This week, we’ll have an invited talk by Katherine Russell (UC Berkeley) on Friday, February 28 at 3PM at Sherbrooke 680 in room 1041. The details of the talk are given below.
Title: Explaining phonological exceptions: The case of Atchan morpheme-specific nasal harmony
Abstract: When phonological phenomena appear to constitute exceptions to typological universals, they prompt a number of important and interesting questions. Is a given phenomena really rare, or are our theoretical and typological predictions incorrect? Are there language-specific explanations for exceptional phonology, perhaps via other modules like phonetics and morphosyntax, or via diachrony? I engage with these questions through the lens of data collected through primary fieldwork with the Atchan-speaking community of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Atchan displays a typologically unusual phenomenon of nasalization which, on the surface, appears to constitute a case of nasal harmony in which different triggers propagate nasality over different amounts of structure. According to theoretical and typological generalizations about harmony systems, this type, in which some morphemes exceptionally trigger harmony, is extremely rare and potentially unattested (Padgett 1995, Finley 2009, McCarthy 2011). Drawing on a wide range of evidence across multiple modules of the grammar, from articulatory phonetic measurements to data collected through stories and narratives, I survey possible phonological and morphophonological analyses, and find that they come up short. Ultimately, I argue that exceptionality in Atchan nasal harmony actually derives from a difference in morphology: apparent long-distance nasal harmony effects are best analysed as the exponents of subject agreement with singular pronouns. In addition to accounting for synchronic nasalization patterns in Atchan, I sketch out a possible diachronic pathway from phonetic to morphological nasalization, supported by comparison with primary fieldwork data on Nghlwa, a closely related language in Côte d’Ivoire.