laryngeal feature specifications in west slavic languages

T W Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics 20: 93–114P L Copyright © 2003 Daniel Currie Hall

Laryngeal feature specificationsin West Slavic languages*

Daniel Currie HallUniversity of Toronto

This paper argues for laryngeal feature specifications based on Avery(1996) to account for voicing assimilation phenomena in Czech,Slovak, and Polish within a theory of contrastive specification basedon the Successive Division Algorithm of Dresher (1998a,b). Theproposed specifications allow for an elegant synchronic and diachronicaccount of the anomalous voicing behaviour of the segments /v/ and/r /.

Introduction

The process of assimilation is a common one among the world’s languages, and theprogress of phonological theory owes much to a desire to formalize the intuition that it isalso a natural one. One major shift in phonological theory strongly supported byassimilation data has been a move from linear towards nonlinear rules. It is easy enough towrite a linear rule that inserts a feature on one segment when that feature is present on anadjacent segment, but it is just as easy to write linear rules that produce arbitrary changes.In a nonlinear assimilation rule, however, an existing feature on one segment spreads sothat it is shared by another. The new feature of the changed segment does not appear outof nowhere; it is already present on the first segment.

Similarly, observations about which segments cause assimilation and which undergoit have inspired and informed various forms of underspecification. If some featurespresent at the phonetic level take no active part in the phonology, perhaps they aresimply not present during the application of phonological rules. In particular, the use ofmonovalent features has been supported by the observation that, in a pair of values suchas [+voice] and [-voice], often only one value is active. Other forms of underspecificationhave arisen from the fact that some combinations of features are either inherentlycontradictory (such as [+pharyngeal] and [+lateral]), or simply nonexistent in a particularlanguage (such as [–voice] and [+lateral] in English, but not in Welsh). If the presence ofone feature makes another either impossible or necessary, then the second feature need *I am grateful to Veronika Ambros, Elan Dresher, Keren Rice, Susana Béjar, Peter Avery, Bill Idsardi,Elizabeth Cowper, and the audience at the 1998 Montréal-Ottawa-Toronto Phonology Workshop for theirinsights and comments on earlier versions of this paper and on West Slavic phonology, laryngeal features,and contrastive specification more generally. Any errors are, of course, my own. The work presented herehas been supported in part by SSHRC research grants 410-96-0842 and 410-99-1309 to Keren Rice andElan Dresher.

94 DANIEL CURRIE HALL

not be specified. In this case, one of the most important questions for a theory to addressis, which feature is the second feature?

West Slavic voicing assimilation poses some interesting challenges for any theorythat makes use of underspecification. In particular, these languages show evidence of bothassimilative voicing and assimilative devoicing. Furthermore, Czech consonants exhibit asmany as five different patterns with respect to two rules of voicing assimilation. Thispaper will explore how these facts may be described in a theory of contrastivespecification based on Dresher (1998a,b), and in particular to relate them to the set ofvoicing systems proposed by Avery (1996).

For the purposes of this paper, I assume that the distribution of underlying featurespecifications is constrained by Dresher’s (1998a,b, 2002a,b) Successive DivisionAlgorithm (SDA), outlined in (1):1

(1) The Successive Division Algorithm, monovalent version(adapted from Dresher 1998a)

a. The input to the algorithm is an inventory (I) of one or more segments that arenot yet featurally distinct from one another.

b. If I is found to contain more than one phoneme, then it is divided into two non-empty subinventories: a marked set M, to which is assigned a feature [F], and itsunmarked complement set Mì .

c. M and Mì are then treated as the input to the algorithm; the process continuesuntil all phonemes are featurally distinct.

Because no feature is assigned unless it serves to distinguish at least one phonemefrom at least one other phoneme, the SDA never introduces redundant featurespecifications. The algorithm does allow for the possibility that the same feature may becontrastive in one language and redundant in another, because it does not stipulate theorder in which features are to be assigned. There may, however, be other factors that atleast partially determine the order of divisions and thus further restrict the range ofpossible feature specifications (see, e.g., Jakobson and Halle 1956 and Dyck 1995).

Many of the Czech data used in this paper come from Palková (1994), de Bray(1969), Hála (1962), and Kučera (1961), but I am also indebted to Professor VeronikaAmbros, an excellent teacher and a native speaker of Czech, for her pronunciations andinsights. Any errors are, of course, my own. In addition, Czech spellings and glosses arebased on Poldauf et al. (1994). The data on Slovak are from de Bray (1969) and Short(1993); the data on Polish are from de Bray (1969) and Stieber (1973).

This paper begins with a detailed exploration of the voicing facts in Czech, andshows how contrastive specification may be used to describe Czech in terms of Avery’svoicing systems as a mixed Laryngeal Voice / Contextual Voice system, or in some 1. Dresher (1998a) uses privative features and refers to the algorithm as the Successive Binary Algorithm(SBA). Dresher (2002a,b) presents a more general version with n-ary features, and calls it the SuccessiveDivision Algorithm. The SBA is simply a special case of the SDA; it is binary because privative featuresmake binary divisions. (See also Dresher, Piggott, and Rice (1994) for an earlier version of the SBA,which they call the Continuous Dichotomy Hypothesis.)

LARYNGEAL FEATURE SPECIFICATIONS IN WEST SLAVIC LANGUAGES 95

dialects, a mixture of Laryngeal Voice, Contextual Voice, and Sonorant Voice. I thendiscuss the predictions made by such an approach for LV systems in general, and go on toshow that Slovak and Polish may each be usefully and elegantly treated as split LV/CVsystems in accordance with these predictions.

