Empirical Relevance

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? Empirical Relevance

• Local conjunction has seen many empirical
  applications here, vowel harmony
• Lango (Nilotic, Uganda) ATR harmony
• Woock Noonan 79
• Archangeli Pulleyblank 91 et seq., esp. 94
• Markedness
• ATR, ?hi/fr
• ?ATR, hi/fr
• A/sclosed
• HD-LATR

Rather than imposing a parametric superstructure
on spreading rules (AP 94), we build the
grammar directly from these markedness constraints
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? Lango ATR Harmony

• Inventory of ATR domains D ATR ( tiers)
• Vowel harmony renders many possibilities
  ungrammatical yourSING/PLUR stew
• d?k Cí ? d? k k í ? dè kk í d? kk
  ? ATR ? ? 0
  ?0 ?
• d?kwú ? ?d?kwú dèkwú d?kw?
• critical difference ifr vs. u?fr ?fr
  worse source for ATR spread violates
  ATR, ?fr marked w.r.t. ATR
• Complex system interaction of 6 dimensions (26
  64 distinct environments)

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d?k Cí ? dèkkí
5
d?kwú ? d?kwú
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? The Lango Challenge

• Need a grammatical framework able to handle this
  nightmarish descriptive complexity
• while staying strictly within the confines of
  rigidly universal (markedness) principles

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Lango rules


a


ß







ATR
ATR





V C V


V
(C)C
V




a


b


c

• Archangeli Pulleyblank 94

ATR
ATR
ATR



V C V


V (C)C V


V (C)C V








hi



hi


hi



fr



x


-


ATR
Why not ?


V (C)C V


AP Rule Template

hi
-

hi


-
fr
fr



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cont seg velar
A/sclosed DA ?hi,A/HDA No ?ATR
spread into a closed syllable from a ?hi
source
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BOWOW ?hi, ?A HD-L?A No regressive ?ATR
spread from a ?hi source
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X,Y,Z ?A 1,2,3 A AGREE FA
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? The Lango Challenge

• Need a grammatical framework able to handle this
  nightmarish descriptive complexity
• while staying strictly within the confines of
  rigidly universal (markedness) principles

Would require ?ATR, ?hi/fr nonexistent
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? The Lango Challenge

• Need a grammatical framework able to handle this
  nightmarish descriptive complexity
• while staying strictly within the confines of
  rigidly universal (markedness) principles

? OT with conjunctive constraint interaction
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? Inherent Typology

• Method applicable to related African languages,
  where the same markedness constraints govern the
  inventory (Archangeli Pulleyblank 94), but
  with different interactions different rankings
  and active conjunctions
• Part of a larger typology including a range of
  vowel harmony systems

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? Summary

• OT builds formal grammars directly from
  markedness MARK with FAITH
• Inventories consistent with markedness relations
  are formally the result of OT with local
  conjunction TLCF, SHarC theorem
• Even highly complex patterns can be explained
  purely with simple markedness constraints all
  complexity is in constraints interaction through
  ranking and conjunction Lango ATR harmony