ON VOWEL ALTERNATION IN ENGLISH* KOJI ONO University of

ON VOWEL ALTERNATION

IN ENGLISH*

KOJI ONO

University of Tsukuba

In this paper, establishing the level of‘syllable’on the segmental

sequence, I will first examine the relationship between syllabic structure

and vowel alternation. Then I will propose, presenting ample evidence,

general rules of vowel tensing and vowel laxing, which have more explanatory power than any other rules that have ever been put forth.

Finally, it will be shown that they are reducible to a single rule called

Generalized Vowel Alternation Rule.

1. GENERAL SURVEY OF VOWEL ALTERNATION. It is well known thatcertain vowels in English simple (or non-derived) words change theirsound qualities under the process of suffixation. This phenomenon,often called the vowel alternation, is subclassified into the two types:vowel tensing and vowel Taxing.

The vowel alternation governed by a tensing rule is illustrated by such

pairs of words as those in 1:(1) Arab-Arabian Iran-Iranian

[e] [ey] [ae] [ey]Amazon-Amazonian Abel-Abelian

[a] [ow] [a] [iy]melody-melodious college-collegiate

[a] [ow] [i] [iy]In 1, a variety of italicized lax vowels in simple words are converted intothe italicized tense vowels in their corresponding derived words throughsuffixation. Chomsky and Halle 1968 (hereafter SPE) describe the contextin which such vowel tensings take place, as follows cf. SPE: 242:

*This paper is a revised version of the first chapter of my MA thesis. I am very

grateful to Shosuke Haraguchi for his invaluable suggestions and encouragements. Iwould also like to thank Yukio Hirose, Nobuhiro Kaga and Wayne Lawrence for their

helpful comments and criticisms.

-123-

124 ENGLISH LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 1 (1984)

(2)

V→[+tense]/[-

-high]Cl1(

[α voc

α con

-ant])

[-low

-back

-cons

-stress]V

Consider, for example, the antepenultimate vowel of Arabian, which istensed by this rule; the vowel in question is represented as non-high inthe underlying representation (i.e. /ae/) and the remainder of the wordalso satisfies the context of the rule. It is important, however, to note thatthe phonetic form [ey] of Arabian cannot be derived by tensing rule 2alone, since its function is simply to tense /ae/ to yield /ae/,1 which is yetfar from the phonetic representation. In order to get [ey], we need someother phonological rules such as Diphthongization and two types ofVowel Shift. In this paper, however, I will not discuss these rules, partlybecause it is doubtful whether even a close investigation of them canreveal any interesting and valuable clue to explain under what conditionsthe vowel tensing occurs, and partly because they have been fullyinquired into by many phonologists, especially since SPE was published.

The vowel alternation governed by a laxing rule is illustrated in 3:

(3) serene-serenity sane-sanity[iy] [e] [ey] [ae]

verbose-verbosity sublime-sublimity

[ow] [a] [ay] [i]profound-profundity produce-production

[aw] [A] [uw] [A]It is obvious that these vowel laxing phenomena are also triggered bysuffixation.

To account for these cases, a rule called Trisyllabic Laxing has been

proposed cf. SPE: 180:(4) V→[-tense]/_C(C1+)[-stress V]C0V

This rule applies to, say, production to convert the antepenultimate tensevowel /u/ to /u/. Standard generative phonologists further assume Vowel

Shift, Centralization Rules and some other rules to change that /u/ to [A],

but I will not be concerned with these rules for the same reasons as notedconcerning vowel tensing.

1The bar above a vowel implies that the vowel is tense, but not necessarily that itis phonetically a diphthong.

ON VOWEL ALTERNATION IN ENGLISH 125

We have seen, so far, two major rules with respect to vowel alterna-

tion, namely, 2 for vowel tensing and 4 for vowel laxing, both of which

specify precisely the position where the vowel alternation takes place.However, going one step further to ask why such alternations are

restricted to a specific position, we will see that these rules cannot

provide any suggestive answer to this question. In other words, many

phonologists using 2 and 4 merely describes where vowel alternationsoccur, but not explain how or why they occur.

2. VOWEL TENSING

2.1. THE RELATION IN DISYLLABIC WORDS BETWEEN THE SYLLABIC WEIGHT

AND THE POSITION OF THE PRIMARY STRESS. Before answering directly the

question raised just above, let us examine the interaction betweensyllabic weight and the position of primary stress concerning disyllabicnouns, for, as we will see below, it plays a crucial role in vowel alternation.The reason for choosing nouns, especially disyllabic nouns, is that stress

patterns of adjectives and verbs are greatly affected by various suffixesand prefixes as well as syllabic weight.

