Re: Dropping from the root

On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Marcus Smith wrote:

> Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Marcus Smith wrote:
> >
> >Hmmm. You mentioned earlier that there is no way to predict
> >whether a verb will truncate by dropping a final consonant or an
> >entire rime. There are also apparently verbs which don't
> >truncate. It already sounds like the system is irregular in
> >much the same way as the strong verbs of English.
>
> This is a system that hasn't been studied in any detail as far as I can
> tell.
Colleen Fitzgerald and Amy Fountain presented a paper at the LSA
several years ago (1995? 1996?) which provided an account of the
prosody of truncation in OT terms. I *still* haven't seen their
handout :-(.

> An quick survey of many truncating words does reveal some tendancies
> though. These should be taken with a grain of salt, pending a more in depth
> study.
>
> - All rime deletions involve a high vowel and a simpleton coda
> - Truncation doesn't seem to involve diphthongs
> - Among the consonants, truncation only involves stops and nasals
>
> Some of these might be statistical accidents though, since there are only
> two non-high vowels (opposed to three high vowels), and fricatives and the
> one glide are not common word endings. Still, that makes you wonder about
> diphthongs and the lateral escaping completely, both of which are common
> word finally.
A bright young scholar could make a killing ...

> >Perhaps this gives a little more credence to the unnamed
> >morphologist's assertion that truncation isn't productive ...
>
> Perhaps, but even so, I wouldn't feel bad about arguing with her, because
> her conclusion was based on theory internal grounds, and she did not
> provide a scrap of evidence for her claim. The reasoning went roughly as:
> morphology is concatenative, that is why truncation is not a regular
> process. She offered no support for the claim that truncation is irregular,
> even after we objected; she simply gave in.
:-). No worries; I think you got her fair and square, even if
truncation is messier than simple affixation.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir

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