Linguistics 200a diola-Fogny Problem p. Linguistics 200a fall 2000

4. Problem Directions I: Solution

Formulate an optimality-theoretic analysis of these facts, using OTSoft to check that your answer works. Make sure your answer can derive all of the sample forms in DiolaStart.xls, which is downloadable from http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/200A/. The forms in DiolaStart.xls are repeated below.

1. 
   Languages often have more liberal syllable structure conditions in final position (cf. Cairene Arabic, English). You may wish to have special Faithfulness constraints that hold for this environment.
   
2. 
   The predicate “is homorganic with” is a perfectly common and legal phonological predicate. (At this point, you needn’t worry about how we are going to formalize it.)
   
3. 
   However, homorganicity is probably not an all-or-nothing thing. Ways in which consonants can be “homorganic” include the following: (i) Loose homorganicity: sharing the same general place of articulation; (ii) Exact homorganicity: sharing the exact details of the articulatory contact: continuancy, laterality, consonantalness. Thus /n/ and /l/ are loosely, but not exactly homorganic. /n/ and /d/ are tightly homorganic. Pick the version or versions of homorganicity you need in order to make your analysis work; do not worry about formalizing this. You may assume that [f] are exactly homorganic; i.e. that the [] is articulated like [f] only with the velum down.
   
4. 
   The form /CVCCC/ is meant to be a “Richness of the Base” form: final CCC is illegal in Diola-Fogny. Presumably, what would win if there were an input of this type would be CVCC, assuming CC were homorganic. The symbols [] are meant to indicate which consonant was deleted; obviously this is conjectural, and you can change the candidates if you like; what’s needed is simply a system that lets CVCC but not CVCCC survive.
   
5. 
   /na-ma-ma/ [namama] ‘he knows’ is probably the hardest form, because it is saltatory. Explain why. Use the recipe given in class for saltatory alternations to handle this. Note that according to Sapir, the pattern here is general: p. 17: “When the first consonant is part of a consonant cluster the entire cluster elides.”