Czech Consonants

The phonemic consonant inventory of Czech is given in (2), organized by place andmanner of articulation.2

(2) The Czech consonant inventoryOrthographic forms are indicated in angle brackets where they differ from IPA.

bilabial/labiodental

dental/alveolar

palatal/postalveolar

velar/glottal

voiceless p t c ⟨ť⟩ kstops

voiced b d Ô ⟨ď⟩ gaffricates voiceless tÉs ⟨c⟩ tÉS ⟨č⟩

voiceless f s S ⟨š⟩ x ⟨ch⟩fricatives

voiced v z Z ⟨ž⟩ ˙ ⟨h⟩nasals m n ¯ ⟨ň⟩

trills r r ⟨ř⟩

lateral lglide j

Key to shading: hard ambiguous soft

The two segments with which this paper will be particularly concerned are the trilledfricative /r/ and the labiodental fricative /v/. The former consists of a laminal trill /r/ and apostalveolar fricative // articulated simultaneously or in close succession. The latter,although it is historically derived from an approximant /*w/, is phonetically very shortand very close; Palková (1994) and Kučera (1961) both describe it as stoplike. Thisproperty is not shared by its voiceless counterpart /f/.

All but three of the obstruents form pairs of voiced and voiceless segments; theexceptions are the two affricates, /tÉs/ and /tÉS/, which have no phonemic voicedcounterparts, and the trilled fricative /r/ (sometimes classified as a sonorant), which has nophonemic voiceless counterpart. The murmured glottal fricative /˙/, which is descendedfrom a Common Slavic /*g/, is the voiced counterpart to /x/. Phonologically, the glottalfricative behaves as if it were /ƒ/, and Kučera (1961) mentions that it is also sometimesphonetically realized as [ƒ]. 2. In this paper, affricates are transcribed with tie bars in order to distinguish them from stop–fricativesequences.


Among the sonorants, /r/ and /l/ may form the nucleus of a syllable, as in smrt /smr`t/‘death’ or mlč /ml `tÉS/ ‘be quiet!’

In addition to the usual phonological categories, the Czech consonants aretraditionally divided into three classes—hard (tvrdé), soft (měkké), and ambiguous(obojetné)—based on their behaviour with respect to palatalization. These classes are alsoindicated in (2). Before certain front vowels, the hard consonants (and the ambiguous /s/and /z/) change into their soft counterparts. The one particularly noteworthy aspect ofthis alternation for the current problem is that /r/ acts as the soft counterpart to /r/; this isthe only hard–soft pair in which one segment is a sonorant and the other an obstruent.

Regressive Voicing Assimilation

Of the two patterns of voicing assimilation found in Czech, the regressive oneoperates more consistently and on a wider range of segments. The basic generalization isthat phonetically, all obstruents in a cluster will have the same voicing value:

(3) SPELLING PHONETIC REALIZATION GLOSShezký [˙eski˘] ‘pretty’kde [gde] ‘where’léčba [le˘dZbA] ‘cure’vstal [fstAl] or [stAl] ‘(he) got up’dcera [ttÉserA] or [tserA] ‘daughter’

Consonant clusters containing sonorants may contain voiced or voiceless obstruents:

(4) sleva [slevA] ‘deduction’zleva [zlevA] ‘from the left’

If the spellings in (3) accurately reflect the underlying forms of the consonantsinvolved, then the obvious explanation for the surface forms is a rule of regressive voicingassimilation. This hypothesis is borne out by an examination of the prepositions s /s/‘with’ and z /z/ ‘from’. The underlying forms of these words can be seen before sonorantconsonants, which (as seen in (4)) do not trigger assimilation. (Vowel-initial words oftenreceive a prothetic glottal stop, which can trigger devoicing. The different endings on thenouns are due to the fact that s usually takes the instrumental case, while z takes thegenitive.)

(5) s mužem [smuZem] ‘with a man’z muže [zmuZe] ‘from a man’s lesem [slesem] ‘with a forest’z lesa [zlesa] ‘from a forest’

With the underlying forms of the prepositions established, the basic pattern ofregressive assimilation may be confirmed:


(6) z domu [zdomu] ‘from a house’s domem [zdomem] ‘with a house’z pole [spole] ‘from a field’s polem [spolem] ‘with a field’z hradu [z˙radu] ‘from a castle’s hradem [z˙radem] ‘with a castle’z chyby [sxibi] ‘from a mistake’s chybou [sxiboU] ‘with a mistake’

The data in (6) strongly suggest that the assimilation involves both voicing anddevoicing. However, Czech, like many other Slavic languages, also has a process of finaldevoicing; compare the nominative forms in (7) with the inflected ones in (5) and (6):

(7) muž [muS] ‘man’hrad [˙rAt] ‘castle’

One important question is whether the apparent dual operation of the regressiveassimilation in (6) is actually the result of two rules rather than one. It is conceivable thatthe assimilation rule results only in voicing, not devoicing. The /z/ is first changed to [s]by final devoicing, and then, if a voiced obstruent follows, revoiced by assimilation. Thetrouble with this account is that /z/ does not appear as [s] in the forms in (5), even thoughsonorants do not spread voicing. This suggests that the preposition z is not in a positionto undergo final devoicing here.

Further support for assimilatory devoicing may be found less directly in the stresspatterns of Czech. In Czech words, stress always falls on the initial syllable; however, ifa word is preceded by a (syllabic) preposition, the stress falls on the preposition instead:

(8) do lesa [»dolesa] ‘into a forest’za řekou [»zar3ekoU] ‘beyond a river’na louce [»naloUtÉse] ‘in a meadow’

cf. les [les] ‘forest’ (nom.sg.)řeka [»r3eka] ‘river’ (nom.sg.)louka [»loUka] ‘meadow’ (nom.sg.)

This stress pattern suggests that a preposition and its object form a single prosodicword, and that z in the examples above is not in a position to undergo word-finaldevoicing.

However, if devoicing is not word-final but syllable-final (as it is in Avery’s (1996)treatment of Russian), it may be possible to write the assimilation rule as voicing only.The prepositions in (6) are analyzed as codas and devoiced; then, if the followingobstruent is voiced, they are revoiced by regressive assimilation. In (5) the prepositionsare parsed into the onset of the first syllable of the noun because they are followed bysonorants; the increasing sonority of the sequence makes it a possible onset.


