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Title:
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A Study of Constraint Interaction in Slavic Phonology
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Author:
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Yuki Takatori
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Email:
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Homepage:
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Degree Awarded:
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Yale University
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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1997
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Phonology
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Language Family(ies):
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Slavic Subgroup
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Director(s):
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Draga Zec
Laurence Horn
Bill Mahota
Jaye Padgett
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Abstract:
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This thesis surveys a range of phonological phenomena in Slavic phonology, within the framewolk of Optimality Theory, with the object of providing formal explanations for them. In Chapter 1, I review Havlik's Law in Old Russian and argue that what are commonly known as 'exceptions' to this law are actually by-products of phonological and morphological requirements. In Chapter 2, I examine the vowel-zero alternation in modern Polish. Since this alternation has its origin in the disappearance of historical jers, many authors posit synchronic jers and a deletion rule to account for it. However, I demonstrate that there is no need to postulate such abstract vowels if two morphological factors are taken into account; (1) foreign lineage and (2) declensional class. Chapter 3 deals with the history of palatalization in Slavic languages. Although Russian has a large inventory of palatalized consonants which can occur syllable-initially as well as syllable-finally, the majority of Slavic languages impose positional and segmental restrictions on the occurrence of palatalization. For instance, Bulgarian prohibits all soft consonants at the end of a syllable, while Polish prohibits only soft labials at this position. I represent such differences by means of constraint reranking. Chapter 4 explores voice alternation in modern Polish. It is generally held that the [voice] of sonorants is unspecified; however, I concur with Lombardi (1996) and specify [voice] in sonorants as well as in obstruents. It is widely known that, unlike the [voice] of obstruents, that of sonorants does not spread to neighboring segments. I argue that such inertness is the result of compliance with IDENT[Release], which bans any change in released segments.
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