Volume 46, Issue 2

1. Introduction This special issue is a collection of seven papers dealing with the theory and typology of the word . In Section 2 we discuss various theoretical issues and typological generalizations involving grammatical words and phonological words . Section 3 provides a brief summary of the main ideas contained in the seven articles and shows how they relate to the general topics discussed in Section 2. Section 4 points to future areas of research.

Irish is characterized by a process of lenition, by which (among other changes) the coronals t, d, s become h, ɣ, h under certain morphosyntactically determined circumstances. Lenition of coronals is blocked (i.e., t, d, s remain unchanged) after other coronal consonants in certain domains, a phenomenon known as coronal blocking (CB). In a subset of CB domains s changes to t rather than remaining s, a phenomenon known as s-Fortition. In this article, it will be shown that the domain of CB and s-Fortition is the (recursive) prosodic word, as these two processes are found in right-headed as well as left-headed compounds, but not in other (noncompound) left-headed complex NPs. An optimality-theoretic analysis reveals that CB and s-Fortition are motivated by the same constraint ranking: the phonological requirement that coronal consonants be followed by other coronal consonants is more important than the selection of the morphologically correct mutation grade of a word.

A number of phonological generalizations in the Kyirong dialect of Tibetan are argued to require reference to rules or constraints referring to the syllable or the phonological word (pword). The latter domain is significant because it requires three distinct representations for suffix-stem combinations, depending on the particular suffix involved: (a) the stem and suffix form one pword, (b) the suffix lies outside of the pword of the stem and is attached to a higher prosodic constituent, and (c) the stem and suffix are separate pwords. In addition, one phonological process will be argued to operate at the left edge of a morphological domain, i.e., the ‘stem’. While the parsings in (a)–(c) above are attested in many other the languages of the world, Kyirong Tibetan is unusual typologically because all but one of the stem plus suffix combinations is either (b) or (c). By contrast, in many other languages stem plus suffix sequences are typically represented as in (a). Kyirong Tibetan will also be argued to be unusual typologically because it treats both parts of compounds as single pwords and not as two separate pwords, which is probably the crosslinguistic default option.

This article is concerned with the “word” in sign language, the “grammatical” and especially the “prosodic word”. Both notions of the “word” are central in sign language linguistics and psycholinguistic. Converging evidence for the size and complexity of the prosodic word is reviewed, stemming from morphological processes such as compounding, derivation, and classification as well as from phonological processes such as coalescence, epenthesis, and deletion. Additional evidence from slips of the hand and their repairs is presented showing that (i) in slips, grammatical as well as prosodic words are involved and that (ii) slip-repair sequences may keep within the limit of the prosodic word. The distinctive morphological typology and the canonical word shape pattern in sign language is explained by modality differences which act on the Phonetic Form (PF) interface. Sign languages are processed more on the vertical axis — simultaneously — whereas spoken languages are processed more on the horizontal axis — sequentially. As a corollary, the information packaging in both language modalities is different while processing is basically the same. Controversial theoretic topics around the notion of the “word” in sign language such as iconicity and notoriously recalcitrant constructions such as classifier predicates are discussed.

This article is concerned with two types of word-level asymmetries and their interaction: left-right asymmetries and stem-word asymmetries. Two left-right asymmetries are examined from a wide range of languages, one morphological (the predominance of suffixation over prefixation), one phonological (the preference for anticipatory over perseverative phonology). Since phonological processes are often triggered by features which originate in roots, a second asymmetry is also addressed: the tendency for suffixes to be more tightly bound to roots than prefixes. Asymmetries between stem- vs. word phonology are examined in Bantu, where suffixes are incorporated into a derived stem domain, from which prefixes are typically excluded. This root+suffix stem domain is shown to be the locus of phonological activity in Proto-Bantu and throughout the large Bantu family, which divides into two typological zones: (i) Northwest Bantu languages, which impose a maximal size condition and stringent consonant distribution constraints on stems; (ii) Central Bantu languages, which do not restrict the size or consonant distribution of stems, but frequently impose a minimal size condition on words. The study presents a number of generalizations concerning such asymmetries and identifies questions for future research.

This article argues that the fundamental typological distinction pertaining to reduplication is that between phonological duplication and morphological doubling (the Dual Theory of reduplication). Phonological duplication, which occurs for a phonological purpose such as providing an onset or nucleus for a syllable or filling in the featural content of an otherwise unspecified timing unit in the representation, is formally related to phonological assimilation, modeled here via the mechanism of string-internal correspondence. It obeys phonological locality conditions, targets phonologically defined constituents, and is sensitive to phonological markedness considerations. Morphological doubling, which occurs for a morphological purpose such as marking a change in meaning or creating a new stem type, is the result of the doubling of a morphological category such as root, stem, or affix. Morphological doubling, modeled via the “double insertion” mechanism of Morphological Doubling Theory (Inkelas and Zoll 2005), is not derived by phonological correspondence and therefore is not subject to any of the phonological properties characteristic of phonological duplication; the two copies, related morphosemantically, are phonologically independent.

In this article I propose a new construction algorithm for the phonological word in Hungarian. Based on a detailed discussion of the differences between so-called ‘postpositions’ and ‘case suffixes’, I show that both types of adpositional elements are of the same morphosyntactic category, and that phonological word status depends not on an arbitrary division between affixes and syntactically free items, but on phonological properties of the respective adpositions: Bisyllabic adpositions form phonological words on their own, while monosyllabic adpositions are integrated into the phonological word of their lexical head. Generalizing this result, I argue that all functional elements of Hungarian traditionally called ‘inflectional affixes’ are syntactically independent functional heads integrated into the phonological word of a preceding lexical head because they are prosodically too small. I show that apparently bisyllabic inflectional affixes must either be decomposed into different markers or are underlyingly monosyllabic, and develop a ranking of optimality-theoretic alignment constraints implementing the construction algorithm for the phonological word in formal detail.

This article investigates the question of word definition in a polysynthetic language, Ahtna Athabascan. Syntactic models of polysynthetic languages cannot explain why some syntactic strings constitute sentences and others words, since they represent both in the same component. In the most articulated of such theories, e.g., Rice (2000) and Hale (2001) for Athabascan languages, it is explicit that words are formed based on prosodic principles. It follows that there should be unambiguous cues to the left and right edge of the word. Two possibilities for these cues are explored: acoustic evidence for consonant fortition and phonological evidence from lexicon search. Consonant fortition does not mark edges of Ahtna words, but stem-initial consonants undergo fortition, and there may be fortition of the first conjunct prefix following the disjunct boundary. Other cues include stress, consonant cluster patterns in prefix strings, and stem-final laryngeal neutralizations. In addition, while stress and syllabification patterns can help a listener shape words in Ahtna, lexical knowledge is also required. Morphological designations such as prefix and suffix are still essential. Given these requirements, a substantial role for morphology is indicated in addition to syntax and prosody.