I assume, following Selkirk 1980, that there are three kinds of syllablesin English: i) the open syllable containing a lax vowel (C0V), ii) the closedsyllable containing a lax vowel (C0VC), iii) the syllable, whether open orclosed, that contains a tense vowel (C0VC0) cf. Selkirk 1980: 581. They arecalled 'light syllable' (L), 'heavy syllable' (H) and 'super-heavy syllable'

(H), respectively. This classification of syllable types is independentlymotivated by their difference with respect to potentialities for being' stressed'; light syllables attract stress least frequently, super-heavysyllables do so most frequently and heavy syllables lie between them.

We can now examine the interaction between syllabic weight and the

position of the primary stress within disyllabic nouns:2(5) a. LL edit level novel panel ticket

b. LH abode belief July police reliefc. HH alcove argyle empire oxide syncline

2Since consonants in final position are not directly involved in vowel alternations,we will ignore them in this paper when we consider the syllabic structure of a givenword. This view is supported from the viewpoint of stress assignment: the consonantsin question are also ignored in assigning stress to any category of words. Thus, H doesnot appear in principle as the second element of disyllabic words.

Actually, there are two more possibilities to be listed in 5, that is HL and HL. Butboth of them behave like LL, and I eliminate them from the table 5.


d. HH feline aedile oboe propane senile

As is clear from the table, primary stress is placed on the initial syllable if

a given word has LL, HH or HH as the syllabic structure; whereas, if a

word has LH, the stress is assigned to the final syllable.3

Let us consider here what happens in LH if the stress on H is shifted to

L. It does not seem inadequate to ask such a question. when we take into

consideration the historical stress shift in English; it is often said that the

primary stress of a noun has a tendency to be shifted leftward within theword, and therefore it is fairly conceivable that someday the stress will be

placed on the initial syllables of the words in 5b. In fact, there existexamples like the following, in which two ways of pronunciation are

permitted:

(6)

(i)

{a. cremate (LH)

[krimeyt]b. cremate (HH)

[kriymeyt]}

(ii)

{a. decrease (LH)

[dikriys]b. decrease (HH)

[diykriys]}

(iii)

{a. detail (LH)

[diteyl]b. detail (HH)

[diyteyl]}

(iv)

{a. relay (LH)

[riley]b. relay (HH)

[riyley]}It might be argued from a historical point of view that the stress pattern

of b-words has resulted from the leftward movement of the stress of a-

words cf. Nessly 1974, but I will not be concerned hereafter with thehistory of English, turning my attention only to the synchronical relation

between a-words and b-words.

It is clear from the examples in 6 that LH changes to HH when the

primary stress is shifted from the final to the initial position. Note thatthe resultant string HH, in fact, obeys the general pattern given in 5d in

that the stress is assigned to the initial H in both cases. Thus, we can

formulate a rule on the basis of these observations, as shown in 7 wherethe position of primary stress is marked by acute accent ('):

(7) LH→HH

2.2. VOWEL TENSING WITHIN THE WORDS IN 1. Having presented rule 7,

we are now in a position to account for the vowel tensing within the

words in 1. What we have to do first in order to make use of 7 is to

3There are a few examples which do not conform to the general tendency that LH

has stress on the final H: rabbai, satire, Semite.


determine the underlying segmental structure of the derived words. They

have two characteristics in common; one is that they include a sequence

of vowels within the final and penultimate syllables, the other is that they

have the primary stress on the antepenultimate syllable. These char-

acteristics are represented as the segmental structure given in 8, where X

contains any element:

(8) XVCVVC0#We assume that vowel tensing takes place after application of stress

assignment rules. In this respect, our analysis is different from SPE'sanalysis, in which a stress rule called Auxiliary Reduction II is orderedafter the vowel tensing rule. We also assume that the string in 8 mustcorrespond to part of the underlying representation of a given word andnot to part of the phonetic representation. To take an example, the suffix-ation, whose underlying form is /aetion/, is regarded as having the

segmental structure compatible with 8 and, as we will see below, can besubject to the rule of vowel tensing, while its phonetic form [eysen] nolonger satisfies 8.

