Everybody is cordially welcome to Prof. Nina Topintzi (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) seminar Beyond and above the segment: the phonology of onsets, on Wednesday, May 8th, 3 p.m., Room 314 B.
Nina Topintzi — Professor of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (theoretical and applied linguistics, English). Her areas of interest are syllable structure, prosody, relations between morphology and phonology, language typology in general. Author of numerous international publications (Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Phonology, Linguistic Inquiry, Glossa, Journal of Greek Linguistics), author of monographs published by Cambridge University Press.
Annotation:
The consonant–vowel (CV) syllable is cross-linguistically the preferred syllable type. It consists of a nucleus (typically a vowel) and an onset—the consonant that precedes it. The phonology of onsets has been thoroughly investigated on the (sub)segmental level, regarding cluster phonotactics and co-occurrence restrictions. What has received much less attention is the phonology of onsets on the supra-segmental level. In fact, most standard theories (e.g. Hayes 1989) hold that onsets are prosodically inert and only rimes—the nucleus-coda sequences—are relevant to prosodic phenomena. In this talk, I show that this view is incorrect; drawing on my own work (Topintzi 2010, 2022; Topintzi & Davis 2017; Topintzi & Nevins 2017, a.o.), as well as much other research (Gordon 2005; Shinohara and Fujimoto 2011; Ryan 2014; Lubera 2024, a.o.), I present empirical evidence from a variety of languages and phenomena (including stress, compensatory lengthening, allomorphy, gemination and word minimality) that showcase the onset’s participation and contribution to suprasegmental phonology. I also discuss the implications for the typology of syllable and weight theories.
References
- Gordon, Matthew. 2005. A perceptually-driven account of onset-sensitive stress. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 23. 595–653.
- Hayes, Bruce. 1989. Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 253–306.
- Lubera, Amber. 2024. Sensitivity to complex onsets in Iron Ossetian. Phonological Data and Analysis 6(2). 1–40. https://doi.org/10.3765/PDA.V6ART2.71.
- Ryan, Kevin M. 2014. Onsets contribute to syllable weight: Statistical evidence from stress and meter. Language 90(2). 309–341. https://doi.org/http://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2014.0029.
- Shinohara, Shigeko & Masako Fujimoto. 2011. Moraicity of Initial Geminates in the Tedumuni Dialect of Okinawa. ICPhS 17. 1826–1829.
- Topintzi, Nina. 2010. Onsets: Suprasegmental and prosodic behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Topintzi, Nina. 2022. A new phonological analysis of geminates in Cypriot Greek. Journal of Greek linguistics 22(1). 36–71. https://doi.org/10.1163/15699846-02201002.
- Topintzi, Nina & Stuart Davis. 2017. On the weight of edge geminates. In Haruo Kubozono (ed.), The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants, 260–282. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Topintzi, Nina & Andrew Nevins. 2017. Moraic onsets in Arrernte. Phonology 34(3). 615–650. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0952675717000306.