Are neutral roots in Uyghur really neutral? Evaluating a covert phonemic contrast

Autor: Connor Mayer, Travis Major, Mahire Yakup
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology. 9
ISSN: 2377-3324
DOI: 10.3765/amp.v9i0.5174
Popis: This paper looks at the case of so-called neutral roots in Uyghur (Turkic: China), whose idiosyncratic behavior with respect to the backness harmony system has been analyzed as stemming from a covert vowel contrast. Based on considerations of the structural properties of the language and the results of an experimental study, we suggest that an analysis based on lexical exceptionality is more parsimonious than the traditional analysis, unifying the treatment of neutral roots with other cases of exceptionality in the harmony system and accounting for a relationship between the patterning of roots and their frequency. We close by discussing implications for covert contrast analyses in general.
Databáze: OpenAIRE