We need here to introduce another, though supplementary, rule ofvowel tensing whose function is to tense a vowel in a prevocalic positioncf. SPE: 242:

(9) V→[+tense]/_V

This rule applies to such words as those in 10, yielding tense vowelsthat finally become correct phonetic forms through Diphthongizationand Vowel Shift:

(10) algebraic Medea variety heroic[ey] [iy] [ay] [ow]

Returning to 8, since there is a vowel in a prevocalic position, one canapply 9 to 8 to change the lax vowel in the penultimate syllable into atense vowel:

(11) XVCVVC0#→XVCVVC0#

(9)If we add to 11 the syllabic structure which tells us the weight of a

syllable as well as the domain it governs, the following representation isobtained where the final syllable is L, the penultimate syllable H and theantepenultimate syllable L.

(12) XVCVVC0#

L H L

These operations make it clear that in the underlying representations, the


words in 1 contain the penultimate H and the antepenultimate L with

primary stress. Recall here that we observed in the preceding section thatLH must change to HH by means of rule 7 when the main stress is placed

on the initial syllable. Given this observation, LH in 12 should be

transformed to HH by rule 7 because it also has primary stress on the

first syllable. Consequently, the antepenultimate vowel is tensed as

required:

(13) XVCVVC0#→XVCVVC0#

(7)LH HH

Now, consider how the procedures developed above are carried out

within the words in 1. Taking Iranian and melodious for example, I will

demonstrate their derivations in 14:4

(14) a. /iraeniaen/→/iraeniaen/→/iraeniaen/

(9) (7)LL LH HH→[ireynien]

b. /melodiaes/→/melodiaes/→/melodiaes/

(9) (7)LL LH HH

→[melowdies]

In 14 the antepenultimate vowels of Iranian and melodious are tensed bysuccessive applications of rules 9 and 7, and are finally changed to theappropriate phonetic forms [ey] and [ow] respectively by other

phonological rules with which we are not concerned in this paper.One might ask why the vowel in the antepenultimate syllable is

diphthongized (e.g. /ae/→[ey] in 14a), but not the one in the penultimate

syllable (e.g. /i/→[ay] in 14a) in spite of the fact that both syllables are of

the same status as H. It seems very difficult to make a fully satisfactory

answer to this question, but there is one point that I should mention

here; all the penultimate syllables of the words in 1 contain a high vowel,

i.e. /i/. As we will see later, the high vowel will not be diphthongized

even if it satisfies every condition of vowel tensing. In addition, many

recent works have shown that it behaves idiosyncratically in comparison

4 There is enough evidence for our considering that in 14 the underlying

penultimate vowel /i/ is realized as phonetically tensed [i]. According to Webster'sThird New International Dictionary, the vowel in question has the same value as aword-final -y which is generally believed to be tensed cf. SPE: 111.


with other vowels cf. Haraguchi (in press). It might be presumed thatsuch an idiosyncratic character of the high vowel blocks diphthongizationof the penultimate vowels in the derivations 14a-b.

To recapitulate the discussion so far in this section, not only have wemade it clear where vowel tensing occurs, but also we have provided a

principled explanation in terms of rules 7 and 9 as to why it takes place inonly such a specific position in the word, that is, in the antepenultimatesyllable. In the course of the discussion, we have demonstrated thesignificance of the notion of syllable (or syllabic weight) in theelucidation of the tensing phenomenon. With this in mind, in whatfollows, we will put forth some arguments for the analysis presented here.

2.3. OTHER INTERESTING EXAMPLES. Let us begin by considering the

examples in 15:

(15) act-actual except-exception

[ae] [ae] [e] [e]fact-factual infect-infectious

[ae] [ae] [e] [e]In 15, the antepenultimate vowels of the derived words cannot be tensed,

though their segmental representations are almost parallel to those of

words like Canadian, collegiate and Iranian discussed above, in the sense

in which there is also a vowel sequence in the penultimate and word-final

positions of those representations. However, if we examine the syllabicstructure of those words in more detail, we can easily account for why

they do not undergo the tensing rule, while the words in 1 do. Taking

actual and Canadian for example, their underlying syllabic structures are

considered as follows:

(16) a. /aektuael/ b. /kaenaediaen/

HL LL

From 16a and 16b, it is obvious that the difference between them liesin the weight of the antepenultimate syllable; in 16a it is H, while in 16bit is L. Recalling that tensing rule 7 applies to a word only when itsantepenultimate syllable is L, we see why Canadian is subject to 7, butactual not.

