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Part of
Sonic Signatures: Studies dedicated to John Harris
Edited by Geoff Lindsey and Andrew Nevins
[Language Faculty and Beyond 14] 2017
► pp. 163–188

Asymmetric variation

| Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
| Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
| Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest & Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The free combination of independent phonological events is (implicitly) assumed by and built into the mechanisms of phonological models. Phonological variation occurring in independent dimensions applies orthogonally. In the possessive paradigms of Hungarian nouns this fails to apply. Suffixes may vary according to front/back harmony and being yod-initial, so we expect four variants for stems that vary in both dimensions. All four are attested if the suffix vowel is high: hotɛl-jyk%juk%yk%uk ‘their hotel’, but one allomorph is systematically missing if the suffix vowel is low: hotɛl-jɛ%jɑ%ɛ, *hotɛl-ɑ ‘his/her hotel’. We explain the gap by constraints requiring the uniformity of harmonic suffix behaviour, the quality of suffix-initial vowels, and the syllabic affiliation of stem-final consonants within the paradigm.

Keywords: phonological variation, paradigm uniformity, paradigm gap, interaction of variation types, analogical support, possessive allomorphy, Hungarian
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Variation in yodfulness
    • 2.1Lowering and variation
    • 2.2Recent loans and variation
  • 3.Variation in backness harmony
  • 4.The orthogonality of (variation in) harmony and yodfulness
  • 5.The problem: The Y-suffixes of Bɛ stems
  • 6.Analysis
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.14.c10
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Cited by

Cited by 3 other publications

Ozburn, Avery
2019. A target-oriented approach to neutrality in vowel harmony: Evidence from Hungarian. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4:1 DOI logo
Rebrus, Péter, Péter Szigetvári & Miklós Törkenczy
2023. Morphological Restrictions on Vowel Harmony. In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Rebrus, Péter & Miklós Törkenczy
2021. Harmonic Uniformity and Hungarian front/back harmony. Acta Linguistica Academica 68:1-2 ► pp. 175 ff. DOI logo

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