In Korean compound nouns, the onset of the second element tensifies: /pjəl + picʰ/ → [pjəl.p*icʰ]. This process displays a substantial number of exceptions. We show that in the Yanbian dialect phonological factors influence compound tensification; their influence is confirmed by the results of a wug test. These results mostly mirror generalisations informed by lexical data, but a pattern not clearly observed in the existing lexicon also emerged (analytic bias or ‘overlearning’), while phonologically implausible interactions were not actively incorporated (‘underlearning’). Preliminary acoustic analysis motivates an OCP restriction against multiple laryngeally marked segments, due to the shared feature [long non-modal voicing]. But in simplex nouns the co-occurrence of two tense onsets is overrepresented. This apparent contradiction is explained by a directionality difference: compound tensification is progressive, as opposed to the regressive assimilation of creaky voice from the vowel of the following syllable in simplex words.

Many languages have restrictions on word-final segments, such as a requirementthat any word-final obstruent be voiceless. There is a phonetic basis for suchrestrictions at the ends of utterances, but not the ends of words. Historicallinguists have long noted this mismatch, and have attributed it to an analogicalgeneralisation of such restrictions from utterance-final to word-final position.To test whether language learners actually generalise in this way, twoartificial language learning experiments were conducted. Participants heardnonsense utterances in which there was a restriction on utterance-finalobstruents, but in which no information was available about word-finalutterance-medial obstruents. They were then tested on utterances that includedobstruents in both positions. They learned the pattern and generalised it toword-final utterance-medial position, confirming that learners are biased towardword-based distributional patterns.

It has been assumed that tonal alignment is not contrastive in contour tones(e.g. Hyman 1988, Odden 1995, Yip 2002). However, Remijsen (2013) and DiCanioet al. (2014) have recently reported evidence for thisconfiguration. In relation to this controversy, we report on an acousticanalysis of the tone system of Shilluk. The dataset is built around the contrastof Low vs. Early-aligned High Fall vs.Late-aligned High Fall vs. High in closed monosyllabic stemswith a short vowel. The results support the hypothesis that tonal alignment iscontrastive in falling contour tones in Shilluk: the two falling contours differconsistently and significantly in terms of tonal alignment, relative both to oneanother and to phonetically similar level-tone configurations. The fallingcontours do not differ significantly in terms of a number of other phoneticparameters (F0 height, size of F0 change, duration).

One of the major attributes of autosegmental phonology is the possibility ofreducing procedural techniques of morphological exponence to a generalisedconcept of concatenation. This research programme, which equates the triggers ofnon-concatenative processes with affixes consisting of incomplete autosegmentalor prosodic representations, is called Generalised Non-linear Affixation inBermúdez-Otero (2012). In this paper, we argue that the GeneralisedNon-linear Affixation analysis of segmental lengthening by mora affixationextends naturally to subtractive morphology. Defective (phoneticallyuninterpretable) integration of an affix mora into the prosodic structure of itsbase triggers deletion and shortening. We show that this approach derives allmajor types of quantity-manipulating morphology (vowel shortening, segmentalsubtraction and vowel-length polarity), and thus demonstrate that GeneralisedNon-linear Affixation extends fully to subtractive morphology, which has beenseen as the ultimate problem for a concatenative reanalysis (Anderson 1992).

Linguists have been attempting to define the range of locations in which infixescan occur since Ultan's pioneering work in 1975, but to date therehas been no unambiguous evidence for infixation after the first syllable,despite previous (now controversial) claims of its existence by Ultan (1975) andMoravcsik (2000), as well as its predicted existence by Yu's SalientPivot Hypothesis (‘phonological pivots must be salient at thepsycholinguistic or phonetic level’) (2003, 2007). Previouslyexamined potential examples are controversial due to restricted patterns and theacceptability of alternative analyses such as a first-vowel pivot or afoot-based pivot (Samuels 2010). In this article, I present strong evidence fromfieldwork on Yeri, an endangered Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea, thatimperfective and additive morphemes productively occur as infixes after thefirst syllable of the verb stem, and that a first-vowel or foot-based analysiscannot account for their position.

In his recent bid for the presidency of the Association for Mathematics of Language, Makoto Kanazawa writes:*