Old Frisian and Old English Gemination in /ja/-stems: Stratal OT Analysis
- Jurij Božič, University of Ljubljana
- Glendinning Lecture Theatre 2D67, UWE Bristol
Much has been written about the Western Germanic phenomenon of gemination, where /j/ lengthens any preceding consonant except /r/, in a descriptive as well as a generative fashion, and such treatments also extend to the domain of Old English. Old Frisian, on the other hand, has received little attention concerning the status of its geminates, especially in generative terms. In addition, Old Frisian word-final geminates underwent degemination in a sporadic fashion, the coherent explanation for which is also lacking. The present paper accounts for these processes and also contrasts them with a typical old West Germanic representative, viz. Old English.
The analysis is performed under the wider generative framework of Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993), by subsuming a ‘stratified’ approach offered by Stratal OT (Kiparsky 2000, Bermúdez-Otero 1999), where structure may be generated on three strata: the stem level, the word level and the postlexical level. Such an approach is tailor-made for dealing with ‘opacity’, i.e. situations when the trigger of a certain surface state is not retrievable on the surface level.
In Old Frisian, nominative and accusative cases of /ja/-stems exhibit no geminates, e.g. ken ‘kin’, while the genitive and dative cases do, e.g. kennes-GEN-SG, kenne-DAT-SG, which renders the synchronic stem forms opaque. This is accounted for by arguing that geminate consonants are underlyingly present in /ja/-stems, i.e. they are specified in the INPUT, and that /ja/-stems are stratified into the word level and postlexical level, according to which degemination ‘happens last’, triggering opacity, which is supported by attestations of dialects in mediaeval Frisian manuscripts. The analysis proposed favours the approach of stratification offered by Stratal OT.
References:
Bermúdez-Otero, R. 1999. Constraint interaction in language change: quantity in English and Germanic. PhD Thesis. Manchester: University of Manchester.
Kiparsky, P. 2000. ‘Opacity and Cyclicity’. The Linguistic Review, 17. 351–367.
Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. MS Rutgers University and University of Colorado.
The analysis is performed under the wider generative framework of Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky 1993), by subsuming a ‘stratified’ approach offered by Stratal OT (Kiparsky 2000, Bermúdez-Otero 1999), where structure may be generated on three strata: the stem level, the word level and the postlexical level. Such an approach is tailor-made for dealing with ‘opacity’, i.e. situations when the trigger of a certain surface state is not retrievable on the surface level.
In Old Frisian, nominative and accusative cases of /ja/-stems exhibit no geminates, e.g. ken ‘kin’, while the genitive and dative cases do, e.g. kennes-GEN-SG, kenne-DAT-SG, which renders the synchronic stem forms opaque. This is accounted for by arguing that geminate consonants are underlyingly present in /ja/-stems, i.e. they are specified in the INPUT, and that /ja/-stems are stratified into the word level and postlexical level, according to which degemination ‘happens last’, triggering opacity, which is supported by attestations of dialects in mediaeval Frisian manuscripts. The analysis proposed favours the approach of stratification offered by Stratal OT.
References:
Bermúdez-Otero, R. 1999. Constraint interaction in language change: quantity in English and Germanic. PhD Thesis. Manchester: University of Manchester.
Kiparsky, P. 2000. ‘Opacity and Cyclicity’. The Linguistic Review, 17. 351–367.
Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. MS Rutgers University and University of Colorado.