Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-16T21:15:40.250Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

New and old puzzles in the morphological conditioning of coronal stop deletion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 August 2021

Laurel MacKenzie  and
Meredith Tamminga
Laurel MacKenzie*
Affiliation:
New York [email protected]
Meredith Tamminga
Affiliation:
University of [email protected]
*
*Corresponding author.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper probes the well-documented morphological effect on coronal stop deletion (CSD, also called /t,d/-deletion), by which there is more deletion in monomorphemes like mist than in regular past tense forms like missed. We observe that there are, in principle, additional morphological distinctions that could be made within each category: for instance, the “regular past” category contains perfect and passive participles; the “monomorpheme” category typically contains compounds and suffixed forms. We demonstrate that several of these newly introduced distinctions actually have significant effects on CSD rates in a corpus of Philadelphia English. And we argue that these new distinctions are worth attending to because they have consequences for two existing accounts of the basic morphological effect. In each case, we show that the existing accounts do not straightforwardly capture the additional significant distinctions we identify, calling the explanatory power of those accounts into question.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , July 2021 , pp. 217 - 244
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Amos, Jenny, Jonathan R., Kasstan & Johnson, Wyn. (2020). Reconsidering the variable context: A phonological argument for (t) and (d) deletion. English Today 36:6–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baranowski, Maciej & Turton, Danielle. (2020). TD-deletion in British English: New evidence for the long-lost morphological effect. Language Variation and Change 32:1–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, Douglas, Mächler, Martin, Bolker, Ben, & Walker, Steve. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software 67:1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayley, Robert. (1994). Consonant cluster reduction in Tejano English. Language Variation and Change 6:303–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. (2010). Morphologically conditioned phonetics? Not proven. In On linguistic interfaces II, Belfast.Google Scholar
Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo. (2013). Amphichronic explanation and the life cycle of phonological processes. In Honeybone, P. & Salmons, J. (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology, Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Borowsky, Toni. (1993). On the word level. In Hargus, S. & Kaisse, E. M. (Eds.), Phonetics and phonology, vol. 4: Studies in lexical phonology. New York: Academic Press. 199–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. (1982). The passive in lexical theory. In Bresnan, J. (Ed.), The mental representation of grammatical relations, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Brown, Esther L. (2004). The reduction of syllable-initial /s/ in the Spanish of New Mexico and southern Colorado: A usage-based approach. Doctoral dissertation, The University of New Mexico.Google Scholar
Brysbaert, Marc & New, Boris. (2009). Moving beyond Kučera and Francis: a critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English. Behavioral Research Methods 41:977–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bybee, Joan. (2002). Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change. Language Variation and Change 14:261–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ceolin, Andrea. (2020). Functionalism, lexical contrast and sound change. Doctoral dissertation: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Cooper, William E. & Paccia-Cooper, Jeanne. (1980). Syntax and speech. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Embick, David. (2003). Locality, listedness, and morphological identity. Studia Linguistica 57:143–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erker, Daniel & Guy, Gregory R. (2012). The role of lexical frequency in syntactic variability: variable subject personal pronoun expression in Spanish. Language 88:526–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fruehwald, Josef. (2011). TD deletion and morphological interaction. Unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Fruehwald, Josef. (2012). Redevelopment of a morphological class. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 18:77–86.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. (1980). Variation in the group and the individual: The case of final stop deletion. In Labov, W. (Ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic Press. 1–36.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. (1991). Explanation in variable phonology: An exponential model of morphological constraints. Language Variation and Change 3:1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. (1996). Form and function in linguistic variation. In Guy, G. R., Feagin, C., Schiffrin, D. & Baugh, J. (Eds.), Towards a social science of language: Papers in honor of William Labov. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Co. 221–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. (2007). Lexical exceptions in variable phonology. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 13:109–19.Google Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. (2019). Variation and mental representation. In Lightfoot, D. W. & Havenhill, D. (Eds.), Variable properties in language: their nature and acquisition. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press. 129–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. & Boberg, Charles. (1997). Inherent variability and the Obligatory Contour Principle. Language Variation and Change 9:149–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. & Boyd, Sally. (1990). The development of a morphological class. Language Variation and Change 2:1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory R. & Cutler, Cecelia. (2011). Speech style and authenticity: quantitative evidence for the performance of identity. Language Variation and Change 23:139–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guy, Gregory, Hay, Jennifer, & Walker, Abby. (2008). Phonological, lexical, and frequency factors in coronal stop deletion in early New Zealand English. Paper presented at Laboratory Phonology 11.Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & Mohanan, K.P. (1985). Segmental phonology of modern English. Linguistic Inquiry 16:57–116.Google Scholar
