LINGUIST List 4.662

Fri 03 Sep 1993

Qs: Exchange rules, Farsi, NWAVE, Yael Ziv

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1. Joseph P Stemberger-1, Query: exchange rules
2. Karen S. Chung, Looking for native speakers of Farsi
3. , query: NWAVE roomshare
4. , 1974 LSA

In phonology, there's a type of rule called an "exchange rule". Steve
Anderson maintains that they're usually morphologically conditioned. They
reverse the values of a feature. For example, [+high] is changed to
[-high], but [-high] is changed to [+high].

The standard (abstract) analysis of English Vowel Shift is an exchange
rule. It has two parts. One reverses the value of [high]. The other
reverses the value of [low].

Anderson & Browne (in Papers in Linguistics in 1973) gave examples of
exchange rules involving reversal of [voice] in Nilotic languages like
Luo, Dinka, Akura, Shilluk. They gave examples of the reversal of length
(long vowels shorten, short vowels lengthen) in Diegueno, Dinka, and Czech.

A double query:

1) Are there other phonological exchange rules that have been reported. If
you happen to have come across any (in any context, including buried away
in a grammar somewhere), please let me know.

2) The English Vowel Shift rule is, of course, controversial. For anyone
who works with the other languages mentioned, has the proposal of exchange
rules stood the test of time, or are there reasons to doubt the analysis?

My reason for asking:
Phonological theory is shifting over to a consensus that phonological
processes are nothing but strategies to repair constraint violations.
Exchange rules superficially don't look like they can be handled in that
way. I'm working on a reanalysis that allows the reversal of feature
values to be handled as the repair of constraint violations (and also
takes into account the morphological conditioning). But I guess I
want to make sure that there are solid cases that have been reported, and
collect as many such cases as possible.

Send replies to me. I'll summarize for the list. Thanks.

---joe stemberger

 I am looking for a native speaker of Farsi (or someone with native
speaker-equivalent competence in the language) who could answer a few
questions I have about some Persian compounds. Please reply to me personally
at karchungccms.ntu.edu.tw
 Thank you!

 Karen Steffen Chung
 Dept. of Foreign Languages and
 Literatures
 National Taiwan University, Taipei

Are there any women going to NWAVE who would be interested in sharing
a double room at the bed and breakfast on the 14, 15 and 16th? Please
repond directly to woukccu1.auckland.ac.nz

thanks,
Fay Wouk (dept. of anthropology, university of auckland)
lingsupantnov1.auckland.ac.nz

A colleague suggested that the folks on this list might be able to help me. I'm
looking for a paper that was presented at the 1974 summer LSA meeting.
Unfortunately, it was unpublished. The author's name is Ziv, Yael and the
title is something like "'If' clauses and Relative clauses on generic heads: a
functional affinity"
If anyone knows how to get this paper, I would appreciate hearing from you. If
that fails, I wonder if anyone knows how to contact the author.
Thank you
Robert Johnson