Dissertation - Michael Becker

vowels (*VpV, *VtV, *VÙV, *VkV) or between a sonorant consonant and a vowel (*RpV,*RtV, *RÙV, *RkV). Each stop-final noun of Turkish is listed under a pair of conflictingconstraints, or equivalently, each pair of conflicting constraints accumulates a list of lexicalitems, and this listing allows the speaker to project the lexical statistics onto novel nouns.This ability of speakers to project trends from their lexicon onto novel items is a wellestablishedobservation (see Zuraw 2000, Albright et al. 2001, Ernestus & Baayen 2003,Hayes & Londe 2006, among others). The theoretical contribution of this work is two-fold:(a) It relates the projection of language-specific lexical trends to cross-linguistic patterns ofphonological interactions, by deriving both from the inventory of universal constraints inCON, and (b) it offers an OT-based grammar that applies deterministically to known items,and projects lexical trends directly from those items onto novel nouns.2.2 Turkish lexicon studyThe distribution of voicing alternations in the lexicon of Turkish depends heavily onthe phonological shape of nouns. For instance, while the final stop in most mono-syllabicnouns does not alternate (18a), the final stop in most poly-syllabic words does alternatewith its voiced counterpart (18b). This section offers a detailed quantitative survey of theTurkish lexicon, based on information from the Turkish Electronic Living Lexicon (TELL,Inkelas et al. 2000).(18) Bare stem Possessivea. aÙ aÙ-1 ‘hunger’b. amaÙ amaÃ-1 ‘target’Several phonological properties of Turkish nouns will be discussed, showing that fourof them correlate with stem-final alternations: (a) the noun’s size (mono-syllabic vs. polysyllabic),(b) the place of articulation of the stem-final stop, (c) the height of the vowel thatprecedes the stem-final stop, and (d) the backness of that vowel.23