Harris, John. (1989). Towards a lexical analysis of sound change in progress. Journal of Linguistics 25:35–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hazen, Kirk. (2011). Flying high above the social radar: Coronal stop deletion in modern Appalachia. Language Variation and Change 23:105–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jurafsky, Daniel, Bell, Alan, Gregory, Michelle, & Raymond, William D. (2001). Probabilistic relations between words: Evidence from reduction in lexical production. In Bybee, J. & Hopper, P. (Eds.), Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 229–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. (1972). Explanation in phonology. In Peters, S. (Ed.), Goals of linguistic theory. Cinnaminson, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 189–227.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. (1982). Lexical morphology and phonology. In Yang, I. S. (Ed.), Linguistics in the morning calm. Seoul: Hanshin. 3–91.Google Scholar
Klatt, Dennis H. (1975). Vowel lengthening is syntactically determined in a connected discourse. Journal of Phonetics 3:129–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Köhnlein, Björn. (2015). The morphological structure of complex place names: The case of Dutch. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 18:183–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1989). The child as linguistic historian. Language Variation and Change 1:85–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William. (1994). Principles of linguistic change, vol. 1. internal factors. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Labov, William. (1997). Resyllabification. In Hinskens, F., van Hout, R. & Wetzels, L. (Eds.), Variation, change, and phonological theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 145–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William, Cohen, Paul, Robins, Clarence, & Lewis, John. (1968). A study of the non-standard English of Negro and Puerto Rican speakers in New York City. Final report, Cooperative Research Project 3288, Vols. I and II.Google Scholar
Labov, William & Rosenfelder, Ingrid. (2011). The Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus of LING 560 studies, 1972–2010. With support of NSF contract 921643.Google Scholar
Lieber, Rochelle. (1980). The organization of the lexicon. Doctoral dissertation: MIT.Google Scholar
Mallinson, Christine & Childs, Becky. (2007). Communities of practice in sociolinguistic description: Analyzing language and identity practices among black women in Appalachia. Gender and Language 1:173–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McPherson, Laura & Hayes, Bruce. (2016). Relating application frequency to morphological structure: The case of Tommo So vowel harmony. Phonology 33:125–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyers, James & Guy, Gregory R. (1997). Frequency effects in variable lexical phonology. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 4:215–28.Google Scholar
Mohanan, K.P. (1986). The theory of lexical phonology. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Science & Business Media.Google Scholar
Mondon, Jean-François. (2009). The nature of homophony and its effects on diachrony and synchrony. Doctoral dissertation: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Neu, Helen. (1980). Ranking of constraints on /t,d/ deletion in American English: A statistical analysis. In Labov, W. (Ed.), Locating language in time and space. New York: Academic Press. 37–54.Google Scholar
Patrick, Peter L. (1991). Creoles at the intersection of variable processes: (td)-deletion and past-marking in the Jamaican mesolect. Language Variation and Change 3:171–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana. (1980). Deletion and disambiguation in Puerto Rican Spanish. Language 56:371–385.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raymond, William D., Brown, Esther L., & Healy, Alice F. (2016). Cumulative context effects and variant lexical representations: Word use and English final t/d deletion. Language Variation and Change 28:175–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
R Core Team. (2015). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Rosenfelder, Ingrid, Fruehwald, Josef, Evanini, Keelan & Yuan, Jiahong. (2011). FAVE program suite [forced alignment and vowel extraction]. University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto. (1996). Sonority and syllable structure in Chicano English. Language Variation and Change 8:63–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schreier, Daniel. (2005). Consonant change in English worldwide: Synchrony meets diachrony. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sóskuthy, Márton & Hay, Jennifer. (2017). Changing word usage predicts changing word durations in New Zealand English. Cognition 166:298–313.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tagliamonte, Sali & Temple, Rosalind. (2005). New perspectives on an ol’ variable: (t,d) in British English. Language Variation and Change 17:281–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tamminga, Meredith. (2016). Persistence in phonological and morphological variation. Language Variation and Change 28:335–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanner, James, Sonderegger, Morgan, & Wagner, Michael. (2017). Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology 8:15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Temple, Rosalind. (2009). (t,d): the variable status of a variable rule. Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics 12:145–70.Google Scholar
Temple, Rosalind. (2014). Where and what is (t,d)? A case study in taking a step back in order to advance sociophonetics. In Celata, C. & Calamai, S. (Eds.), Advances in sociophonetics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 97–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tomaschek, Fabian, Tucker, Benjamin V., Ramscar, Michael, & Baayen, Harald. (2021). Paradigmatic enhancement of stem vowels in regular English inflected verb forms. Morphology 31:171–99.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Turton, Danielle. (2016). Synchronic stratum-specific rates of application reflect diachronic change: Morphosyntactic conditioning of variation in English /l/-darkening. Papers in Historical Phonology 1:130–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, James A. (2012). Form, function, and frequency in phonological variation. Language Variation and Change 24:397–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. (1977). Transformations and the lexicon. In Culicover, P., Wasow, T. & Akmajian, A. (Eds.), Formal syntax. New York: Academic Press. 327–60.Google Scholar
Weide, Robert. (2008). The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Carnegie Mellon University.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt. (1969). A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech (Urban Language Series 5). Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Wolfram, Walt & Christian, Donna. (1976). Appalachian speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: File

MacKenzie and Tamminga supplementary material

MacKenzie and Tamminga supplementary material

Download MacKenzie and Tamminga supplementary material(File)
File 100.3 KB