Title

Glide Formation in Takituduh Bunun

Author

Hui-chuan J. Huang

Genre

Article  

Pages

441-468

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Language

Chinese

Key words

Bunun, glide formation, onset principle, Optimality Theory, output-to-output correspondence

Abstract

     Previous studies on Bunun have shown that glides in Bunun are not phonemic; they are derives from underlying vowels in order to said syllables without onsets. Adopting the onset principle implies that vowel sequence will not appear on the surface representation of Bunun. This paper examines whether glide formation in Takituduh Bunun is solely governed by the onset principle. The collected data show that there are two types of exceptions to the prediction that one of adjacent underlying vowels will turn into a glide. One type of exception occurs in order to satisfy the requirement that a content word must be a disyllabic prosodic word, the other involves the situation in which a vowel-ending stem takes a vowel-initial suffix. The paper proposes that the second type of exception is related to the final stress pattern in the language: the stressed vowels in the final syllables of non-suffixed forms tend to remain syllabic in corresponding suffixed forms. Finally, the paper formalizes the interactions among onset requirement, stress, and word minimality within the framework of Optimality Theory, and shows that constraint interactions better express the nature of such apparent exceptions to a phonological generalization than the traditional rules do.