Another interesting and suggestive word group that supports ouranalysis is illustrated below:


(17) biennial potassium recession succession

[e] [ae] [e] [e]These words are apparently counterexamples to our approach in that theydo not undergo the tensing rule, though their surface sgmental structureis just the same as that of 1, that is, 8. For example, the antepenultimatevowel of recession would also be tensed by the rule used for thederivation of the words in 1 if it were supposed to have the form of 8, asshown in 18:

(18) /resesion/→/resesion/→/resesion/

(9) (7)LL LH HH

→*[risiyzen]

By successive applications of rules 9 and 7, the underlying LL wouldchange to LH, next to HH and finally we would obtain the incorrect

phonetic form [risiyzen] through a number of other phonological rules.To derive the correct surface representation, we must block the appli-

cation of rule 7 somehow so that the antepenultimate vowel will not betensed.

A simple device for blocking the rule involved would be to represent

the words in 17 with double consonants before the penultimate vowel, aswe do in conventional orthography. Thus the lexcial representations

would be /bienniael/, /potaessium/, /resession/, and so on. This deviceaccomplishes our purpose. In fact, the word recession receives H on the

antepenultimate syllable, which violates the structual condition of 7, as

shown below:

(19) /resession/→/resession/→

(9) (7)HL HH

We must apply such a rule as 20 after the application of 7 in order to

derive the correct phonetic form from the corresponding underlying

representation cf. SPE: 148:

(20) C→φ/before an identical C.

The device of making use of double consonants in the underlying formis independently necessary in the assignment of stress to the words

Mississippi, confetti, abscissa, Philippa, vendetta. Whatever approach to

stress assignment, linear or non-linear, one might follow, to derive theircorrect stress contours, one must regard double consonants as appearing

before the final vowels in the underlying representations. After stress

assignment, rule 20 again applies to these underlying representations


to yield each correct phonetic form.5

2.4. THE RULE OF VOWEL TENSING. The purpose of this section is tolook briefly at the systematic exceptions to our analysis and to modifyrule 7 slightly so that it can cover such exceptions.

Let us consider the following words that are true exceptions to theanalysis proposed here:

(21) Darwin-Darwinian magic-magicianmusic-musician prohibit-prohibition

Since the derived words in 21, unlike those in 15 and 17, have theantepenultimate light syllables in the underlying representations, there isno means at present to block the application of rule 7 to them. As aresult, it would be incorrectly predicted that the antepenultimate vowel/i/ should be tensed to become the phonetic [ay]:

(22) /prohibition/→/prohibition/→/prohibition/

(9) (7)LL LH HH

→*[prowhibaysen]

But we can find a common factor among the words in 21, which seems to

make rule 7 inapplicable; all the words involved include a high vowel in

the antepenult. The distinctive character of the high vowel can be also

observed to be involved in a number of other phonological phenomena.According to Haraguchi (in press), the high vowels [i] and [u] trigger not

only segmental processes such as High Vowel Deletion and High Vowel

Devoicing but also tonal processes such as Star Shift and the Flop Rule ofJapanese dialects. Haraguchi claims, on the basis of the fact that high

vowels are less sonorant than non-high vowels, that the difference in

sonority between high and non-high vowels accounts for the reason whythese phenomena are conditioned by vowel height. Thus, it may be

explained on the grounds of this difference that it is difficult for the

antepenultimate high vowel to become tense.If 7 is revised so as not to apply to words with antepenultimate high

vowel, as shown in 23, it becomes possible to assign the correct phonetic

5There is another piece of evidence supporting the postulation of doubledconsonants in underlying representations: they block the application of a rule voicing[s] in the context V=_V to words like assign, assist, assemble cf. SPE: 148.Accordingly, we have further justification for assuming rule 20. As for the argumentagainst the use of absolute neutralization rules like 20, see Kiparsky 1968.


form [prowhibisen] to the word prohibition.

(23) Vowel Tensing Rule6L→H/_H$#, where the vowel involved in L is non-

high.

