomena. (46 references) (JL)

Argues that contour tones in East Asian languages behave as melodic units consisting of a root node [upper] dominating a branching specification. It is also argued that, with upper as the tonal root node, no more than two rising or falling tones will contrast underlying. (49 references) (JL)

Based on previous research showing five examples of verb reduplication in Majang, a member of the Nilo-Saharan language family, this paper presents more specific examples of verb reduplication, its different uses, and the phonological rules governing it. Examples of possibly reduplicated forms from other parts of speech are also given, and data…

An investigation, analyzing the linking of skeleton and syntactical rules of Madurese, presents counterevidence to Marantz's claims about the nature of reduplication, and to Carrier-Duncan's claim that reduplication must precede all phonological rules. It is proposed that reduplication in Madurese is not affixation, as Marantz claims, and can be…

Examination of the speech of 33 monolingual Spanish-speaking children found that syllable type affected the correct pronunciation of novel words. The different syllable types comprising the novel words could be hierarchized. Performance on syllable type appeared to be an interaction between the structure of the syllable and phonological processes…

Argues that the distribution of lexical stresses in Macedonian and Polish follows from the architecture of metrical theory and can be accounted for by adopting revised obligatory branching (ROB) feet. These are feet where the head dominates an accented syllable and the nonhead may dominate any kind of syllable. (17 references) (JL)

Some Japanese examples of several common phonological phenomena (whispered vowels, nuclear friction, and consonant-vowel articulation) are examined. The segmental and transformational characterizations of these and related phenomena are reassessed and it is shown that by paying more careful attention to phonetic detail and abandoning conventional…