The trouble with this analysis is that it depends on the existence, in the forms in (6),of codas without nuclei, or codas preceded by empty nuclei. Although such structureshave been proposed (by, e.g., Kaye (1992)), their motivation in this particular instancewould be rather tenuous. A full exploration of the possibilities and difficulties of thisapproach would require a thorough analysis of Czech syllable structure, which is quitecomplex and beyond the scope of this paper.

How would the rules of voicing assimilation be written under each of these twopossible interpretations? If the only process involved is assimilation, then we requireactive features on both voiced and voiceless consonants. It will not do simply to have[Voiced] and [Voiceless]; two such monovalent features are essentially the same as onebinary feature. What other options are available? Avery (1996) describes the possiblerepresentations of voicing distinctions as follows:

(9) SYSTEM VOICELESS VOICED SONORANT

a. Contextual Voice t d n| |

Laryngeal SV

b. Sonorant Voice t d n| |

SV SV|

Nasal

c. Laryngeal Voice t d n| | |

Laryngeal Laryngeal SV|

Voice

Of these three systems, the only one that gives a voicing feature to both voiced andvoiceless obstruents is the Laryngeal Voice (LV) system. (This is also the system whichAvery uses for Russian.) In an LV system, regressive voicing assimilation can beformulated as in (10):

(10) Rt (+) Rtú P |

Laryngeal Laryngeal | | Voice Voice

The features necessary to this rule can be assigned by the Successive DivisionAlgorithm. The first division distinguishes sonorants and obstruents by assigning thefeature [Laryngeal] to the latter. The second division takes place within the set ofobstruents, assigning [Voice] to the voiced ones and nothing to the voiceless ones. Thissequence of divisions does not allow sonorants to receive the [SV] node given them by


Avery; however, at this point the [SV] node is not yet needed to distinguish sonorants.So far they are adequately distinguished by their lack of a [Laryngeal] node. (The datarelating to progressive assimilation will render the [SV] node both possible andnecessary.) For now, we can assume redundancy rules that realize segments with a bare[Laryngeal] node as voiceless and segments with no [Laryngeal] node as voiced.

However, another account is compatible with the Czech data considered so far. If weadopt the hypothesis that devoicing is syllable-final rather than word-final, we can useessentially the same pair of rules Avery uses for Russian, although we do not yet needthe full LV system in which Avery’s rules are formulated. A version of these rulesemploying only the feature [Voice] is given in (11) below (since there is no evidence yetof the need for the [Laryngeal] node in this approach, I omit it here; the rules will workjust as well with or without it):

(11) a. Coda Devoicing: Rt ]σú

Voice

b. Assimilatory Voicing: Rt (+) Rt P g

Voice

Depending on what other features distinguish sonorants, the [SV] feature may berequired to allow redundancy rules to realize sonorants as voiced, while other consonantswith no [Voice] feature are realized as voiceless. However, there is no difficulty in inallowing the presence of this feature. The inventory is again first divided into sonorantsand obstruents, but this time the feature [SV] is assigned to the former, and nothing to thelatter. The obstruents are then divided into voiced and voiceless as before.

How do these two approaches compare? The assimilation rule in (11b) is moreelegant, as it requires only one feature, and does not involve delinking: a marked featurespreads onto an unmarked target. However, the rule in (10), in which one [Laryngeal]node replaces another, can be seen as a repair strategy motivated by some version of theObligatory Contour Principle (Leben 1973). Adjacent segments are not permitted to haveseparate [Laryngeal] nodes, and so the [Laryngeal] node of the rightmost segment isshared by all the segments in the cluster.

The rules in (11) also depend on delinking to account for all the data, and thedelinking rule given for syllable-final devoicing, while it is not an unnatural process (beingmost famously attested in German), has a more arbitrary appearance than the rule in (10).What is there about a syllable boundary to cause an obstruent to lose its [Voice]? Wemight prefer the rule in (10) based on its lack of such an unmotivated delinking. However,the hypothesis expressed by (10) has not yet accounted for word-final devoicing, whichis taken care of by (11). Does the first hypothesis require an equally arbitrary delinkingrule in order to bring the data in (7) into its compass? Perhaps not. Given the assimilationrule in (10), final devoicing could result from the leftward spreading of a bare [Laryngeal]node inserted at the right edge of the word as a boundary feature.

So far these rules have dealt with sequences of two obstruents, but what happens insequences of two voiced obstruents followed by a voiceless one, or two voiceless ones


followed by a voiced? Do both the first two consonants assimilate, or only the one in themiddle? Kučera (1961) indicates that both assimilate:

(12) lec+kdo [ledzdo] ‘several people’

In this case, the assimilation rules under both accounts must be seen as spreading the[Laryngeal] node as far left as there are valid targets for it; this fact will be furtherconsidered in the treatment of /v/ later on.

Progressive Assimilation

Both of the hypotheses considered above for regressive voicing assimilation providereasonable accounts for the behaviour of most Czech obstruents. Two consonants inCzech show evidence of more complicated behaviour, and provide reasons for preferringthe rule in (10) to the rules in (11). These consonants are /v/ and /r/. Each of theseconsonants undergoes regressive assimilation, but neither triggers it.

According to de Bray (1969), /r/ does not trigger regressive voicing assimilation, butinstead undergoes progressive devoicing when it is preceded by a voiceless obstruent, asin (13a). This process does not apply to /r/, or to any other sonorant, as shown in (13b).

