i

Subcategorization and Optimality Theory: The Case of Spanish Diminutives

By

JASON ALLEN SMITH

B.A. (Western Washington University) 1997 B.A. (Eastern Washington University) 2004 M.A. (University of California, Davis) 2006

DISSERTATION

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in

Spanish

in the

OFFICE OF GRADUATE STUDIES

of the

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

DAVIS

Committee in Charge

Professor Travis Bradley, Chair Professor Robert Blake Professor Orhan Orgun

Fall 2011

ii

Subcategorization and Optimality Theory: The Case of Spanish Diminutives

© 2011

by

Jason Allen Smith

iii

Abstract

Subcategorization and Optimality Theory: The Case of Spanish Diminutives

by

Jason Allen Smith

Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish

University of California, Davis

Professor Travis G. Bradley, Chair

In the present work I utilize the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince

& Smolensky 1993/2004) to account for the pattern of diminutive formation in

Spanish. I argue that Spanish diminutivization is an example of suppletive

allomorphy in which the -ito{o, a} and -cit{o, a} allomorphs are not related to one

another through either a process of segmental insertion or segmental deletion.

Crucially, I propose that both allomorphs are available to attach to all word types

in Spanish and that unattested output candidates, such as *casecita or *balconito,

are eliminated by faithfulness and markedness constraints that, with the exception

of RESPECT (Bonet 2006), are phonological in nature.

In my analysis I argue that Spanish substantives are divided into two

morphological classes for dimininutive formation. Class D1 includes all those

words that end in the unstressed canonical class markers /o/ and /a/. Words from

this class are lexically specified to select the –it{o, a} allomorph—a lexical bond

that is enforced by the RESPECT constraint. All other words that undergo

diminutivization belong to Class D2 and are not subject to any lexical

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specification. Therefore, allomorph selection in Class D2 words follows from the

interaction of phonological faithfulness and markedness constraints.

In addition to these arguments, I assert in this work that Spanish

diminutivization is always a process of suffixation in which the morphemes attach

to a stem that crucially does not contain the final vocalic element: casa~casita

[kas- + it{o, a}]. Contrary to analyses in support of infixation of -it- between the

root and the class marker morpheme, I argue that the class marker in diminutive

forms is a set {o, a} that is part of the inflexional possibilities of the diminutive

itself. Selection between /o/ and /a/ is determined by the interaction of three

constraints: 1) IDENT-VOWEL limits the final vowel in derived forms to the

inflectional capacity of the diminutive suffix, indicated by {o, a}; 2) REFLECT

mandates that derived forms reflect all segments present in the base form; and,

finally, 3) FEM = /a/ requires the selection of the final vowel /a/ for feminine

derived forms and prohibits its selection for non-feminine derived forms.

While this dissertation focuses primarily on an analysis of the diminutive

data for Sonoran Spanish in Northern Mexico presented in Crowhurst (1992), I

also demonstrate how my analysis accounts for the dialectal variation found in

Peninsular Spanish (Colina 2003), Paraguayan (Jaeggli 1978), and Nicaraguan

(Miranda 1999) through re-ranking of constraints.

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Subcategorization and Optimality Theory: The Case of Spanish Diminutives

Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction to Spanish Diminutive Formation ……………………………………. 1 I. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………. 1 II. Spanish Diminutive Data ………………………………………………………........................... 2 III. Theoretical Issues: Underlying Assumptions and the Phonology-Morphology Interface ……... 6 Chapter 2. Previous Analyses of Spanish Diminutive Formation ……………………………. 10 I. Jaeggli (1978) …………………………………………………………………………………… 10 II. Prieto (1992) …………………………………………………………………………………… 12 III. Crowhurst (1992) ……………………………………………………………………………… 19 IV. Ambadiang (1997) …………………………………………………………………………….. 29 V. Elordieta and Carreira (1996) …………………………………………………………………... 31 VI. Miranda (1999) ………………………………………………………………………………… 38 VII. Colina (2003) ………………………………………………………………………………….. 44 VIII. Stephenson (2004) ……………………………………………………………………………. 50 Chapter 3. Class Marker Selection in Diminutive Formation …………………………………. 55 I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 55 II. Review of Harris’ Word Classes ……………………………………………………………….. 56 III. Harris’ Word Classes and Diminutivization …………………………………………………… 62 IV. Underlying Assumptions ………………………………………………………………………. 79 Chapter 4. Morphological and Phonological Interactions in Diminutive Allomorph Selection ………………………………………………………………… 101 I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………… 101 II. Analysis of Diminutive Class D1 Words in Sonoran …………………………………………… 102 III. Analysis of Diminutive Class D2 Words in Sonoran ………………………………………….. 113 IV. Additional Support for High-Ranking RESPECT Constraint …………………………………. 121 V. Dialectal Variation in Paraguayan and Nicaraguan Spanish …………………………………… 128 VI. Further Evidence for Constraint Rankings …………………………………………………….. 131 VII. Subcategorization Frames on Allomorphs: An Alternate View ……………………………… 138 Chapter 5. Concluding Remarks ………………………………………………………………… 141 I. Review of Underlying Assumptions …………………………………………………………….. 141 II. Review of OT Analysis ………………………………………………………………………… 145 III. Possible Objections and Future Work …………………………………………………………. 151 References ………………………………………………………………………………………… 154

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Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude goes to those wonderful people in my life who always believed in me much more than I believed in myself and were kind enough to remind me of it: My grandparents, Raymond and Eleanor Raines, who loved me unconditionally and gave me an example of how to be a good person—they know I am still trying. My 9th grade English teacher, Pat Roberts, who reminded me that learning should be fun. My dear friends, Brian Hagenbuch, Henry Murphy, Lynn and Carolee Pomeroy, and James Spears, who have given me so many laughs and thrown out so many lifelines. My first Spanish linguistics professor, Teresa Oteíza, who gave so generously of her time during the first year of her first position. I’ll be paying it forward for many years to come. Our Graduate Program Coordinator in the department, Kay Green, who saved many of us from the brink time and time again. Professor Robert Blake, who is a gentleman, a scholar, and one impressive educator. My dissertation advisor and friend, Travis Bradley, who introduced me to a whole new world and has helped me to find my place in it. My lovely wife, Iliana, who has never doubted me and has never let me doubt myself. Life just gets better and better with you. My parents, who had the faith to let me find my own way.

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Chapter 1

Introduction to Spanish Diminutive Formation

I. Introduction

Several studies have attempted to account for the pattern of diminutive

formation in Modern Spanish within generative linguistics (Ambadiang 1997,

Colina 2003, Crowhurst 1992, Elordieta & Carreira 1996, Jaeggli 1978, Miranda

1999, Prieto 1992, Stephenson 2004, among others). While some researchers

have limited their analyses to a specific dialect (see Jaeggli 1978 for Paraguayan,

Miranda 1999 for Nicaraguan, and Crowhurst 1992 for Sonoran dialect of

Northern Mexico), still others have attempted to account for the data across

dialects, particularly through the framework of Optimality Theory (Colina 2003,

Elordieta & Carreira 1996, Stephenson 2004).

In this work I will present a new analysis of Spanish diminutivization

within the Optimality Theory framework (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004) that is

greatly indebted to these previous accounts. For example, several of the

constraints that I utilize in my analysis are similar or identical to constraints

presented in the aforementioned OT analyses of diminutivization and, in some

cases, find their counterparts in the earlier rules-based accounts. That said, I

believe the present paper offers a more simplified approach to this complex

example of the interface between morphology and phonology, and, at the same

time, provides a more complete account of the various word types and dialectal

variation reported in the literature.

