Untitled

Left margin in Polish51‘splash, pf.’. The data in (8), which have been adapted from Scheer(2004:15), illustrate some more examples of such inconsistent forms. Sincethe same clusters can either vocalise the prefix vowel or not, e.g. odebrat‘take away’, bezbrady ‘beardless’, respectively, the theory is required toexplain this situation. The solution may be sought in the postulation oftwo separate representations for phonetically the same cluster.(8)a. prefix vocalisedode-bratroze-dratvze-šlyroze-dmoutroze-pøitb. prefix unvocalisedbezP-bradyrozP-drobitrozP-šlapatrozP-dmychatrozP-pøahat‘take away/beardless’‘tear up/crumble’‘open/crush’‘blow up/poke (fire)’‘straddle/stretch’Luckily enough, the Czech situation seems to be more regular than thePolish, as in this language the clusters that provoke vocalisation of prefix-finalnuclei are always alternation sites, that is, they are separatedby a vowel in related forms. Thus, the root initial clusters in the formsrepresented in (8a) are broken up by a vowel in other grammatical forms.For example, the initial cluster in brat ‘take’ appears without the alternatingvowel in the infinitive but is separated by a vowel in the inflectedforms, e.g. beru ‘I take’, and in the imperatives pod-birat ‘seize from belowipf.’ On the other hand, the forms in (8b) never vocalise the prefixvowel. What is more, the initial clusters in the forms under (8b) are neverbroken up by an alternating vowel. To sum up the discussion so far,in Czech only the root clusters hosting vowel-zero alternation vocalisethe prefix vowel. On the other hand, clusters which are never separatedby a vowel do not provoke the vocalisation of the prefix-final vowel. Fromthe above it follows that what we are dealing with here is an exact copyof the Polish situation. An alternating vowel is lexically present, hencethe consonants flanking it cannot contract IG. As has been mentioned inthe course of our earlier discussion, alternating vowels are target for PG.Consequently, the initial clusters in (8a) are separated by the empty properlygoverned nucleus which is responsible for the vocalisation of theprefix vowel (9a). Czech regular cases of prefixation are represented in(8b). 5 It follows that in both Polish and Czech a default case is the InfrasegmentalGovernment relation contracted by TR clusters which is responsiblefor the suppression of the prefix vowel (9b).5Scheer (1996) analyses the total number of 957 items where 762 occur withoutthe prefixal vowel and only 195 possess prefix-final vocalised vowels.4*