The Phonology of Hungarian (The Phonology of the World's Languages) - Péter Siptár, Miklós Törkenczy (2025)

First of all, it is our pleasure to acknowledge our indebtedness to our colleagues László Kálmán, Ádám Nádasdy, and László Varga, with whom we co-authored another book (Ferenc Kiefer (ed.), Strukturális magyar nyelvtan, 2. kötet: Fonológia [The Structure of Hungarian, Volume 2: Phonology], Akadémiai Kiadó, 1994) without which this volume could never have been written. Special thanks are due to Ferenc Kiefer for having initiated the project the end product of which is the present book. We would also like to thank Anna Kürti, Catherine Ringen, and Péter Szigetvári for their careful reading of and valuable comments on various versions of the manuscript. The discussions of various aspects of Hungarian phonology with László Kálmán, Ádám Nádasdy, Krisztina Polgárdi, Péter Rebrus, and Péter Szigetvári were invaluable and often drove us to despair. We owe a lot to our students, especially Zsuzsa Bárkányi, Zoltán Kiss, Anna Kürti, and Nóra Wenszky, who had to suffer several trial runs of various chapters of the manuscript and whose comments improved this book considerably. We would also like to thank Jacques Durand for valuable comments and for the editing of this series. We thank the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for supporting the project between September 1996 and December 1996 (Zsigmond Telegdi Grant) and the Hungarian Soros Foundation for the Short Study Grant awarded to us in 1998. We are grateful to the Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics, University of Leiden, and Harry van der Hulst in particular for the hospitality, help, and the 'atmosphere of intellectual freedom' that surrounded us during the time we spent at HIL working on the final chapters of the book.

Lowering: the interaction of phonology and morphology in Hungarian

2000

that in the forms of this word where the word final affricate is adjacent to the suffix-t, the affricate assimilates in voicing to the stop and becomes [t s ]

Rassegna di Studi Etiopici, 2021

After an introduction that reviews the major studies on the phonology of Nara, a Northern East Sudanic language of north-western Eritrea, this paper discusses its phoneme inventory, and the distribution and allophonic variation of its consonants and vowels. Allowed syllable structures and consonant clusters are analysed in two successive sections. A separate section highlights the complex rules of internal sandhi and a number of other rules and processes of segmental phonology. Finally, the tonal system on this language is discussed, together with a number of phenomena of grammatical tone and of tonal sandhi that occur both word-internally and across words. The major focus is on Higir Nara, which is the most studied dialect and the basis of Eritrean written Nara. However, data from different dialects are now available thanks to Rilly’s and Elsadig’s works, and have been taken in consideration. Internal Sandhi

On Hungarian morphology

1994

The aim of this study is to provide an autosegmental description of Hungarian morphology. Chapter 1 sketches the (meta) theoretical background and summarizes the main argument. In Chapter 2 phonological prerequisites to morphological analysis are discussed. Special attention is paid to Hungarian vowel harmony. In Chapter 3 a universal theory of lexical categories is proposed, and the category system of Hungarian is described within it. The final chapter presents a detailed description of nominal and verbal inflection ...

Consonant cluster phonotactics : a perceptual approach

2000

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2000.

Yucatec Maya vowel alternations. arguments for syntagmatic identity and positional faithfulness

Two papers on constraint domains”, SFB, 2000

In this paper, I will give a detailed account of vowel harmony and vowel dissimilation in Yucatec Maya. These phenomena provide insights for the treatment of assimilation in Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993), as well as for the organisation of phonological features. The theoretical topics to be dealt with are (i.) an adequate formalisation of phonological feature assimilation within Correspondence Theory (McCarthy & Prince 1995), and (ii.) an account of morpheme-specific alternations within this framework. I will argue that harmony, or assimilation in general, surfaces due to a Faithfulness constraint family, Syntagmatic Identity, which establishes a correspondence relation between segmental or prosodic entities of the same type within one representation. Idiosyncratic alternations will be analysed with reliance on featural underspecification of underlying forms. Effects which were traditionally attributed to different rules on different levels of derivation are accounted for within the parallelist model of Correspondence Theory by constraint interaction, and without assumptions like serialist candidate evaluations (which were p roposed by Benua 1997, Kiparsky 1999, and many others). * I would like to thank the SFB 282 for its support. Special thanks go to Janet Grijzenhout, Heather Goad, Chris Piñon for their comments and suggestions.

The Phonology of Dutch

The phonology of most languages has until now been available only in a fragmented way, through unpublished theses, or articles scattered in more or less accessible journals. Each volume in this series will offer an extensive treatment of the phonology of one language within a modern theoretical perspective, and will provide comprehensive references to recent and more classical studies of the language. The following will normally be included: an introduction situating the language geographically and typologically, an overview of the theoretical assumptions made by the author, a description of the segmental system and of the rules or parameters characterizing the language, an outline of syllable structure and domains above the syllable, a discussion of lexical and postlexical phonology, an account of stress and prominence, and, if space allows, some overview of the intonational structure of the language. While it is assumed that every volume will be cast in a modern non-linear framework, there will be scope for a diversity of approach which reflects variations between languages and in the methodologies and theoretical preoccupations of the individual authors.