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In Section II of this introductory chapter I present the data on Spanish

diminutives and highlight the variation among several dialects. Then, in Section

III, I discuss the major issues and underlying assumptions that must be addressed

with any account of diminutive formation and I describe briefly how my analysis

approaches these issues and outline my own underlying assumption about this

process. Finally, I end with a brief introduction to the preceding chapters.

II. Spanish Diminutive Data

The following data for Spanish diminutive formation is based on examples

presented in Jaeggli (1978) for Paraguayan, Crowhurst (1992) for Sonoran

(Northern Mexico), Miranda (1999) for Nicaraguan, and Colina (2003) for North

Central Peninsular.

1) Words that end in an unstressed /o/ or /a/ and do not contain a diphthong all

select the -it{o, a} diminutive:

-o/-a: -it{o, a} libro librito “book” casa casita “house”

2) Disyllabic words that end in an unstressed /e/ all select the -(e)cit{o,a}

diminutive:

-e: -(e)cit{o,a} clase clasecita “class” madre madrecita “mother”

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3) Trisyllabic words or longer that end in an unstressed /e/ all select the -it{o, a}

diminutive:

-e: -it{o, a} chocolate chocolatito “chocolate”

comadre comadrita “godmother of one’s child”

4) Disyllabic words or longer that end in a consonant all select the -cit{o, a}

diminutive: 1

-C: -cit{o, a} pintor pintorcito “painter”

corazón corazoncito “heart”

5) All words ending in a stressed vowel select the -cit{o, a} diminutive:

-ˈV: -cit{o, a} té tecito “tea”

café cafecito “coffee”

matiné matinecito “matinee”

6) Monosyllabic words ending in a consonant select -cit{o, a} in the Nicaraguan

and Paraguayan dialects, but -ecit{o, a} in Sonoran and North Central Peninsular:

Paraguayan and Nicaraguan:

-cit{o, a} pan pancito “bread”

Sonoran and Peninsular:

-ecit{o, a} pan panecito 1 One exception to this generalization is found among the diminutive selection of some speakers when the final consonant is /l/. While some maintain the -citV pattern papelcito “little piece of paper”, it appears that many more speakers opt for -itV papelito.

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7) Disyllabic words ending in the diphthong [jo] or [ja] select the -ecit{o, a}

diminutive in North Central Peninsular, Sonoran, and Paraguayan dialects, but the

-it{o, a} diminutive in Nicaraguan:

-[jo/ja]: -ecit{o, a} novio noviecito “boyfriend/groom”

Nicaraguan: -it{o, a} radio radito “radio”

8) Disyllabic words with an alternating diphthong (/o/ [we]; /e/ [je]) in the

initial syllable select -it{o, a} in Sonoran and Nicaraguan, but select -ecit{o, a} in

Peninsular:2

ue/ie.: -it{o, a) piedra piedrita “stone”

puerta puertita “door”

Peninsular: -ecit{o, a} piedra piedrecita

puerta puertecita

The term “alternating diphthong” refers to those pairs of Spanish words

that historically share the same root (e.g. pedr- piedra “stone,” pedroso “rocky;”

ten- tener “to have,” tienes “you have”) but in the development of Modern

Spanish the stressed vowel /o/ and /e/ underwent diphthongization: /o/ [ue];

/e/ [ie]. Some authors appeal to this alternation as an explanation for the

2 Jaeggli (1978) does not directly address alternating diphthongs in his analysis for Paraguayan and none are found in his examples.

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dialectal variation among some disyllabic words with diphthongs in tonic position

(piedrita ~ piedrecita) and the lack of variation in others that do not alternate

(viudito ~ *viudecito “widower”).

Curiously, trisyllabic words with alternating diphthongs do not appear to

select the -ecit{o,a} in any of the dialects:

abuelo (~abolengo “ancestry, lineage”) abuelito “grandfather”

huérfano (~orfanato “orphanage”) huerfanito “orphan”

escuela (~escolar “school (adj.)”) escuelita “school (n.)”