With this modified rule, we can predict why not only derived words in 21

but also non-derived words like opinion, Endimion, idiom, idiot are notsubject to the tensing rule.7

In terms of Vowel Tensing Rule 23, we have so far provided a principledexplanation for why the specific vowel in a given word is tensed whencertain suffixes are added to it. It is, however, important to note thatapplication of this rule is not limited to words such as nouns andadjectives. In fact, it applies to any strings whenever the conditions aresatisfied. One of such examples is the suffix -ation; successive appli-cations of Vowel Tensing Rule and supplementary rule 9 make it possibleto explain why the suffix does not have the phonetic form [aesen] but

[eysen]. Therefore, this also indicates that our analysis is far-reaching andadequate with respect to vowel tensing. The derivational process of-ation is illustrated as follows:

(24) /aetion/→/aetion/→/aetion/→[eysen]

(9) (23)LL LH HH

By the same token, we can account for the fact that the non-derived word

nation has the phonetic form [neysen] rather than *[naesen].

3. VOWEL LAXING

3.1. SOME COUNTEREXAMPLES TO TRISYLLABIC LAXING. In this section we

are mainly concerned with vowel laxing. For convenience of explanation,

let us repeat some representative examples and the rule responsible for

6$ stands for a syllable.

7Still a few exceptions to 23 remain; although the words battalion, clarion, Marionand valiant perfectly satisfy the conditions of the vowel tensing rule 23, they are notsubject to it. One possible way to solve this problem would be to make use of the factthat they all contain a liquid [l] or [r], followed by a vowel sequence; we could addanother condition to the effect that when the consonant followed by a prevocalicvowel is a liquid, rule 23 does not apply to the vowel preceding this consonant. But alittle reflection tells us that this artifice is not feasible because there are many of words(e.g. Abelion, managerial, various) which would constitute counterexamples to it. Itseems that the most direct way to account for these facts is by assigning a rule featurelike [-vowel tensing] to words like battalion, clarion, valiant. As for the reason whyonly such words are marked as [-vowel tensing], we must leave it to future research.


this phenomenon.

(25) serene-serenity sane-sanity

[iy] [e] [ey] [ae]verbose-verbosity reduce-reduction

[ow] [a] [uw] [A]divine divinity profound-profundity

[ay] [i] [aw] [A](26) Trisyllabic Laxing

V→[-tense]/_C(Cl+)[-stress V]C0V

As we observed in section 1, Trisyllabic Laxing applies to the derivedwords in 25 to make lax the italicized tense vowel in the antepenultimatesyllable as desired. However, we see at once that the rule is at best of adescriptive character, because it merely describes the fact that the vowellaxing takes place in the antepenultimate syllable of a given word; that is,it does not provide a principled explanation as to why this is so. What is worse is that the words in 27 do not undergo vowel laxing, though they allsatisfy the context of the rule:

(27) agent-agency potent-potency[ey] [ey] [ow] [ow]regent-regency vacant-vacancy

[iy] [iy] [ey] [ey]If we accept Trisyllabic Laxing as it is, the initial vowel of agency, forexample, should become lax.

One might assume as a possible solution that the final -y should betreated not as a vowel but as a consonant cf. Kiparsky 1982: 155. If so, thewords in 27 will not meet the contextual conditions of Trisyllabic Laxing,and will be immune to laxing, as required. But such a solution will not bea preferable one because, if it is adopted, we must allow two distinct types of suffix -y, a serious undesirable result; one triggers Trisyllabic Laxing

(i.e. the words in 25), the other does not (i.e. the words in 27). These observations lead us to the conclusion that the approach within

which Trisyllabic Laxing is used is inappropriate for the explanation ofvowel laxing. I will show in the following subsection that vowel laxing,

just like vowel tensing, should be considered from the point of view ofsyllabic structure.

3.2. THE RULE OF VOWEL LAXING. Let us begin by examining thesyllabic structure of divinity in 25 and vacancy in 27 to ascertain what


causes the vowel laxing:8

(28) a. /diviniti/ b. /vakaenti/

HL HHIn 28a the underlying penultimate syllable is L, while in 28b it is H. Thus,

it can be said at least that this difference is related somehow to the fact

that divine, but not vacant, undergoes a rule of laxing after suffixation is

carried out. More specifically, the rule is applicable only when the penult

is L in the lexical form. Furthermore, once it applies to the H of 28a, the

H will become L because of the laxing of the vowel. On the basis of these

observations, we propose a rule that accounts for the vowel laxing:

(29) H→L/_L$#

By virtue of this rule, /diviniti/ is transformed to the correct phonetic

form:

(30) /divinity/→/diviniti/→[divinati]

(29)HL LL

On the other hand, vacancy, whose syllabic structure in question is HH,is not subject to 29 and retains the initial tense vowel of the simple wordvacant.

