For Fall 2001
L712 Phonological opacity effects
Section 3116, 3 credits

Tuesday & Thursday 4:00 to 5:15; BH 335

The phonology of any language is characterized by a host of
generalizations (or alternatively laws, principles, rules, processes,
and/or constraints). An example of a language-specific phonological
generalization might be a statement about what sounds can and cannot
occur in particular contexts. Generalizations often interact with one
another with the result that one generalization is obscured or
rendered opaque by another. A generalization is considered opaque if
it is not surface-true or if it is not surface-apparent. One typical
example of a generalization that is not surface-true is the
principled failure of neutralization processes to apply
in certain contexts (e.g. in nonderived environments). The result is
that some phonetic forms appear to violate or be exceptions to those
neutralizing processes. The other type of opacity is equally well
documented. Compensatory processes, for example, result in this type
of opacity in that the contextual conditions for one generalization
are not overtly present in the phonetic form. Such a case might find
vowel nasalization to be rendered opaque if the conditioning nasal
consonant is deleted.

While opacity effects appear to be fairly common, different
theoretical frameworks have been more or less challenged to provide
for them and/or have treated them as relatively marked, dispreferred,
unstable or hard to learn. This seminar takes up the dilemma that
opacity effects pose for phonological theory, historical sound change
and first- or second-language acquisition. A range of occurring
opacity effects will be surveyed and the ability of different
theoretical proposals to handle these effects will be assessed.
Phenomena from fully developed and developing phonologies will be
considered with a view toward understanding how opacity effects
emerge and how they are lost.

Some of the proposals for handling opacity effects that will be
considered from the more traditional rule-based derivational theories
will include: principles for rule ordering (and reordering), cyclic
rule application, global rules, underspecification, and feature
geometry. Other proposals that will be considered from the more
recent constraint-based approaches of optimality theory will include
output-to-output correspondence constraints, contextual restrictions
on constraints (e.g. prosodic, morphological, lexical), local
constraint conjunction, ternary feature scales, sympathy,
targeted constraints, and turbidity.

Requirements will include a series of presentations and a final
paper. Depending on a student's project, this seminar can be used to
satisfy the departmental Ph.D. requirement for a course on language
acquisition.

Prerequisite: L542 (or equivalent)

For more information, contact Dan Dinnsen, Linguistics, phone:
855-7948; email: dinnsen@indiana.edu