To summarize, diminutive formation is consistent across these four

dialects for all words except monosyllabics ending in a consonant (6), disyllabics

ending in a diphthong [jo]/[ja] (7), and disyllabics containing an alternating

diphthong (8). As explained in detail in Chapter 4, I propose that these dialectal

variations are the result of different repair strategies to severe phonotactic

constraints (7) or, as in the case of (6) and (8), depend on varying sensitivities to

prosodic constraints. These variations are easily captured in Optimality Theory

through re-ranking of the relevant constraints along the constraint hierarchy.

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III. Theoretical Issues: Underlying Assumptions and the Phonology-

Morphology Interface

The first major issue that must be addressed concerns the affixal status of

the diminutive morpheme(s). Some authors treat -it- as an infix and –(e)citV as a

suffix that attaches directly to the end of the word (Jaeggli1978, Colina 2003).

Others analyze the process as the case of one underlying morpheme—/ƟitV/ or

/sitV/—that then undergoes a process of deletion of the initial segment in

response to phonological pressures (Prieto 1992, Crowhurst 1992). A third

option, and the one that I adopt, analyzes both diminutive forms as suffixes that

attach to a stem that lacks the final vowel present in the base. Note that for words

like clase that end in unstressed /e/, I agree with the majority of authors in

analyzing the /e/ in the corresponding diminutive form as epenthetic.

Crucially, I view Spanish diminutivization as an example of suppletive

allomorphy (Paster 2006a provides a detailed discussion), in which one allomorph

is not phonologically derived from the other. Thus, -it{o, a} is not the result of

deletion of the fricative segment in -cit{o, a}, nor is the latter created from the

former through segmental insertion. Furthermore, and in accordance with the

tenets of Optimality Theory, I view both suffixes as available underlying to all

words. In this way, possible output candidates, such as *casecita and *balconito,

are eliminated by faithfulness and markedness constraints that, with one

exception, are phonological in nature.

This final point leads into a second important issue: the degree to which

morphology interacts with the phonology in this process. With the exception of

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Jaeggli’s (1978) analysis, all the major papers on Spanish diminutivization allow

at least a minor role for morphology. In the case of Prieto (1992), for example,

she adopts Harris’ (1991b) form classes to explain the difference in diminutive

selection between the phonologically similar bases in casa~casita and

clase~clasecita. Crowhurst (1992) posits a morphological constraint on Terminal

Elements /-o/ and /-a/ appearing in non-final position, thus explaining the lack of

an output such as *casacita; this constraint will appear in various forms in the

later OT accounts as well. Colina takes the strongest stance on a role for

morphology stating that “diminutivization is primarily driven by morphological

factors” (2003:45). In addition to the Terminal Element restriction, Colina argues

that attachment of the diminutive morphemes is constrained and determined by

the morphological structure and class of the base.

This fundamental role for morphology found in almost every analysis of

the topic is due to the uneven distribution of the allomorphs in the data of all

dialects in the literature. Viewed strictly from the syllable-count standpoint,

monosyllabic words select -cit{o, a} exclusively, disyllabics select either -it{o, a}

or -cit{o, a}, and trisyllabics or longer also select either of the allomorphs. An

analysis of the data based only on word endings is just as unrevealing: diminutive

selection in words ending in unstressed /o/, /a/ are not limited to either allomorph

(with the exception of the Nicaraguan dialect), nor is there consistent selection in

those words ending in unstressed /e/. Only those words ending in a stressed

vowel and (to a lesser degree) those ending in a consonant exhibit consistent

allomorph selection, in this case -cit{o, a}.

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Most analyses have divided the words, either implicitly or explicitly, into

varying classes to account for why prosodically similar words, such as the

disyllabics casa and clase, select different forms. In the analysis I lay out in the

following chapters, I adopt a similar strategy and provide a role for morphology

by creating two word classes for diminutive formation—Class D1 and D2. Where

I differ from previous analyses is that I propose that my first class, which consists

of those words that end in the unstressed canonical gender markers /o/ and /a/, is

lexically specified to select the -it{o, a} allomorph. Class D2 simply contains

those words that are not bound by this lexical specification and allomorph

selection is determined by a hierarchy of faithfulness and markedness constraints.