The phonology-morphology interface in Malay: an optimality theoretic account

2005

This book gives an exhaustive description of the phonology and the interface between the phonology and the morphology of the Malay language. The description primarily focuses on the segmental alternations that are derived due the morphological processes of prefixation, suffixation and reduplication. It is observed that the phonology of prefixation, suffixation and reduplication in the language are quite distinct in both character and degree of generality. Processes that are visibly active in prefixation are generally not active in suffixation or reduplication, and vice versa. This asymmetry has not been satisfactorily accounted for in previous works. The phonological analysis proposed in this book is grounded in the theoretical framework of Correspondence Theory (McCarthy & Prince 1995b), set within the constraint-based approach of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolen sky 1993). The asymmetry between prefixation, suffixation and reduplication is satisfactorily accounted for as a consequence of the output candidate best satisfying the language's constraint hierarchy. The book is organised into six chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief overview of the language under investigation, and briefly introduces some fundamental aspects of Optimality Theory. Chapter 2 examines the aspects of Malay phonology which are governed and conditioned by syIJable structure and syllabification. Chapters 3 and 4 investigate the phonology and morphology interface in suffixation and prefix at ion respectively. It is apparent that the morphophonological behaviour of suffixation is quite distinct from prefixation both in character and in degree of generality. The asymmetry between prefixation and suffixation is accounted for as a consequence of the output candidate best satisfying the language's constraint hierarchy. The interaction between phonology and reduplication, which gives rise to a variety of reduplicative patterns, is examined in Chapter 5. It is demonstrated that these reduplicative phenomena can be accounted for and regulated by a single language-specific ranking schema. The parallelist Correspondence Theory provides a unified framework to capture the generalisation that fundamentally a single general ranking schema is at work in driving all of those reduplicative patterns. Finally, Chapter 6 gives a brief summary of the important findings discussed thus far. This book is ba sed on my dissertation 'The phonology and morphology interface in Malay: an optimality theoretic account', which was submitted to the Department of Language and Linguistics, University of Essex, United Kingdom, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Language and Linguistics in March 1998. My achievement in completing this book was due largely to the support and contribution of many generous and considerate people to whom lowe deep gratitude. My greatest appreciation goes to Professor Iggy Roca, my adviser, who gave me immeasurable assistance ix x and encouragement and provided me with penetrating criticism and suggestions throughout the preparation of the book. I am sincerely grateful to my colleagues at Essex University Phonology Workshop who have provided helpful discussions and suggestions, especially

Armenian Phonology

unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard, 1994

The prosodic phonology of Central Kurdish

2016

This thesis investigates the prosodic structure of Central Kurdish; a language whose phonology and prosody is poorly studied. Within the framework of Optimality Theory, rhythmic categories (mora, syllable and foot) and prosody-morphology interface category (Prosodic Word) of the language is addressed. The thesis also includes comparing the prosodic units (below phonological phrase) with the parametric variation for each constituent. This study fills the gap in the work of the prosodic system of Central Kurdish and on its phonology as such. Based on the data, the thesis also assesses the conflicting sub-theories of prosodic phonology: the view which sees phonological representation as a hierarchical organisation of units of which the higher prosodic units are defined in terms of lower ones against a different view which argues against constituency in phonology. Being theoretical in nature, the researcher's intuition as a native speaker of the language under study is used for the description of the data. The validity of the data is being supported and cross-examined by the descriptive literature on the language. As it is described as the best method for interpreting prosodic phonology, Optimality Theory is used as the framework to analyse the data. The supporting evidence for each prosodic constituent is drawn from the (morpho)phonological processes that use the categories as the domain of their application. As the research question investigated covers a broad area in the prosody of Central Kurdish, the findings were wide-ranging and multi-layered. First, it was found that sequences of speech sounds are organised into constituents, which serve as the domain of certain phonological processes. Each prosodic constituent consists of at least a constituent of the lower constituent. Similar to syntactic categories, it was shown that prosodic categories (above syllable and foot) can be recursive and parsing can be nonexhaustive. Mora, though not a prosodic constituent within the prosodic hierarchy, can be sensitive to certain morphological processes and insensitive to phonological processes, i.e. sensitivity of processes can be a process-specific rather than languagespecific. The significance of the findings of this thesis is twofold. First, it is the first analytical prosodic study of Central Kurdish. Second, which is theoretical, Prosodic structure, at least for Prosodic Word, matches a syntactic constituent. iii Declaration The material contained within this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree at Newcastle University or any other university.

The Phonology and Morphology of the Tanacross Athabaskan Langauge

2000

This dissertation presents a linguistic description of the phonology and morphology of Tanacross Athabaskan, an endangered language spoken by approximately sixty persons in eastern interior Alaska. There is little extant documentation of Tanacross; hence, this description is based primarily on data gathered from first-hand field work. Tanacross is typical of the Athabaskan family in its typological characteristics. There is a relatively small phonemic inventory, and most of the phonemic contrasts are neutralized outside the stem-syllable onset position. The lexicon is relatively small, consisting of perhaps six thousand distinct morphemes. Noun morphology is relatively straightforward, with few active morphological processes. In contrast, verb structure is extremely complex, consisting of a possibly discontinuous root morpheme together with a string of inflectional and derivational affixes which combine via an elaborate system of non- concatenative templatic morphology. The verb word may stand alone as entire utterance. Members of other minor word classes tend to be monomorphemic. Tanacross exhibits several unique properties which distinguish it from neighboring Athabaskan languages and invite further study. Tanacross is unique among the Alaska Athabaskan languages in having high tone as the reflex of Proto-Athabaskan constriction. In addition, more than any other tonal language in Alaska Tanacross has preserved segmental information lost via apocope through an elaborate system of compound tone. Tanacross also has many unique phonetic features, including the loss of suffix vowels and the devoicing of stem-initial fricatives. Tanacross morphology reflects its transitional status between the (historically) conservative languages of the lower Tanana river and the innovative languages of the Tanana and Yukon uplands.