We now look at some other examples that support the syllabic analysis

of vowel laxing. First, consider such pairs of words as rota/rotary and

[ow] [ow]rose/rosary. Obviously the derived words are not subject to 29. The

[ow] [ow]explanation is obtained with ease, if the syllabic structure is taken intoaccount in this case. In fact, it is the penultimate H that prevents thosewords from undergoing the rule, as in the following:

(31) /rosaeri/→

(29)HH

We assume, as many other phonologists do, that the initial vowel of thesuffix -ary is tense in the underlying from. This assumption is justifiedwhen we consider the stress assignment to words with -ary: the presenceof tertiary stress on words like preliminary, sedentary, literary is accounted

8Notice that whenever a tense vowel is involved in a simple word, it remains tensein the underlying representation of the corresponding derived word. Thus, the ante-penultimate vowels of divinity and vacancy must be tense in the underlying forms, asshown in 28.


for only when the initial vowel of -ary is tense.

Second, let us examine the most significant and crucial pairs of words

for our analysis:

(32) cone-conic mime-mimic

[ow] [a] [ay] [i]tone-tonic volcano-volcanic

[ow] [a] [ey] [ae]It is well known that when an underlying tense vowel is followed by thesuffix -ic, it will usually become lax, though there are a number ofexceptions that do not conform to this general tendency: e.g. basic (base)and cyclic (cycle).

In order to account for the fact mentioned above, we start by looking atthe syllabic structure of conic:

(33) /konik/

HL

It is obvious from 33 that conic is not subject to rule 29, for the ruleconverts H on the antepenult rather than the penult to L. It is therefore

impossible to change /o/ in 33 to /o/, as it stands. However, as we will see

below, a clue to the solution of this problem will be given when reviewingthe way of assigning stress to words with suffix -ic.

As far as English nouns and adjectives are concerned, primary stress is

generally placed on the antepenultimate syllable unless the penult isheavy or super-heavy. This is demonstrated by the following list: in 34,

primary stress is placed on the antepenultimate syllable because of the light penult, while in 35 it is placed on the penultimate syllable because

of the heavy penult.

(34) a. custodian daffodil economy elephantiasisemigrant interest remedy sympathy

b. analogous capricious familiar innocentfugitive prevalent purposive radical

(35) a. agenda anaconda influenza reversalb. diphthongal elemental enormous indulgent

If this is a valid generalization, the adjectives ending in -ic must beregarded as exceptions to it; most of them have primary stress on the

penultimate syllable (e.g. titanic, prosodic, scientific, and so on).9 One

9On the other hand, noun-forming ending with -ic obeys the generalization; forexample, arithmetic, Catholic, climacteric, lunatic cf. SPE and Suiko 1983.


possible way to put main stress on the desirable position of each of these

adjectives is to assume that a null syllable /φ/ exists in the position

following the suffix involved in the underlying representations.10 By the

adoption of this device, titanic whose underlying form is /titaenik+φ/, for

example, will receive main stress on the correct position in terms of the

normal way of stress assignment.

We are now in a position to answer the question of why the derived

words in 32 undergo the vowel laxing rule. If we assume that a null

syllable also appears in their underlying representations, the vowels to

become lax will be situated in the antepenultimate syllable, a situation

that now satisfies the condition of rule 29. We can see in 36 the process in

which the vowel in question is converted into a lax vowel:

(36) /konik+φ/→/konik+φ/→[kanik]

(29)HL LL

Needless to say, the null suffix does not appear (or is invisible) when we

pronounce the word conic.

4. THE RULE OF VOWEL ALTERNATION. I have so far proposed twodifferent types of rules for vowel alternation; one is the vowel tensing

rule, the other the vowel laxing rule. They are repeated in 37 and 38,

respectively.

(37) Vowel Tensing RuleL→H/_H$#

(38) Vowel Laxing RuleH→L/_L$#

Since it is evident that the environments in which both rules operate are

almost identical, we would like somehow to collapse them into a single

rule. In order to attain this purpose, let us first recall that, of the three

kinds of syllables, L is the lightest and H is the heaviest cf. 2.1.. For

the sake of discussion here, assign to L, H, H the numbers 1, 2, 3

respectively in accordance with syllabic weight;

10I owe this idea to Shosuke Haraguchi. He also pointed out that SPE's assumption

that the underlying form of -ic is always represented as /ik+ael/ is inadequate in at

least two respects: one is that such an analysis is unable to capture the difference in

meaning between, say, economic and economical, the other is that it cannot treat

uniformly the suffixes -id, -ish and -ic all of which behave in the same way, in the sense

that the underlying forms of -id and -ish cannot by any possibility be taken to be /id+

ael/ and /is+ael/, respectively.