(13) a. řeč [ret] ‘speech’

při [pri] ‘near’

středa [streda] ‘Wednesday’

břeh [brex] ‘shore’

b. chléb [xlep] ‘bread’

pry [pri] ‘it is said, supposedly’

trysk [trisk] ‘gallop’

Palková (1994) agrees that /r/ is devoiced following a voiceless consonant in the sameword, but maintains that it can trigger regressive assimilation between words:

(14) tři [tr38i] ‘three’

k řece [retse] ‘toward a river’

máš říci [ma ritsi] ‘you (sg.) should speak’

However, Palková does allow that such forms as [kretse] and [ma˘S ri˘tsi] occur“mistakenly” (“chybně”). Here I will attempt only to account for the situation asdescribed by de Bray.

The behaviour of /v/ is similar to that of /r/, but not identical. Like /r/, and likesonorants, /v/ does not trigger regressive assimilation; however, neither does it undergoprogressive devoicing:


(15) květ [kvjet] ‘flower’tvůj [tvu˘j] ‘your’

In other words, /v/ behaves almost entirely like a sonorant, except that it undergoesregressive devoicing and final devoicing. According to Hála, however, some dialects dodevoice /v/ after voiceless obstruents, resulting in [f] or in a voiceless fricative that retainssome of the stoplike character of /v/ mentioned earlier. In this case, /v/ and /r/ patterntogether. The five different patterns of voicing behaviour exhibited by Czech consonantsare listed in (16).

Regressive Assimilation Progressive Assimilation(16) Defaultrealization Trigger? Target? Trigger? Target?

sonorants voiced no no n/a no/v/ voiced no yes n/a some dials./r/ voiced no yes n/a yes

vd. obs. voiced yes yes n/a novls. obs. voiceless yes yes yes no

Note that since the only segments which undergo progressive assimilation are voiced,the triggering of progressive assimilation by voiced segments would be vacuous.

It is not surprising that /r/ should pattern differently from other obstruents.Historically, it is derived from a palatalized sonorant /*r/; synchronically, it functions asthe soft counterpart to /r/. It is also, because of its origins as a sonorant, the only voicedobstruent in the Czech inventory with no phonemic voiceless counterpart. The voicelessaffricates have no voiced counterparts, but this gap may be in the process of being filled.Kučera (1961) observes that underlying /dz/ sequences, as in podzim (‘autumn’) arephonetically realized as affricates in fast speech. In loanwords from English, Czech tendsto realize the English affricate /d/ as a /d/ sequence, as in the examples in (17). (Otherlanguages change this sound to /Z/ or /tÉS/.)

(17) džus [dZus] ‘fruit juice’džez [dZes] ‘jazz’džungle [dZuNgle] ‘jungle’

In the terminology of Dresher (1998a, 2002a,b,c), the difference between /r/ and thevoiceless affricates appears to lie in the contrastive scope of their voicing properties. Theaffricates, which are capable of triggering assimilatory devoicing, are squarely within theobstruent system, and voicing is contrastive among obstruents in general. Although Czechdoes not have phonemic /dz/ and /d/, the entire set of voiced obstruents can, in somerelevant sense, be considered to be the ‘voiced counterparts’ of /ts/ and /t/. The trilledfricative, on the other hand, appears to be outside the obstruent system, and thus, like asonorant, outside the scope of the voicing contrast.

From a diachronic perspective, /v/ is also not entirely an obstruent, but rather whatmight be called a ‘lapsed sonorant.’ Unlike its cognate segment in Russian (on which see,e.g., Hayes 1984), Czech /v/ has developed a stoplike quality alluded to earlier, but both


are descended from /*w/. Although modern Czech /v/ does have a phonemic voicelesscounterpart /f/, the relation between the two is somewhat oblique. Phonetically, /f/ doesnot share the stoplike quality of /v/, and while /v/ is a lapsed sonorant, /f/ appears to be arecent development within the obstruent system. Most words containing /f/ are of foreignorigin:

(18) filiálka [filia˘lka] ‘branch office’fejeton [fejeton] ‘feuilleton’efemérní [efeme˘r¯i˘] ‘ephemeral’reflektor [reflektor] ‘searchlight’reliéf [relije˘f] ‘(bas-)relief’

Others appear to be onomatopoeic:

(19) frkat [fr`kat] ‘to sputter’fňukat [f¯ukat] ‘to whimper’

To some extent, then, the fact that /r/ and /v/ behave differently from otherobstruents seems to be related to the fact that their voicing is less distinctive than thevoicing on other obstruents. There is, it seems, a voicing contrast between segmentswhich enter into voicing contrasts and segments which do not. Under the first hypothesis,in which voicing assimilation is generated by the spreading of the [Laryngeal] node, theSuccessive Division Algorithm can capture this generalization by putting /r/ and (in therelevant dialects) /v/ on the sonorant side of the first division of the inventory, so thatthey do not receive [Laryngeal]. The rule of progressive devoicing can now be formulatedas in (20); an obstruent (i.e., a segment with a [Laryngeal] node) spreads its [Laryngeal]node to a following segment that does not already have one:

(20) Progressive assimilation

Rt Rtg Q

Laryngeal

Since the only segments that can be targets of this rule are voiced by redundancyrules anyway, (21) has a phonetic effect only when the [Laryngeal] node being spread hasno [Voice] feature dependent on it.

The rule originally given in (10) needs to be revised slightly, so that the presence ofthe [Laryngeal] node on the target is optional; this ensures that /r/ and /v/ will be targets ofregressive assimilation. The revised rule is shown in (21).


(21) Regressive assimilation (revised)

Rt (+) Rt ú P | Laryngeal Laryngeal | | Voice Voice

The problem with the new rules is that they seem to devoice sonorants. This can beprevented, however, by adopting the [SV] node as a means of distinguishing the truesonorants from the lapsed sonorants /r/ and /v/. Now that the presence of sonorantvoicing is no longer predictable from the absence of [Laryngeal], this feature can beassigned by the Successive Division Algorithm. Sonorants have [SV]; voiced obstruentshave [Laryngeal] dominating [Voice]; voiceless obstruents have bare [Laryngeal]; /r/ hasnothing. In dialects in which /v/ undergoes progressive assimilation, /v/ also has no voicingfeatures. If a /r/ or /v/ does not acquire a [Laryngeal] node by spreading, it is realized asvoiced by a redundancy rule.

