An OT Approach to Vowel Height Harmony in Brazilian Portuguese
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Abstract
The phenomenon of vowel height harmony in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) has previously been considered under rule-based approaches (Lipski 1973, Harris 1974, Redenbarger 1978, Hancin 1991, and Wetzels 1991, 1995). Hancin (1991) argues that vowel height harmony in BP depends strongly on morphological factors. That is to say, morphological structure plays a critical role in the application and constraint of an alleged spreading rule. She claims that there is a cyclic/non-cyclic distinction between BP suffixes, in which certain suffixes trigger the spreading of the feature [+high], while other suffixes do not. Parallel to this, there has been great effort to deal with the well-known problem of phonological opacity (Kiparsky 1971, 1973) within surface-oriented models known as Optimality Theory (OT). To my knowledge, Vowel Height Harmony (henceforth VHH) in BP has yet to be accounted for within an OT framework. This paper is organized as follows: First, I discuss some basic facts of BP phonology as presented by Hancin (1991), focusing on the attested VHH that she accounts for with a [+high] spreading rule. This is then followed by a discussion of opacity in stress vowels and across multiple morpheme boundaries. According to Hancin (1991), VHH occurs in some morphemes, while leaving others unaffected. To account for this cyclicity, she adopts a Lexical Phonology (LP) approach (Kiparsky 1982). Following this, I show how the BP facts are better accounted for under the assumptions of Lexical Phonology and Morphology OT (LPM-OT: Kiparsky 2000). This model unites claims made in the tradition of lexical phonology with claims made in the tradition of OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993).
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