In Chapter 2 I review the major analyses of Spanish diminutive formation

over the past thirty five years and, where relevant, highlight possible

shortcomings in these approaches that my analysis overcomes.

Chapter 3 is dedicated to a discussion and analysis of class marker

selection in diminutive formation. In Section II, I review Harris’ (1991a, b) five

word form classes based on word endings for Spanish and then, in Section III,

demonstrate their inadequacy with respect to Spanish diminutives. I argue for a

merger of his Class I and II words into one (Class D1) for the purposes of

diminutivization and combine the remainder of his three classes into Class D2. In

Section IV I defend my assumptions that all diminutive morphemes are suffixes

that attach to a stem that lacks the final vocalic element present in the base.

Additionally, I present a novel OT analysis for class marker selection in Spanish

diminutive formation based on these assumptions.

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In Chapter 4 I present my analysis of diminutive formation for the

Sonoran dialect presented in Crowhurst (1992). Adopting Bonet’s (2006)

approach to Spanish gender allomorphy, in Section II I argue that Class D1 words

are lexically specified to select the -it{o, a} suffix and will only select -(e)cit{o, a}

as a repair strategy to avoid severe phonotactic constraints. This lexical

specification is marked with a subcategorization frame /-it-/ on all members of the

diminutive class D1. Selection of -(e)cit{o, a} results in a violation of a high-

ranking constraint, RESPECT, that governs against selection of non-lexically

specified allomorphs. In Section III, I analyze Class D2 words in Sonoran and

propose that both suffixes are readily available to Class D2 words and that

selection is determined by faithfulness and markedness constraints that are

generally phonological in nature. In Section IV, I provide additional data and

support for the RESPECT constraint and also demonstrate how my analysis handles

the variation between the Sonoran and North Central Peninsular (Colina 2003)

dialects through constraint re-ranking. I also appeal to constraint re-ranking in

Section V to account for the dialectal variation in Paraguayan and Nicaraguan

Spanish. Section VI presents further evidence for my constraint rankings and

presents Hasse diagrams for the four dialects that I address. Finally, in Section

VII I argue that a possible alternative analysis in which the diminutive

morphemes themselves are lexically specified for certain word types (rather than

the other way around) is too cumbersome and misses several important

phonologically conditioned generalizations.

Chapter 5 concludes with a review of the major points of my analysis.

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Chapter 2

Previous Analyses of Spanish Diminutive Formation

I. Jaeggli (1978)

In the first unified account within generative grammar, Jaeggli (1978)

analyzes diminutive formation in the Paraguayan dialect as a distinction between

infixation of the -it- allomorph and suffixation of -citV.3 Using a rule-based,

serial framework, he first establishes a syllabic domain for infixation in which it

occurs only in words that end in an unstressed [+back] vowel:4

1) a. pal + o “stick” pal + it + o palito b. cas + a “house” cas + it + a casita For all other syllabic domains, the suffix -cit + V attaches to the base, where V

will always agree with the gender of the base:

2) a. canción (f.) “song” canción + citV cancioncita b. café (m.) “coffee” café + citV cafecito While this analysis is particularly efficacious for words that end in a single

consonant (2a) or a stressed vowel (2b), Jaeggli must introduce a pair of

allomorphic rules, e-Insertion and s-Deletion, to account for the large group of

words that end in an unstressed -e:

3 Orthographic <c> refers to /s/ in this and other Latin American dialects and generally to /θ/ in Peninsular dialects. 4 While this should also include the high, back vowel /u/ as in tribu “tribe,” Jaeggli does not address such examples.