Our second hypothesis, which assumed that only voiced segments could spread theirvoicing values, cannot account for the behaviour of /r/. If /r/ is underlyingly specified asvoiced, there is no way to devoice it (except in coda position). If it is underlyinglyunspecified for voicing, it could be voiced by progressive assimilation, but then thedevoiced allophone would have to be generated by a redundancy rule, which wouldpredict voiceless /r/ in places where it is unattested—for example, word-initially or after asonorant. This hypothesis cannot account for progressive devoicing. Both voiced andvoiceless obstruents must have marked features to spread.

The first hypothesis, however, raises questions about the phonetic content ofphonological features, and by extension about learnability. What is the phonetic basis forsaying that the other obstruents have some feature [Laryngeal] that /r/ and /v/ lack? Thesound /r/ is not phonetically ‘less laryngeal’ than other Czech obstruents. The differencebetween the voicing of /r/ and the voicing of any other sound lies not in the quality of thevoicing, but in its behaviour. Is this difference enough to satisfy the requirement thatphonological features define classes that are natural by virtue of some shared phoneticproperty? Can we say that a feature is underlyingly absent from one segment, notbecause it does not appear on that segment, but because it does not also appear onadjacent segments? I believe that we can, and, in this case, that we must. Jakobson andHalle (1956) have the following to say about the recognition of a feature from its effects:

The auxiliary role of redundancies must not be underestimated. Circumstances may evencause them to substitute for distinctive features. Jones [1950] cites the example of theEnglish /s/ and /z/ which in the final position differ from each other solely in the degree ofbreath force. Although “an English hearer will usually identify the consonants correctly, inspite of their resemblance to one another,” the right identification is often facilitated by theconcomitant difference in the length of the preceding phoneme: pence [pens] — pens[pen:z].

If speakers can recognize a segment by the effect it has on an adjacent segment, thenwe should be able to posit the existence of a feature based on the fact that some segmentshave different effects on others, even though they themselves may be realized in the same


way. The feature [Laryngeal] may, in Czech, be defined as the ability of a segment toshare its voicing value.

In dialects in which /v/ does not undergo progressive assimilation, there are fivedistinct patterns of voicing behaviour to account for. However, a solution is possible ifwe allow a further mixture of Avery’s (1996) set of voicing systems. In Czech dialectswhere /v/ does not undergo progressive devoicing, the only difference between /v/ and thesonorants is the ability of /v/ to be devoiced by regressive assimilation and final devoicing.Suppose we treat /v/ in these dialects as a ‘sonorant obstruent’ of the sort found in SVsystems, bearing the feature [SV]. This approach echoes earlier treatments of Russian[v]/[f] as derived from underlying /w/, discussed in Avery (1996). The genuine Czechsonorants can, as in an SV system, be distinguished from /v/ by the presence of furtherfeatures dependent on the SV node:

(22) /v/ /m, n, / /l, r/ /j/Rt Rt Rt Rt| | | |

SV SV SV SV| | |

Nasal Liquid Approximant

The presence of /v/ among the sonorants allows us, under contrastive specification,to provide all the real sonorants with further features. We would then allow regressiveassimilation to spread a Laryngeal node to, and beyond, segments with SV. Thatregressive assimilation can spread across /v/ and (non-syllabic) sonorants may be seen inthe following data from Kučera:

(23) víc vdolků [vidz vdolku] ‘more muffins’

moc lže [modz le] ~ [mots le] ‘much lies’

That the voicing of the final consonant in víc is triggered not by the /v/ in vdolků, butby the /d/, can be seen in (24), where no assimilation occurs.

(24) víc vody [vits vodi] ‘more water’

Unlike the examples in (23), syllabic sonorants do block spreading of the [Laryngeal]node, as shown in (25).

(25) vlk [vlk] [*flk] [*flk] ‘wolf’

That Czech syllabic sonorants block regressive assimilation is, as in Russian, “a factrelated to their status as syllable heads, not as sonorants” (Avery 1996). So, if all non-syllabic segments can receive [Laryngeal] nodes, how do we allow /v/ to be devoiced andnot the other sonorants? This can be accomplished by saying that the rules for thephonetic realization of voicing features allow an [SV] node to overrule a bare [Laryngeal]node if and only if the [SV] node has a dependent. This need not be a purely formalstipulation; Hayes (1984) has suggested that the revoicing of a devoiced sonorant may


follow from the phonetic implementation of properties such as [Nasal], [Liquid], or[Approximant]. The rules for the phonetic implementation of all derivable combinationsof voicing features are shown in (26).

(26) ∅ ⇒ voicedLaryngeal ⇒ voicelessLaryngeal+Voice ⇒ voicedSV ⇒ voicedSV+{Nas, Liq, App} ⇒ voiced (sonorant)SV, Lar ⇒ voicelessSV, Lar+Voice ⇒ voicedSV+{N, L, A}, LV ⇒ voiced (sonorant)SV+{N, L, A}, LV+Voice ⇒ voiced (sonorant)

Note that, in light of these rules, we must now insist that the progressiveassimilation rule target only segments with no voicing specifications at all, in order toprevent progressive devoicing of /v/ in dialects where /v/ has [SV].

An additional advantage of this analysis is that it allows for a straightforwardaccount of the phonological development of modern Czech /v/ from Common Slavic /*w/.Assuming that the original /*w/ was specified with [SV] and [Approximant], as it becamephonetically more obstruent-like, in some dialects it lost the entire [SV] node, while inothers it lost only the [Approximant] dependent. The feature geometry predicts that asonorant on its way to becoming an obstruent is likely to pass through precisely theseintermediate stages.

