Input- and output-oriented generalizations in Iny ATR harmony
Adam McCollum, Adam Jardine
September 2022
 

A number of fundamental concerns have motivated linguistic theory within the generative tradition. We consider three such concerns: explanation, typology, and computation. Significantly, these three goals are not equally well captured in the various phonological formalisms developed in the last half century. In this paper, we develop a computational analysis of ATR harmony in Iny (Ribeiro 2002, 2012) using boolean monadic recursive schemes (BMRS; Bhaskar et al. 2020) to account for the behavior of icy targets (Jurgec 2011) – elements that undergo but do not further propagate the harmonic feature. We argue that direct reference to input and output features values in BMRS enables a superior explanation for the data than is possible in other formalisms. Compared to its derivational predecessors, access to surface-oriented patterns is a key component of Optimality Theory’s analytical and typological successes. However, its inability to directly reference input-oriented (opaque) patterns is a persistent problem for the theory. BMRS is able to directly reference both inputs and outputs, allowing analysis of opaque patterns. Further, the intensional characterizations available in the formalism allow more familiar predictions than computational work using automata-theoretic tools.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006830
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: submitted
keywords: computational phonology; vowel harmony; opacity; boolean monadic recursive schemes, phonology
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