Harmony vs. spreading: Morphophonological binding in Haitian Creole
Parth Bhatt
Universidade de Toronto
Data: terça-feira 3 de Abril
Local: sala B1-01 do Complexo Interdisciplinar da UL
Hora: 11.30
Duração: 45 min
Organização: ANAGRAMA
RESUMO
This paper analyzes definite determiner allomorphy in Haitian Creole. It is argued that, despite the paradoxical nature of some forms which involve the creation of vowel hiatus and sequences of two consonants, Haitian provides principled, phonologically motivated morphophonological alternations. Haitian definite determiners are post-posed unlike their counterparts in French. This paper argues that previous accounts of Haitian allomorphy have not taken sufficiently into account the phonological structure of Haitian and in particular, the presence of underlying word-final consonants and defective syllables.
Haitian determiner allomorphy is argued to be a principled phenomenon that reveals “morphophonological binding” of the cliticized forms through propagation of nasality and glide formation (as for example in \plA)t + la\ [plA)tlA)] “the plant”; \Zanm + la\ [ZA)mnA)] “the leg”, and \SjE)+la\ [SjE)ja)] “the dog”).
In short, this paper follows recent accounts of morphological processes in Creoles (Baptista 2011, Brousseau 2011) by claiming that Haitian morphophonology shows productive, phonologically motivated alternations.
References
Baptista, M. (2011) On the development of verbal and nominal morphology in four lusophone creoles, Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 56, 7-35.
Brousseau, A.-M. (2011) Mesure de la productivité morphologique des créoles, Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 56, 61-86.
Valdman, A. (1978) Le créole : structure statut et origine, Paris : Klincksieck.
Valdman, A. and I. Iskrova (2003) A new look at nasalization in Haitian creole, In I. Plag (Ed.) The phonology and morphology of creole languages, Tübingen: Niemeyer.