Slide 1

Slide 2

Opacity and prominence in Crimean Tatar Darya Kavitskaya Yale University darya.kavitskaya@yale.edu CUNY Conference on the Phonology of Endangered languages January 14, 2011

Slide 3

The language Crimean Tatar (CT) is an understudied and endangered language of the West Kipchak branch of the Northwestern subgroup of the Turkic family (Johanson 1998). CT is spoken in Ukraines Crimean peninsula and also in Uzbekistan, Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Turkey (Samoilovich 1916, Bogoroditskii 1933, Sevortian 1966, Memetov 1993, Izidinova 1997, Useinov, Mireev & Sahadzhiev 2005, Kavitskaya 2010). The data come from the authors fieldwork in 2002, 2003, 2009 in Crimea, Ukraine. 2

Slide 4

3

Slide 5

4

Slide 6

5

Slide 7

Processes Harmony Backness Rounding Syncope of high vowels Initial Medial Stress 6

Slide 8

CT vowels -back +back -round +round-round +round +highiyu -higheao i and have undergone an almost complete phonetic merger, but remain phonologically distinct. 7

Slide 9

Backness harmony bil-mekknowjuv-maqwash ket-mekgoqorq-maqbe afraid tyyn-mekthinkqr-maqrub tk-mekpourajlan-maqturn 8

Slide 10

Rounding harmony Triggered by any round vowel, targets high vowels only. dost-ufriend-3 SG. POSS tift-ipair-3 SG. POSS Rounding harmony is active only in the first two syllables of a word. a.dost-umfriend-1 SG. POSS kyz-lykautumn- ADJ. SUF bul-un-maqfind- PASS - INF b.tuzlu-msalt shaker-1 SG. POSS syrgyn-likdeportation- ADJ. SUF tykyr-in-mekspit- PASS - INF 9

Slide 11

Dialectal variation and harmony In the Southern dialect of CT, rounding harmony affects all high vowels in a prosodic word (low vowels are blockers), and in the Northern dialect of CT rounding harmony is lost; the feature [round] is licensed only in the initial syllable of the word (like in some Altaic languages, such as Vogul, Bashkir, Ostyak (Steriade 1995: 161-162)). 10

Slide 12

Syncope of high vowels Syncope targets high vowels, in word-initial (a) and word-medial syllables (b). Syncope of a high vowel in an initial syllable can create word-initial onsets that do not obey the CT phonotactics (a). Word-medially, syncope is blocked if it results in structures not acceptable by the phonotactics of the language. In the native vocabulary, complex onsets are not allowed. Complex codas are maximally CC and obey the SSP. a.kitap[ktap]book tlemek[tlemek]to bite bilem[blem]I know skmaq[skmaq]to push, press qsqa[qsqa]short b.aldlar[aldlar]they took otura[ot.ra]s/he sits ketirip[ket.rip]having brought ldyrmek[ldyrmek] *[ldrmek] to kill 11

Slide 13

Syncope of high vowels The leftmost vowel in a word deletes(c). The vowel may delete even when it is the absolute initial in a word (d). Final (stressed) high vowels never delete (e). c. tyyrdik[tyrdik]they dropped tykyrem[tkyrem] *[tykrem]I spit piirem[pirem] *[pirem]I cook d.ilemek[lemek]to work e.berdi[berdi] *[berd]she gave 12

Slide 14

A spectrogram of /tykyrmek/ to spit 13

Slide 15

Stress Each word in Crimean Tatar has exactly one main stress. The default stress position is word-final. It has been argued for Turkish (Levi 2005) that its default final stress is postlexical that seems to be the case for the related CT as well. a.arabacart araba-larcarts cart- PL araba-lar-danfrom carts cart- PL - ABL b.bala-d-mI began begin- PAST -1 SG ba-lar-mz-nour heads head- PL -1 PL. POSS - ACC 14

Slide 16

Stress Final stress is overriden by lexical stress in both roots and pre-stressing suffixes. a. nasl which, how mitlaqadefinitely tezdenquickly b. aar-mI eat iter-imI drink c. gede-lejinat nights aq-tanlq-nenin a hurry ana-dasnain a motherly manner d.bar-dhe wentbar-ma-d he didnt go bil-mekto knowbil-me-mekto not know 15

