Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition

The article scrutinises several vowel reduction and lenition phenomena by employing a model of syntax-like structural representations, i.e. Government Phonology 2.0. In contrast to the standard GP model, whereby lenition and vowel reduction can be viewed as shortening, element suppression or status...

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Main Author: Karolina Drabikowska
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin 2021-12-01
Series:LingBaW
Subjects:
Online Access:https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/LingBaW/article/view/13451
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author Karolina Drabikowska
author_facet Karolina Drabikowska
author_sort Karolina Drabikowska
collection DOAJ
description The article scrutinises several vowel reduction and lenition phenomena by employing a model of syntax-like structural representations, i.e. Government Phonology 2.0. In contrast to the standard GP model, whereby lenition and vowel reduction can be viewed as shortening, element suppression or status switching, the structural approach employs the procedure of tree pruning with a heavily limited role of melodic annotation. This paper will take a closer look at node removal with special attention to its trajectory. In particular, two basic directionalities are considered: top-down and bottom-up. The former has been proposed to account for vowel reduction whereby the highest positions are deleted retaining the head and potentially its sister. The acquisition of plosives and fricatives points to the latter trajectory, which disposes of nodes closer to the head. However, the choice of positions that are targeted in weak contexts might be also related to the inherently encoded hierarchy of terminal nodes within the constituents in question.
format Article
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institution Kabale University
issn 2450-5188
language English
publishDate 2021-12-01
publisher The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin
record_format Article
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spelling doaj-art-81b3da1a38bf4a91a266135e683af3d22025-01-21T05:13:47ZengThe John Paul II Catholic University of LublinLingBaW2450-51882021-12-01710.31743/lingbaw.13451Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenitionKarolina Drabikowska0John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin The article scrutinises several vowel reduction and lenition phenomena by employing a model of syntax-like structural representations, i.e. Government Phonology 2.0. In contrast to the standard GP model, whereby lenition and vowel reduction can be viewed as shortening, element suppression or status switching, the structural approach employs the procedure of tree pruning with a heavily limited role of melodic annotation. This paper will take a closer look at node removal with special attention to its trajectory. In particular, two basic directionalities are considered: top-down and bottom-up. The former has been proposed to account for vowel reduction whereby the highest positions are deleted retaining the head and potentially its sister. The acquisition of plosives and fricatives points to the latter trajectory, which disposes of nodes closer to the head. However, the choice of positions that are targeted in weak contexts might be also related to the inherently encoded hierarchy of terminal nodes within the constituents in question. https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/LingBaW/article/view/13451vowel reductionlenitionstructuretree pruningphonological representation
spellingShingle Karolina Drabikowska
Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition
LingBaW
vowel reduction
lenition
structure
tree pruning
phonological representation
title Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition
title_full Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition
title_fullStr Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition
title_full_unstemmed Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition
title_short Tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition
title_sort tree pruning in the structural approach to vowel reduction and lenition
topic vowel reduction
lenition
structure
tree pruning
phonological representation
url https://czasopisma.kul.pl/index.php/LingBaW/article/view/13451
work_keys_str_mv AT karolinadrabikowska treepruninginthestructuralapproachtovowelreductionandlenition