Under this analysis, the dialects of Czech in which /v/ does not undergo progressivedevoicing represent a mixture of all three of Avery’s voicing systems: /r/ has the voicingspecifications of a voiced obstruent in a CV system, and /v/ those of a voiced obstruent inan SV system, while the other obstruents follow the LV pattern. The change necessary toaccount for these dialects does not conflict with the basic premises of either Avery’sfeature systems or of the Successive Division Algorithm; it merely employs the fullestrange of representations that may be derived from the combination of the two. Thefollowing sections will consider the theoretical implications of using Avery’s featuregeometry with contrastive specification, and show how some of the representationssuggested for Czech also work for two other West Slavic languages, Slovak and Polish.

Predictions for Other Languages

Mathematically inherent in the monovalent version of the Successive DivisionAlgorithm in (1) is the prediction that exactly one segment in every inventory will beentirely unspecified. Each division creates a marked inventory M and an unmarkedinventory Mì . If Mì contains exactly one segment, then that segment will be the oneunmarked segment in the inventory. If Mì contains more than one segment, then Mì willbecome the input to the algorithm, and in turn will be divided into marked and unmarkedsubinventories. Once all segments have been distinguished from one another, there will beexactly one fully unmarked segment left.


What does this mean when contrastive specification is applied to Avery’s (1996)voicing systems? Both the CV and SV models (shown in (9a) and (9b)) easily lendthemselves to the contrastive algorithm. In a CV system, the voiced obstruents have nounderlyingly specified voicing features; in an SV system, the voiceless obstruents arefully unspecified. However, each class of segments in an LV system (shown in (9c)) hasat least one voicing feature: all obstruents have [Laryngeal], all sonorants have [SV], andvoiced obstruents have [Voice] as a dependent of [Laryngeal]. The trouble for contrastivespecification lies in the relationship between [SV] and [Laryngeal]: in a pure LV system,the absence of one entails the presence of the other. Czech, as we have seen here, is not apure LV system; the presence of the anomalous segment /r/, which has neither [Laryngeal]nor [SV], made it possible for the algorithm to assign the full range of LV features to theremaining consonants. However, until /v/ and /r/ were brought into consideration, thecomplete LV feature system was not needed. To account for the assimilatory behaviourof the other Czech consonants, only two features were required, and either sonorants orvoiceless obstruents could be fully unspecified.

Under the assumption that active phonological feature values are restricted to thosethat can be assigned by the Successive Division Algorithm, all LV systems are expected tocontain at least one segment which, like Czech /r/, patterns as a CV voiced obstruent andis accordingly unspecified for voicing features. This assumption might be modified inorder to take into account the universal dependence of [Voice] on [Laryngeal] in thefeature geometry. Following the Node Activation Condition of Avery and Rice (1989),the contrastive specification of [Voice] on voiced obstruents would entail the presence of[Laryngeal] on all obstruents. The set of specifications in (9c) could thus be generated inthe absence of exceptional segments such as /r/. However, such exceptions seem to befrequent among LV languages; Avery (1996) describes cases in Russian, Turkish, andDutch, and the following sections of this paper discuss cases in Slovak and Polish that aresimilar to the Czech case.

Slovak

Czech’s closest relative, Slovak, has a very similar consonant system, as describedby de Bray (1969). The only differences in the obstruent inventory are that Slovak hasphonemic voiced affricates /dz/ and /d/, and does not contain the trilled fricative /r/.Where Czech has /r/, Slovak cognates have /r/, which, being a sonorant, is not susceptibleto devoicing:

(27) Slovak Czech glosstri [tr] tři [tri] ‘three’

tvár [tvr] tvář [tvr]/[tfr] ‘face’

Slovak has the same set of sonorants as Czech, with the addition of a palatal lateral// and a length contrast in the syllabic liquids (/r`/ vs. /r̀˘/ and /l `/ vs. /l `̆ /).

Like Czech, Slovak has regressive assimilation which can result in either voicing ordevoicing. This assimilation targets all obstruents, including /v/:


(28) kresba [krEzbA] ‘drawing’odsúdiť [çtsu˘ÔIc] ‘to condemn’vták [ftA˘k] ‘bird’

The only Slovak obstruent that does not trigger regressive assimilation is /v/. UnlikeCzech /r/ (and /v/ in some Czech dialects), Slovak /v/ does not undergo progressivedevoicing:

(29) tvoj [tvçj] ‘your [sg.]’tvár [tvA˘r] ‘face’

Slovak has final devoicing, which applies to all obstruents except /v/. Instead,syllable-final /v/ is realized as [w]:

(30) mráz [mrA˘s] ‘frost’chlad [xlAt] ‘cold’ (noun)stav [stAw] ‘position’stavba [stAwbA] ‘building’

In its inability to undergo final devoicing or trigger voicing assimilation, Slovak /v/resembles a sonorant. One approach might be to treat Slovak /v/ as an SV segment in anotherwise LV system, as proposed above for /v/ in some dialects of Czech. However,contrastive specification predicts that any LV system should have at least one CVsegment, and Slovak /v/ can be accounted for as a CV segment. If /v/ has no voicing featureat all, then Slovak voicing assimilation can be expressed using the same rule as the onegiven before for regressive assimilation in Czech in (21). Note also that Slovak /v/provides evidence that regressive devoicing is spreading rather than syllable-finaldelinking: if the /v/ in vták were in syllable-final position, we would expect it to berealized as [w].

