Aspects of segmental phonology and Chinese syllable structure
Kuo, Feng-Lan
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/20540
Description
Title
Aspects of segmental phonology and Chinese syllable structure
Author(s)
Kuo, Feng-Lan
Issue Date
1994
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Cole, Jennifer S.
Department of Study
Linguistics
Discipline
Linguistics
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Language, Linguistics
Language
eng
Abstract
The syllable has been recognized as a prosodic unit as demonstrated in the work of Kahn (1976), Steriade (1982), Levin (1985), McCarthy and Prince (1986), and Ito (1986), among others. However, the exact composition of the syllable is still controversial. The theory of Prosodic Morphology and Phonology recognizes the prosodic units of Prosodic Word, Foot, Syllable, and Mora (McCarthy and Prince 1986, Ito 1986, Zec 1988), but not the syllable internal unit of Rime. The goal of this dissertation is to demonstrate that syllable internal organization is hierarchical and the organizational unit Rime should be incorporated into the Prosodic Hierarchy. This dissertation presents a case study of Mandarin segmental morphology and phonology which covers the areas of (i) the analysis of derived mid vowels, (ii) distributional constraints on syllable structure, (iii) pre-specified reduplication patterns found in Mandarin-based language games, and (iv) phonological alternations found in the Beijing $\tau$-suffixation process, to argue that the syllable template of a language can be more than just a canonical form; it can be a fixed structure which must be fully instantiated in each surface syllable.
This dissertation examines a wide range of data, covering the reduplication patterns found in the Na-ma language game and the Taiwanese-based language game, and phonological alternations in Huojia and Yiwu diminutive affixation processes, which have implications for current phonological theory in the area of Templatic Morphology and Phonology. It will be demonstrated that morphological and phonological processes can directly refer to and manipulate template structure, leading to the claim that the device of a syllable template is a primitive in the Universal Grammar. The grammars of individual languages may vary in terms of their choice of a particular template, necessitating a theory of template parameters.
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