Slide 17

An opaque interaction between harmony and syncope Harmony and syncope in rule terms: ty-Ir-Em fall- CAUS - 1 SG. PRES a.URty-Ir-Em 1. Harmonytyyrem 2. Syncopetyrem Surfacetyrem b.URty-Ir-Em 1. SyncopetIrEm 2. Harmonytirem Surface *tirem 16

Slide 18

A classic OT account L ICENCE R D () (after Walker 2005) Feature [round] must be associated to positions in two syllables. D EP (round) Assign a violation mark for every instance of the feature [round] in the output that has no correspondent in the input (=dont insert the feature [round]). *N UC /i,u,y, >> *Nuc/e,o,a, (informally, *Nuc/high >> *Nuc/low) (Gouskova 2003 on differential syncope, see also Prince and Smolensky 1993, de Lacy 2004, 2006). M AX V Assign a violation mark for every input vowel that has no output correspondent (=dont delete a vowel). 17

Slide 19

CT opacity in classic OT 18

Slide 20

Harmonic serialism and vowel harmony Serial Harmony avoids some undesirable typological predictions with respect to feature spreading, present in classic OT (McCarthy 2009, to appear; Kimper 2008; Pruitt 2008; Wilson 2003, 2004, 2006; Wolf 2008, Zentz 2011). See, in particular, Padgett 1995, McCarthy 2003 on the sour-grapes property of local agreement constraints. 19

Slide 21

Assumptions of Serial Harmony (McCarthy 2009: 1-2) Distinctive features are privative (present/absent), and not equipollent (positive/negative). Harmony is motivated by a constraint on autosegmental representations, Share(F), that is violated by any pair of adjacent segments that are not linked to the same [F] autosegment. The input for the [tyrem] I drop is: [round] | t y i r e m 20

Slide 22

Constraints S HARE (F) (McCarthy 2009: 8) Assign one violation mark for every pair of adjacent segments that are not linked to the same token of [F]. S HARE (back) S HARE (round) I NITIAL (F) penalizes leftward spreading of a feature F (20), and F INAL (F) penalizes rightward spreading of the feature F (McCarthy 2009). The harmony in CT is progressive, thus I NITIAL (F) >> S HARE (F) >> F INAL (F) (where F is back and round). Harmonic Serialism has the same problem as classic OT with the analysis of counterbleeding opacity (see McCarthy 2007: 37). 21

Slide 23

OT with candidate chains (OT-CC, McCarthy 2007) The output is reached from the input via a series of steps (a candidate chain) Gradualness: one violation of one basic faithfulness constraint per step (a localized unfaithful mapping, LUM) The first step is the most harmonic faithful parse of the input Harmonic improvement: each step must improve harmony Each chain has a correspondent set of LUMs (the L -set) and an ordering of the elements in the set ( rLUMSeq). 22

Slide 24

Valid chains for the input /ty-ir-em/ I drop a. , (faithful) b. {D EP (rd)@4}, c. {M AX V@2}, d. {M AX V@4}, e. {D EP (rd)@4, M AX V@2}, { } f. {D EP (rd)@4, M AX V@4}, { } 23

Slide 25

Opacity in OT-CC Within OT-CC, we account for opacity with a precedence constraint P REC (A, B), which requires that all violations of B are preceded by and not followed by violations of A. P REC (D EP (round), M AX V) requires violations of D EP (round) (harmony) to precede and not follow violations of M AX V (syncope). 24

Slide 26

An OT-CC tableau for the input /ty-ir-em/ I drop 25

Slide 27

Prominence and the interaction of harmony and syncope In CT the prominence status of the initial syllable is different for different processes. The initial syllable is a common privileged position associated in the literature with phonological strength effects (see Barnes 2006; Beckman 1997; Kaun 1995, 2004). Northern CT: roundness is limited to the initial syllable. The same position is also weak, and is thus the best syncope site, as it is the furthest away from the final stress. CT does not show any evidence for secondary stress or further footing. The conflicting requirements on prominence are the source of opacity in the system. Support: a word nasl which, how is stressed on the first syllable. The second (high) vowel is reduced and often deleted. 26

Slide 28

An analysis To formalize the proposal, we modify OT-CC to include a family of constraints on the preference of the direction of iteration, P REFER (F x, F x+1 ), where F is a faithfulness constraint. P REFER (M AX x, M AX x+1 ) Assign one violation mark for a candidate chain that has a violation of M AX and a competitor chain in which this violation occurs earlier in the form. 27