(39) L<H<H1 2 3

It can be therefore said that L and H, H and H differ by one rank, and Land H by two ranks.

Now, we notice that in the input strings of 37 and 38 the ante-

penultimate syllables differ by two ranks from the penultimate sylables.We also notice that, if a syllable undergoes the vowel tensing or the vowellaxing, its weight is converted to the same as that of the followingsyllable. These observations make it possible to reduce 37 and 38 to asingle rule that may be called The Generalized Vowel Alternation Rule. Itcan be stated as follows:

(40) The Generalized Vowel Alternation Rule (GVAR)If the weight of the antepenultimate syllable, W1, differs bytwo ranks from that of the penultimate syllable, W2, thenchange W1 to W2.

The rule 40 is formulated as follows:

(41) GVARW1→W2/_W2, where W1 differs by two ranks from W2.

If W1 is L, we will get the tensing rule 37 and if W1 is H, we will get the

laxing rule 38.

5. SUMMARY. To summarize the discussion in this paper, we have

demonstrated that the rules of vowel tensing and vowel laxing, which

have been so far regarded as quite distinct rules, can be reduced to the

single rule of 40. Furthermore, in terms of this rule, we can provide a

principled explanation for various phenomena relevant to the vowel

alternations.

In the course of this discussion, we have found it difficult to account

for all the cases of vowel alternations on the basis of those segmental

approaches that are advocated by Chomsky and Halle, Kiparsky,

Michaels, and other standard generative phonologists. But this does

not necessarily mean that recent metrical analysis, promising alternative

theories to those segmental analyses, can explain English vowel

alternations elegantly, for they are also essentially based on Chomsky and

Halle's analysis with respect to the phenomena discussed here. To the

contrary, we have found it very important for the explication of the

mechanism of the vowel alternation to make an appeal to the notion

'syllable' and to investigate the syllabic structure of a given word. In

addition, it has been shown that in English it is necessary to classify


syllables into three types, i.e. light syllable (L), heavy syllable (H) andsuper-heavy syllable (H). Note that few works have paid much attentionto this classification.

REFERENCES

BELL, A. and J.B. HOOPER. 1978. Issues and evidence in syllabic phonology. In Belland Hooper (eds.) Syllable and segment, 3-22. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

CHOMSKY, N. and M. HALLE. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York:Harper and Row.

GOVE, P.B. (ed.) 1976. Webster's third new international dictionary. Springfield.HARAGUCHI, S. (In press). High vowel and their tonal/segmental effects. Language

and sound structure.HAYES, B. 1982. Extrametricality and English stress. LI 13. 227-76.IMAI, K. 1971. Seisei-bunpo no oninron. Oninron II, 107-454. Tokyo: Taishukan.KAHN, D. 1976. Syllable-based generalization in English phonology. Doctoral

dissertation, MIT.KIPARSKY, P. 1968. How abstract is phonology? Reproduced by the Indiana

University Linguistic Club. Reprinted in Explanation in phonology 1982, 119-64._. 1982. From cyclic phonology to lexical phonology. In Hulst and Smith (eds.)The structure of phonological representations (part I), 131-75.

MICHAELS, D. 1980. Spelling and the phonology of tense vowels. Language andSpeech 23. 379-92.

NESSLY, D. 1974. English stress and synchronic descriptions. Doctoral disser-tation, University of Michigan.

OHSIEK, D. 1978. Heavy syllables and stress. In Bell and Hooper (eds.) Syllable andsegments, 35-43. Amsterdam: North-Holland.

ONO, K. 1983. A study of the vowel alternation and the stress system in English.Unpublished MA thesis, University of Tsukuba.

SELKIRK, E. 1980. The role of prosodic categories in English word stress. LI 11. 5-40.

SUIKO, M. 1983. Placement of primary stress in English. The Humanities, 1-88.Kyoto University.

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ON VOWEL ALTERNATION IN ENGLISH* KOJI ONO University of