Final devoicing in Slovak may be treated either as delinking of the [Voice] feature inword-final position, or, as proposed earlier for Czech, as spreading of a bare [Laryngeal]node inserted as a boundary feature. If the latter course is adopted, then the rule whichrealizes /v/ as [w] in syllable-final position must be ordered before the rule that spreads[Laryngeal]. This ordering does not constitute an introduction of redundant features intothe phonology, since the insertion of [SV] on /v/ is a phonological process that applies ina restricted environment, rather than a filling in of a non-contrastive feature value. (Theredundancy rule for /v/ in Slovak would be the one that realizes it as a voiced obstruent ifit has not received a voicing feature during the phonological derivation.) Thus Slovak, inaccord with our predictions, may be elegantly treated as an LV language with one CVsegment. The voicing specifications and rules for Slovak consonants are as follows:


(31) a. sonorants /v/ other voiced obstruents voiceless obstruentsRt Rt Rt Rt| | |

SV Laryngeal Laryngeal|

Voice

b. v-sonorization:

coda coda| |

Rt → Rt|

SV|

Approximant

c. Regressive assimilation:

Rt (+) Rt ú P | Laryngeal Laryngeal | | Voice Voice

Short (1993) offers a slightly different picture of Slovak; the behaviour of theobstruents is as described by de Bray (1969), but sonorants can also trigger regressiveassimilation. Assimilation of an obstruent to a sonorant occurs only across morphemeboundaries:

(32) vlak mešká [vlAg meSkA˘] ‘the train is late’viac ráz [viAdÉz rA˘s] ‘several times’tak+mer [tAgmer] ‘almost’nes+me [nezme] ‘let’s carry!’

cf.: vlákno [vlA˘kno] ‘fibre’

However, it does not always occur:

(33) vlak+mi [vlAkmi] ‘train+inst.pl.’

Because of the morphological complications involved, I will not attempt here toformulate the exact rule required for this process. However, the voicing specificationsalready posited for Slovak do allow such a rule to be written. The sonorants have [SV]nodes which can be spread to a preceding obstruent, making it voiced.


Polish

Polish, the most widely spoken of the West Slavic languages (Carlton 1991), alsoshows evidence of voicing patterns similar to those found in Czech and Slovak.Regressive voicing assimilation in Polish (as described by de Bray (1969)) results in bothvoicing and devoicing, and it can occur across the boundary between a preposition and itsobject, which are treated as one phonological word:

(34) odbiór [odbiUr] ‘[radio] reception’odpornosc [otpornoCcÉC] ‘resistance’obok domu [obog domu] ‘near the house’obok tego domu [obok tego domu] ‘near this house’

Polish /v/ (written ⟨w⟩) undergoes both regressive and progressive assimilation:

(35) w Gdyni [vgdi¯i] ‘in Gdynia’w Polsce [fpolstÉse] ‘in Poland’dwa [dvA] ‘two’twój [tfuj] ‘your [sg.]’

These data support a treatment of Polish as an LV language with /v/ as anexceptional CV segment, identical in behaviour to Czech /r/.

Polish at one time contained the phoneme /r/, but in virtually all dialects this segmenthas now been replaced by non-trilled /Z/ and /S/. However, the earlier trilled fricative iscommemorated by the retention of the spelling ⟨rz⟩. The pattern of correspondence of⟨rz⟩ to /Z/ and /S/ indicates that Polish /r/ was subject to progressive assimilation:

(36) morze [moZe] ‘sea’ (cf. Czech moře)brzeg [bZek] ‘shore’ (cf. Czech břeh)przy [pSi] ‘near’ (cf. Czech při)

Stieber (1973) concludes that /r/ had voiced and voiceless allophones, the latteroccurring word-finally and on either side of a voiceless obstruent:

(37) twarz [*tfAr38] ‘face’

krzak [*kr38Ak] ‘bush’

pierzchac [*pJer8xAcÉC] ‘to flee’

Stieber finds evidence of the gradual disappearance of Polish trilled /r/ from as earlyas 1411, in which year the thirteenth scribe of the Pyzdry lawcourts thrice wrotepomorzy for pomoz ˘y (/pomoZi/, meaning ‘help!’). Applying the split LV/CV system toPolish allows us to paint a smooth picture of the transition from /r/ to /Z/ and /S/.Originally, /r/ would have had no voicing specifications, and would have been realizedphonetically as it is in Czech. Since the trilled fricative is a difficult sound to articulate (it


is generally the last sound acquired by Czech children), Polish /r/ gradually lost its trilledcharacter, resulting in the following set of realizations:

(38) a. Beside voiced obstruents: Rt|

Lar ⇒ voiced: [r] ∞ [Z]|

Voice

b. Beside voiceless obstruents Rtand word-finally: |

Lar ⇒ voiceless: [r38] ∞ [S]

c. Elsewhere: Rt ⇒ voiced by default: [r] ∞ [Z]

Some dialects of Polish (those having undergone mazurzenie) already had phonemic/Z/ and /S/, with the usual LV specifications for obstruent voicing. In these dialects, thephonetic forms in (39) would have been interpreted by the next generation of Polishlearners as resulting from underlying /Z/ and /S/. After voiceless obstruents, /r/ [S] wouldbe seen as underlyingly /S/, since an underlying voiced /Z/ would be expected to triggerregressive voicing. After voiced obstruents and in nonfinal positions not adjacent toobstruents, /r/ [Z] would have to be interpreted as underlyingly /Z/. Everywhere else,either /Z/ or /S/ would result in the correct output.3 In dialects that did not already have /Z/and /S/, /r/ would simply become /Z/, retaining its underlying underspecification forvoicing. Thus a mixed LV/CV system is appropriate to Polish voicing facts bothsynchronically and diachronically.

Conclusions

This paper has shown the ability of contrastive specification to account for some ofthe more difficult aspects of West Slavic voicing features, especially in dealing with thecomplexities of Czech. In particular, it has shown that features assigned by the SuccessiveDivision Algorithm can generate both assimilatory voicing and assimilatory devoicingwithout resorting to arbitrary delinking rules. The solutions presented for the voicingfacts considered generally fit into the larger theoretical framework supplied by Avery(1996) and by the notion of contrastive specification in general. From the languagesconsidered here, it seems that the predictions inherent in applying contrastivespecification to Avery’s feature systems are reasonable, although a full vindication ofthese predictions would require a survey of all LV systems. In addition to accounting forthe synchronic facts in Czech, Slovak, and Polish, the analyses presented here have alsobeen seen to be useful for describing two diachronic phenomena–the transition fromCommon Slavic /*w/ to Czech /v/, and the replacement of Polish /r/ by /S/ and /Z/. 3. In the absence of alternations, learners would presumably posit underlying representations identical tothe surface forms, by some transparency principle along the lines of Prince and Smolensky’s (1993)Lexicon Optimization.