Slide 29

A modified tableau for the input /ty-ir-em/ I drop 28

Slide 30

Conclusions Conflicting prominence in CT is the source of opacity. Vowel harmony is driven by spreading of a feature from the initial (most prominent) syllable. Syncope of high vowels prefers the initial syllable since it is the least prominent, being the furthest away from stress. The decision between the initial and medial syncope cannot be made by metrical constraints since there is no evidence for further footing in CT, beyond the final stressed syllable. In order to account for these data, we proposed a constraint on the preference of the direction of iteration. 29

Slide 31

Acknowledgements I thank Eric Ciaramella and Matt Wolf for their insightful comments on this paper. I am indebted to Remzije Berberova and to my other Crimean Tatar consultants for sharing their language with me. 30

Slide 32

Selected references Beckman, J. 1997. Positional faithfulness, positional neutralisation and Shona vowel harmony. Phonology 14: 1-46. Berta, rpd. 1998. West Kipchak languages. In L. Johanson, & E. Csato, eds., The Turkic languages. New York: Routledge. 301317. Bogoroditskii, V.A. 1933. Dialektologicheskie zametki. V. O krymsko-tatarskom narechii. Kazan. de Lacy, Paul. 2004. Markedness conflation in Optimality Theory. Phonology 21: 145-199. de Lacy, Paul. 2006. Markedness: reduction and preservation in phonology. Cambridge, CUP. Gouskova, Maria. 2003. Deriving economy: syncope in Optimality Theory. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Izidinova, S.R. 1997. Krymskotatarskii iazyk. In E.R. Tenishev (ed.), Iazyki mira. Tiurkskie iazyki. Moscow: Indrik. Johanson, Lars. 1998. The history of Turkic. In Johanson, L. & E. Csato (eds.) The Turkic languages. New York: Routledge. 81125. Kaun, Abigail. 1995. The typology of rounding harmony: an Optimality Theoretic approach. PhD dissertation, UCLA. Kaun, Abigail. 2004. In Bruce Hayes, Robert Kirchner, and Donca Steriade, eds. Phonetically Based Phonology. Cambridge University Press. Kavitskaya, Darya 2010. Crimean Tatar. LINCOM Europa. Kimper, Wendell. 2008. Local optionality and harmonic serialism. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. ROA-988. Memetov, A. 1993. Krymskie tatary: istoriko-lingvisticheskii ocherk. Simferopol: Anaiurt. Pruitt, Kathryn. 2008. Iterative foot optimization and locality in stress systems. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. ROA-999. 31

Slide 33

Levi, Susannah V. 2005. Acoustic correlates of lexical accent in Turkish. JIPA 35: 73- 97. McCarthy, John J. 2003. OT constraints are categorical. Phonology 20: 75-138. McCarthy, John J. 2007. Hidden Generalizations. Equinox, London. McCarthy John J. 2008. The serial interaction of stress and syncope. NLLT 26: 499- 546. McCarthy, John J. 2009. Harmony in harmonic serialism. Unpublished manuscript, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. ROA-1009. Samoilovich, A. N. 1916. Opyt kratkoi krymsko-tatarskoi grammatiki. Petrograd. Sevortian, E. 1966. Krymskotatarskii iazyk. In N. Baskakov et al, eds., Iazyki narodov SSSR 2, Nauka, 234-259. Steriade, Donca. 1995. Underspecification and markedness. In John Goldsmith, ed., The Handbook of Phonological Theory. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Useinov, S., V. Mireev, & V. Sahadzhiev. 2005. Qrmtatar tilini greniiz. Simferopol: Ocaq. Walker, Rachel. 2005. Weak triggers in vowel harmony. NLLT 23: 917-989. Wilson, Colin. 2006. Unbouded spreading is myopic. In Workshop on Current Perspectives on Phonology, vol. 23. Wolf, Matthew A. 2008. Optimal interleaving: serial phonology-morphology interaction in a constraint-based model. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. ROA-996. Zentz, Jason. 2011. Progressive front vowel harmony in Warlpiri: a Serial Harmony approach. Paper to be presented at the CUNY Conference on the Phonology of Endangered Languages, January 14, 2011. 32