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e-Insertion & s-Deletion Rules (Jaeggli 1978: 146, 150) 3) a. madre Base madr + e “mother” Suffixation madr + cit + V e-Insertion madr + ecit + V Output madrecita

b. comadre Base comadr + e “godmother” Suffixation comadr + cit + V s-Deletion comadr + it + V Output comadrita

The purpose of these two rules is to avoid an illicit consonant cluster, in

this case *[drs], that would otherwise surface following suffixation.5 It is not

clear from this analysis, however, what motivates the selection of one rule over

another. Why should e-Insertion be triggered with some words and s-Deletion

with others? Jaeggli’s acknowledgement that s-Deletion will occur only in non-

monosyllabic words, while descriptively correct, lacks explanatory power.

Furthermore, if the stated purpose of these rules is to break up disallowed

consonant clusters, then it is unclear why e-Insertion, for example, should occur

in words such as nube~nubecita “cloud” or naipe~naipecito “playing card” in

which the clusters [bs] and [ps] in unattested forms *nubcita/naipcito pose no

difficulties for speakers (cf. abstracción “abstraction,” lapso “lapse”).

This overall lack of motivation for the rules proposed in this analysis

constitutes its major drawback. The fact that infixation occurs with words that

end in an unstressed back vowel perhaps adequately reflects the data, but does

5 Jaeggli does not explain at length the status of word-final /e/ in (3a-b) except to mention later in the article that “suffixation destroys the final vowel of the base, if the base has a final vowel.” (emphasis added) This description of the facts, however, is too broad in that it would also include words with stressed-final vowels (e.g. café~cafecito) that are never deleted.

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little to expand our understanding of why that might be. The word sofá, for

example, ends in a stressed back vowel and therefore must undergo suffixation

(i.e. sofacito), yet the reasons restricting an unattested, but phonotactically well-

formed, *sofita are left unexplained. Finally, Jaeggli’s analysis would require

considerable reworking to account for dialects that select for the -citV allomorph

in words with diphthongs ue/ie in the penultimate syllable despite ending in an

unstressed, back vowel: puerta “door” ~ puertecita, fiesta “party” ~ fiestecita.

II. Prieto (1992)

Prieto’s (1992) analysis of diminutive formation in Spanish argues for a

unified morpheme /-sit/ that maps onto stems or roots. Crucial to her analysis is

the proposal that prosodic structural—and therefore phonological—information is

available to the speaker prior to the application of the morphological process of

diminutivization.

Prieto follows Harris (1991a, b) in her adoption of his five form classes

that divide Spanish nouns, adjectives, and adverbs in accordance with their

subcategorization for inflectional suffixes, as shown in (4):

(4) Form Classes in Spanish (Harris 1991b)6

I. pas-o “step” II. pas-a “raisin” guap-o “handsome” guap-a “beautiful” dentr-o “inside” cerc-a “near, close”

6 See Chapter 3 for a detailed description and discussion of Harris’ and other accounts of Spanish class markers.

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IIIA. jef-e “boss” IIIB. as “ace” verd-e “green” común “common” delant-e “in front” atrás “back, behind” IIIC. pas-e “pass”

inmun-e “immune” adred-e “on purpose”

IV. dos-is “dose” V. trib-u “tribe” vival-es “bon viveur” esnob “snob” lej-os “far”

Prieto also adopts Harris’ (1991b) Marker Spellout Rule in (5). As Prieto remarks

(1992:189), an advantage of this rule is that it stipulates that inflectional markers

[-o, -a] are lexically controlled rather than dependent on the gender of the root.

This obviates the need to exceptionally mark words such as problema which are

masculine but have a terminal element /-a/ generally associated with feminine

nouns.

