Linguistics 120A Fall 2003 Phonology I Hayes/Billerey Syncope in Namklaw (sample term paper) WARNING: DO NOT USE ANY WORDS FROM THIS SAMPLE TERM PAPER 1. Introduction Namklaw is a Namklawic language spoken in the Southern province of Noisevelet. The goal of this paper is to present and document a phonological rule of Syncope in Namklaw, based on evidence elicited from a native speaker. My consultant for this paper, Charles Rotsisnaret, is a native speaker of Namklaw. He comes from Semagoediv, the largest city of the Southern province. He says he speaks something fairly close to the standard dialect of the language, used in education and in broadcasting. Charles lived in Semagoediv for all of his life up to the age of 23, at which point he moved to Los Angeles to study electrical engineering at UCLA. He has lived here for the past two years, and is quite fluent in English. My project has benefited greatly from the analysis of Namklaw phonology given in Billerey (2003). Billerey covers most of the major phonological rules of Namklaw, including the process of Syncope focused on here. In what follows, I will first summarize Billerey’s account of Namklaw, then present my own data and suggest how Billerey’s analysis might be revised to cover Charles Rotsisnaret’s speech. 2. Billerey (2003) The phonemic inventory of Namklaw, according to Billerey, is as follows: (1) ... Another source, Smith (1968), lists two additional phonemes, /∏/ and /B/. Words that have these sounds in Smith (1968) always are pronounced with /f/ and /v/ in the dialect Billerey describes. Apparently some dialects of the language preserve an older stage in which /∏/ and /B/ were separate phonemes, but in the Billerey dialect these have merged with older /f/ and /v/ respectively. Since the merger took place in all contexts, there is no justification for setting up an underlying /∏/ or /B/ in the Billerey dialect. Charles Rotsisnaret apparently has the same phonemes as Billerey’s consultants. Although he is familiar with other people’s pronunciations with /∏/ and /B/, he says that in his own speech he only says /f/ and /v/. Stress in Namklaw typically falls on the third to last syllable. Billerey expresses the rule as follows: (2) Stress Assignment: σ → »σ / ___ ((σ) σ) ]Word2 Here are some examples of antepenultimate stress in Namklaw, taken from Billerey. (3) [»lupebdo] ‘milk’ [mu»keptilu] ‘intransigence’ [»ambeTi] ‘soap’ [so»latinde] ‘basilisk’ The central phonological rule of Noisivelet is a rule of Syncope, formulated by Billerey as follows: (4) Syncope V → ∅ / V+stress C ___ CV That is, the vowel of the posttonic syllable deletes if it itself in a nonfinal syllable and separated from the nearby vowels by just one consonant. Syncope creates many alternations in the language, since suffixation can vary the length of words. This causes a different syllable to bear stress, and thus a different vowel to be syncopated. Here is a simple example of how Syncope applies. I assume that the underlying form of [»amla] ‘platypus’ is /amila/. (5) /amila/ »amila Stress Assignment »amla Syncope It can be seen that as the rules are stated, Stress Assignment must precede Syncope, since Syncope relies for its application on the position of stress, which must be established first by the stress assignment rule. The underlying form /amila/ can be justified by looking at suffixed forms of the same stem. In these cases, there is a different antepenult, hence a different stressed syllable, and hence a different vowel syncopates. The underlying /i/ of /amila/ therefore survives in the phonetic representation. (6) /amila-ma/ ‘platypus-plural’ /amila-ma-nu/ ‘platypus-plural-accusative’ a»milama Stress Assignment ami»lamanu Stress Assignment a»milma Syncope ami»lamnu Syncope Here are some similar forms that can be derived in the same way:3(7) Gloss Underlying form Nom. sg. Nom. pl. Acc. sg. Acc. pl. /X/ /X+ma/ /X+nu/ /X+ma+nu/ ‘friendship’ /likeso/ »likso li»kesma li»kesnu like»somnu ‘yellow dye’ /asurefi/ a»surfi asu»refma asu»refnu asure»fimnu ... Billerey justifies the details of his rule as follows. First, one might wonder why the rule is formulated to delete the post-stress vowel, rather than the penultimate vowel. The reason is that there are a few exceptional words in which the stress falls four syllables from the end. In such cases, the vowel that syncopates is the third from the end, just as Billerey’s rule predicts. (8) /lu»patirome/ ‘mongoose’ — Stress Assignment (this form is [-Stress Assignment]) lu»patrome Syncope When such forms are suffixed, the exceptional stress disappears by a rule which I will not try to formulate here. Regular antepenultimate stress is assigned, and the underlying vowel shows up: (9) /lupatirome-nu/ ‘mongoose-acc.’ lupati»romenu Stress Assignment lupati»romnu Syncope Billerey’s rule also requires that the vowel to be deleted be separated from its neighboring vowels by exactly one consonant. The need for this provision can be seen in the following forms, where there are two consonants and Syncope does not apply: (10) /konektima/ ‘extension cord’ ko»nektima Stress Assignment — Syncope [ko»nektima] output /mulatopra/ ‘envy of better dancers’ mu»latopra Stress Assignment — Syncope [mu»latopra] output Similar forms showing the same thing are: (11) ... 3. Syncope in the Speech of Charles Rotsisnaret The first thing I did in checking out Charles’s phonology was to elicit from him all the examples from Billerey (2003) covering the phenomenon of Syncope, including all the examples cited above. When I elicited these forms, I got a rude shock: Charles didn’t syncopate any of4them. That is, he said [»amila], [a»milama], [ami»lamanu], [»likeso], and so on, down through the whole list. One thing that I noticed about Charles speech was that it seemed rather formal, in fact almost ceremonial. In casual conversation Charles mentioned that all citizens of Noisivelet, even those who cannot themselves speak Namklaw, hold the language in high regard as the purest embodiment of Noisiveletian culture. Charles felt a little disappointed that I only wanted him to say individual words for me, since what he really