Dissertation - Michael Becker

The licensing effect emerges when selecting –ot allows its stressed [o] to license theunstressed [o] in a root via auto-segmental linking.Regular nouns (84a) allow [o] to surface unlicensed in the plural. For ot-takers that havean [o] in the root-final syllable (84b), the [o] is licensed directly by stress in the singular,and by being associated with the stressed syllable in the plural. As for ot-takers that havea non-final [o] (84c), the [o] surfaces faithfully in the singular, just like the [o] in alon-ím,but it is licensed across the [a] in the plural.(84) Singular Plural[−high+back][+high−back]a. Regular a l ó n a lo n - í m[ ]−high+back‘oak tree’b. Irregular x a l ó n x a l o n - ó t ‘window’[ ]−high+backc. Irregular o l á m o l a m -ó t ‘world’This diagram in (84c) shows the licensing of the unstressed [o] in the root by thestressed [o] of the plural affix, skipping the intervening [a]. Alternatively, the [a] couldbe associated with the licensed features, and thus eliminate the skipping, since [a] iscompatible with [−high] and [+back] specifications.Licensing a marked vowel nonlocallyacross another vowel is attested in other languages, as discussed in Hualde (1989);Walker (2006).In the Lena Bable dialect of Spanish, the [+high] feature of a wordfinalvowel must be licensed by the stressed vowel, skipping any intervening vowels (e.g./trweban+u/ → [trwiban-u]). The treatment of intervening vowels, in Hebrew and crosslinguistically,is discussed in further detail in §3.4.4.92