(5) Marker Spellout Rule (Harris 1991b) Stem Extension: Ø V / [ [ …]d____]i d = uninflected word boundary i = inflected word boundary

a / [Class II]

V / ]d______ o / Elsewhere [i.e. Class I] Within Class III are those words with an epenthetic final /-e/ (IIIA), bare roots

(IIIB) and words with a non-epenthetic /-e/ (IIIC). The difference between IIIA

and IIIC lies in the fact that the words in IIIC need not have undergone word-final

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epenthesis because they would end in one of the permissible word-final

consonants in Spanish / d s θ n l r /: pas-e “pass”, prol-e “progeny.” Therefore

he claims “the lexical entries of these words specify by brute force that they have

an unspecified vowel (manifested phonetically as the default vowel /e/) in stem-

final position” (Harris 1991b: 73). Class IV refers to those words that end in word

markers /-as/, /-es/, /-is/, /-os/ and /-us/. Class V words end in a consonant or /-i,

-u/.

Prieto argues that Diminutive Formation triggers stem extension in Class I

and II, which in her analysis includes the addition of a moraic unit. Class III

words, however, are lexically excepted from stem extension and, therefore,

receive no moraic unit upon Diminutive Formation. (The status of Class IV and

Classa V words in this process is unclear in Prieto’s analysis since she does not

directly address them in terms of diminutivization). The addition of the moraic

unit accounts for the difference between a Class III word like pintor/pintorcito

and a Class II, as in casa/casita since the morpheme /-sit/ will undergo stray

erasure of /s/ if the next available unit is vocalic. This distinction is illustrated in

(6a-b).7

7 I use the IPA throughout this paper and have adapted the symbols of the original authors to the IPA whenever necessary.

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(6) a. casa ~ casita [kas-] [Class II] [ k a s ] [-sitV] µ µ Moraic unit through stem extension σ σ

Removed via ‘stray erasure’ [ k a s ] [ s i t V] µ µ σ σ [ k a s i t a ] µ µ µ σ σ σ (6) b. pintor ~ pintorcito

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[ p i n t o r] [s i t V] µ µ σ σ “stray erasure” does not occur since no moraic unit has been added (i.e. No stem extension) [ p i n t o r] [s i t V] µ µ µ µ σ σ σ σ Prieto analyzes those words with final word marker /-e/ by stipulating a variation

of the Spellout Rule called the Default Vowel Rule in which /-e/ is added to the

root before diminutivization. This ordering in (7) would apply to words in Class

IIIA and IIIC.

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(7) clase ~ clasecita Application of Default Vowel Rule [ k l a s V ] V = Default Vowel /e/ µ µ σ σ [ k l a s e ] [ s i t V] µ µ µ µ σ σ σ σ

To account for dialectal variation between words like pan

(pancito~panecito), Prieto (1992: 195) invokes a minimal word constraint (8) that

establishes a word template of two trochaic feet.

(8) Minimal Word Template Wd Foot Foot σ σ σ σ pa ne si to

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The panecito dialect of Central Peninsular Spanish, then, requires satisfaction of

this constraint. Presumably speakers of pancito dialects (Bolivian, Paraguayan,

etc.) would not be sensitive to this constraint. However, Prieto does not specify

that certain word classes must adhere to this constraint while others do not. Given

the fact that she uses this constraint to partially explain forms such as

sabio~sabiecito “sage” (a Class I word) and puerta~puertecita “door” (a Class II

word), it is safe to assume that the minimal word constraint must be operational

across all word classes under her analysis.

Following this line of reasoning, in the relevant dialects the minimal word

constraint should also apply to other Class I and Class II words that never trigger

an epenthetic /e/ despite violating the template of two bisyllabic feet, such as libro

“book” or mesa “table.”

(9) libro li.br.ito *li.bre.si.to

mesa me.si.ta. *me.se.si.ta

It could be argued that Prieto does not intend the epenthetic /e/ found in puertecita

and sabiecita types to be considered a result of the same process of template

satisfaction as found with panecito, but rather that for independent reasons—

preservation of the diphthong in puertecita and avoidance of an illicit [ji] cluster

in the case of sabiecito—the epenthetic /e/ emerges during diminutivization and

has the added benefit, in some cases, of creating a new word that satisfies the

19

minimal word template. Nevertheless, it would still be necessary to explain why

a prosodic constraint should apply to one class of words, but not to others.

