Phonological underspecification gives rise to morphotactic and phonological exceptionalities in Mandan
Katie McCann
March 2025 

Mandan’s (Sioux, North America) 1pl affixes exhibit a correlation between phonological and morphological exceptionality. I argue that vowel deletion, the phonological exceptional behaviour, and the exceptional position of the 1pl affixes in the morphological word, derive from the same underlying source, namely phonological underspecification in the form of an unassociated, floating mora. The lack of an associated mora triggers exceptional phonological re-ordering and consequently vowel deletion. Despite the phonology handling both exceptionalities, the proposed analysis adds to a body of work that focusses on deriving phonologically conditioned affix order without resorting to a non-modular P≫M approach.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008957 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	submitted to Radical
keywords:	exceptionality, underspecification, phonological reordering, autosegmental phonology, phonologically conditioned affix order, morphology, phonology
Downloaded:	41 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]