However, one theoretical issue remains problematic. While the features assigned herefor the segments under consideration account for the way in which the voicing of thesesegments is realized, what about other articulatory facts? Consider the dialects of Czechin which we have posited that /v/ and /r/ are both underlyingly unspecified for voicingfeatures. Under contrastive specification, once one feature is assigned to either of theseconsonants, each of them will be fully distinguished from the rest of the inventory, andthey will not be assigned any further features. One of them will have no features at all. Inaddition, there will be one consonant with only a [Laryngeal] node, and one consonantwith only a [Laryngeal] node with a [Voice] dependent. Presumably, there will be defaultrules for realizing these segments appropriately. However, what happens when the fullyunspecified segment (either /v/ or /r/) undergoes assimilation? It becomes identical to oneof the two segments that are specified only for their voicing features. How can theassimilated CV segment be realized correctly? For instance, if /v/ is the segment with nofeatures at all, and /f/ is the segment with only a bare Laryngeal node, then devoiced /v/will be correctly realized as [f], but what about a /v/ that has received a [Laryngeal] nodewith a [Voice] dependent? The phonetic rules cannot say that this is realized as [v],because there is another segment underlyingly having only a [Laryngeal] node and a[Voice] node; whatever this segment is, it is not /v/, and the phonetic component musthave some instruction for pronouncing it.

A complete answer to this question would seem to depend on a thorough analysis ofall features of the entire Czech consonant inventory. However, even considering theproblem in the abstract, it quickly becomes clear that a strict interpretation of theSuccessive Division Algorithm will result in great trouble in ensuring that the phoneticrules have enough information to realize all consonants appropriately. A definitivesolution to this large theoretical problem is beyond the scope of this paper. Hall (2002)suggests that a minimal retreat from the strongest contrastivist hypothesis is possible: ifredundant features can be present but inactive during the phonological computation, thenvoicing assimilation need not become total assimilation.

The approach to voicing assimilation taken in this paper is an essentially formal one,in that the possibility or impossibility of assimilation is determined by the presence orabsence of certain formal phonological features. A more functionalist approach is takenby Steriade (1997) in a general discussion of processes that neutralize laryngeal contrasts,and by Padgett (2002) in a treatment of Russian [v].

Steriade (1997), drawing on data from a wide range of languages, argues that theenvironments in which laryngeal contrasts are neutralized are precisely those in which thecontrasts are phonetically most difficult to perceive. Because prevocalic and presonorantpositions offer more robust voice onset time cues, obstruents are more likely to preservetheir underlying voicing values in these environments than they are in preobstruent orword-final positions. Steriade offers empirical evidence that this cue-based account issuperior to alternatives based on syllable structure in predicting the environments inwhich neutralization occurs. However, the phonetic approach has little to say about thedirection of neutralization. When a segment loses its contrastive underlying voicing value,it may either take on a default voicing value or assimilate to the value of an adjacentsegment. Which of these two kinds of neutralization occurs seems to depend not onphonetic cues to voicing, but rather on the presence of other phonologically contrastivelaryngeal features in the environment. Thus obstruents that are neutralized next to other


obstruents tend to assimilate, while those that are neutralized next to sonorants or wordboundaries tend to neutralize to a default value. The phonetic cue-based approach musttherefore be supplemented by some theory of contrast and markedness. In an approachbased on feature spreading, however, the environment and the direction of neutralizationare determined by a single formal mechanism.

Steriade’s approach also seems likely to have difficulty accounting for the anomalousbehaviour of Czech /r/ and /v/. Progressive voicing assimilation is unexpected if the maintrigger for laryngeal neutralization is an absence of robust VOT cues, nor is there anyobvious cue-related reason for these two segments to behave differently from other Czechobstruents. However, Padgett (2002) offers a phonetic explanation of the similarlyanomalous behaviour of [v] in Russian. Like Czech /v/, the corresponding Russiansegment undergoes, but does not trigger, regressive voicing assimilation. (It is not subjectto progressive devoicing.) Padgett attributes the quasi-sonorant, quasi-obstruentbehaviour of Russian [v] to its quasi-sonorant, quasi-obstruent phonetic properties;rather than a fricative /v/ or (as in Lightner (1965), Hayes (1984), and Kiparsky (1985),among others) an approximant /w/, this segment is, according to Padgett, a “narrowapproximant” //. Because // is a sonorant, it does not trigger voicing assimilation; as inSteriade’s account, obstruents retain their underlying voicing values before sonorantsbecause the latter provide good VOT cues. However, // also belongs to the class ofsegments, defined by the features [–wide, –nasal], that are subject to the AGREEconstraint that drives regressive voicing assimilation. It is thus a target for assimilation,but not a trigger.

It would be difficult to extend Padgett’s phonetic account of Russian // to Czech/v/. As noted above, Czech /v/ is nothing like an approximant; rather, it is more like astop. The basis for classifying it as anything other than an obstruent is purelyphonological, not phonetic. Furthermore, the inventory of Czech obstruents includes themuch more open segment //, which, however, patterns phonologically as if it were anordinary voiced velar fricative //. Padgett’s theory would seem to predict that if anyCzech consonant were to behave similarly to Russian //, it would be // rather than /v/.

Unlike the approaches of Steriade (1997) and Padgett (2002), then, the explanationof West Slavic voicing phenomena offered by this paper is essentially formal rather thanfunctional, and phonological rather than phonetic. The patterns observed in theselanguages, especially Czech, suggest that there is more to the behaviour of certainsegments than can be explained by their phonetics alone.

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laryngeal feature specifications in west slavic languages

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