John Coleman John Local (1989)

No Crossing Constraint in Autosegmental phonology

Presented by : Mbarek Elfarhaoui

Outline:

II. Arguments against the NCC

VI. Conclusion

I. Introduction

I. Introduction Autosegmental phonology is a theory of

phonological representatioon which employs multi-tiered representations rather than strings. Autosegmental phonology includes a well-formedness condition on association lines .

Each autosegmental tier contains a linearly ordered sequence of autosegments.

when an articulatory gesture is interrupted by another distinct gesture, one has to start a new in order to resume the gesture. a. * H L H L H

ba la ba ba la ba

Representation (a) is ruled out because the same tone H cannot be associated with the first and third syllable when another tone (L) follows on the second syllable

crossing is forbidden and a separate H tone must be posited

III. Arguments against NCC

Coleman and Local (1989) argue that NCC does not , in fact, constraint the class of well-formed autosegmental representaions.

The NCC is not a constraint at all since it doesn’t restrict the class of well-formed phonological representations.

The core of their arguments can be briefly sketched as follows:

A distinction must be drawn between autosegmental phonological representations and diagrams of those autosegmental phonological representations.

The NCC is a constraint on diagrams, not autosgmental phonological representations.

Graphs are abstract mathematical entities with no unique visible manifestation.

NCC is a constraint on pictures, not on phonological representations, since straightness of lines is a property of pictures, not linguistic representations.

No crossing constraint is an incoherent concept in autosegmental phonology because there is no mathematical justification for insisting on straight lines.

V.conclusion