A Probe-based Account of Voice Agreement in Formosan Languages
Chaokai Shi, T.-H. Jonah Lin · Scholarship@Western (Western University) · 2018
Relative clauses in Tongan are post-nominal, but exhibit variable word order with respect to the socalled Definitive Accent (Churchward 1953), which may immediately precede or follow a relative clause.Arguing for a promotion analysis of relative clauses (Schachter 1973, Vergnaud 1974, Kayne 1994), and invoking three independently motivatable movement operations, this paper accounts for this variable ordering with distinct structures.Each of these structures directly feeds the prosodic component, in which three Optimality Theory style constraints (Prince and Smolensky 1993) determine the available prosodic phrasings.Moreover, even when the movement that distinguishes these structures is string-vacuous, it affects the possible prosodic phrasings, as this analysis would predict.* I would like to thank the native speaker consultants, Piula Tonga and Saia Moala.Special thanks also go to Hilda 1 Abbreviations used in this paper follow the Leipzig glossing conventions, with the exceptions of the following two: DEFACC: definitive accent; KO: pan-Polynesian predicate marker (Potsdam and Polinsky In Press). 2 There is likely to be more functional material than is explicit in the hierarchy of (2). 3 The definite determiner in Tongan has two morphologically conditioned allomorphs: he and e. 4 Here, and throughout this paper, I use "NP" as a cover term that envelops a range of structure that may include adjectives, reduced relative clauses, (and perhaps more,) as well as the N's arguments and the N itself.Koopman and Kie Zuraw, for their clear guidance on this project.I would also like to thank all of the UCLA 2010 Field Methods course members, as well as Laura Kalin, Robyn Orfitelli, Norvin Richards, Matt Tucker, and the participants of AFLA18 , for their input and suggestions.