Dissertation - Michael Becker

1998; Prince 2002), augmented with a mechanism of constraint cloning (Pater 2006, 2008b;Becker 2007). Cloning allows the speaker to keep track of lexical trends and build theirrelative strength into the grammar.The appropriateness of using markedness constraints will be simply assumed in thissection, but it discussed and motivated empirically in §3.5, using results from an artificiallanguage experiment.3.4.1 AnalysisThe preference of roots that have [o] for taking –ot is interpreted as a requirement forlicensing unstressed [o]’s. In native nouns, stress shows up on the root in unsuffixed forms(e.g. xalón ‘window’), but stress moves to the right in suffixed forms, such as the plural(e.g. xalon-ót ‘windows’). In the plural, then, the root’s [o] surfaces unstressed, where itrequires licensing.Limiting [o] (and other non-high round vowels) to prominent positions is quite commonin the world languages. Many languages are known to limit [o] to the stressed syllable, asin Russian dóm-a ∼ dam-áx ‘at home(s)’ 10 . Similar restrictions apply in Portuguese andelsewhere.Other languages require [o] to be licensed by the word-initial syllable. Turkish nativenouns, for instance, allow [o] only in the first syllable of the word. Shona allows [o] inthe word-initial syllable, and more interestingly, an initial [o] can license an [o] later in theword (Beckman 1997; Hayes & Wilson 2008).In the analysis proposed here, Hebrew is like Shona, but with stress: In Hebrew, [o]must be stressed, but a stressed [o] allows [o] to appear elsewhere in the word. A similarlicensing effect is seen with High vowels in several romance languages (see §3.4.4). Thelicensing of [o] is not a categorical restriction in Hebrew, as unstressed [o]’s are tolerated.10 In standard American English, and other dialects, [o] can be unstressed (‘piano’, ‘fellow’) word-finally,but in some dialects, especially in the South, unstressed [o] is not allowed (‘piana’, ‘fella’). This restrictionon [o] in English, however, is just a part of a wider ban on unstressed full vowels in these dialects.91