Understanding Allomorphy - Perspectives from Optimality Theory - Eulàlia Bonet
Accentual Allomorphs in East Slavic: An Argument for Inflection Dependence
Understanding Allomorphy - Perspectives from Optimality Theory - Eulàlia Bonet
Donca Steriade [+]
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Igor Yanovich [+]
University of Tübingen
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Description
This study analyzes a pattern of inflection dependence (Steriade 2008) in the distribution of accentual stem allomorphs in East Slavic, and it explores the significance of this pattern for the analysis of the phonological cycle. Inflected forms in Ukrainian and Russian surface with accented or unaccented stems as a predictable function of their inflectional class, the underlying accent of their root and further phonological factors. The result is that some lexemes possess multiple accentual stem allomorphs, others have invariably accented or invariably unaccented stems in inflection. We show that the derivatives of these lexemes use the full set of accentual stem allomorphs generated in the inflectional paradigm of their base, to optimize satisfaction of markedness and faithfulness conditions. The analysis requires a modification in the theory of Output-to-Output Correspondence (Benua 1998): in computing a derivative, the forms relative to which Faithfulness is assessed consist of the full set of inflected forms of the base item. In terms of the phonological cycle, the input to any cycle is a set of forms rather than just one form.