Aside from the issue of selective application of constraints, Prieto’s

analysis is not able to account convincingly for all of the data. As mentioned

above, she argues that epenthesis is triggered in words with alternating diphthongs

(e.g. piedra/pedroso “stone” / “rocky”, nuevo/novedad “new” / “newness,

novelty”), as a means of preserving that diphthong. For example, in some dialects

puerta is diminutivized as puertecita. However, she offers no explanation as to

why the epenthetic /e/ is instrumental in preserving the diphthong nor is there any

indication of why in dialects that favor puertita the diphthong remains despite the

lack of epenthesis. Clearly there is a generalization to be uncovered with respect

to the behavior of cases of alternating diphthongs; it is just not captured in

Prieto’s analysis.

III. Crowhurst (1992)

Crowhurst (1992) limits her analysis to the Sonoran dialect of Northern

Mexico. She posits a minimality constraint that triggers /-e/ epenthesis on the end

of a stem that does not contain a disyllabic foot prior to a process of suffixation of

the diminutive morpheme -(c)itV. This approach functions particularly well with

monosyllabic words such as pan.

20

(10) [ p a n ] + sito [ p a n e ] + sito [panesito]

F[σ σ] F[σ σ]

In her view a template of a disyllabic foot is mapped onto the stem. Lacking two

syllables to satisfy the template, the epenthetic /e/ is added, thus fulfilling the

template that will allow for proper suffixation.

With disyllabic words that end in /o/ or /a/ (Terminal Elements in

Crowhurst’s terminology), the disyllabic template is satisfied, but she must still

account for why the suffixed form is not *librosito.

(11) [l i b r o ] + sito *librosito

F[σ σ]

She argues that after satisfaction of the disyllabic template and before suffixation

the Terminal Element must be deleted. This move is motivated by a

morphological constraint that a Terminal Element must surface in final position.

(12) Following TE Deletion

[ l i b r ] + sito

21

Much as in the Prieto analysis in which she claims Stray Erasure of

syllabically unattached segments, Crowhurst must also account for the fact that

the /s/ does not surface in the suffixed form. She appeals to a second template

apart from the process of diminutive formation that demands that an emptied

moraic node must reattach to the nearest unattached segment capable of bearing a

mora (13).

(13) [l i b r ] + sito [l i b r ] + s i t o

µ µ µ µ µ

σ σ σ σ σ

This leaves Crowhurst with essentially the same issue as Prieto, and she deals

with it in a similar way. The reattachment occurs at the segment /i/ of the

diminutive suffix and she argues that this leaves the sibilant ‘trapped,’ which is

then erased from the surface structure. Crucial for this analysis, monosyllabic

words like pan lack a terminal element and therefore this second template

satisfaction is not relevant. Longer words lacking a Terminal Element, such as

those ending in a consonant (escritor) or a stressed vowel (café), not only satisfy

the disyllabic template and therefore lack /-e/ epenthesis as in panecito, but also

do not require reattachment of a mora since there is no TE to be deleted. In these

cases, simple attachment of the -citV morpheme applies, as in (14).

22

(14) [k a f e] + s i t o

µ µ µ µ

F[σ σ] σ σ

To account for diminutive forms such as burdelito and papelito that also

lack a Terminal Element but in which the /s/ fails to surface after suffixation,

Crowhurst appeals to the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) and states that

adjacent segments with the feature [+continuant] violate the OCP in Mexican

Spanish with the stipulation that the restriction is in effect only across morpheme

boundaries. The rightmost [+continuant] segment (i.e. /s/), then, is deleted.

(15) [ p a p e l ] s i t o [papel] ito

[+cont] [+cont]

To capture the contrast between the diminutive forms of disyllabics ending

in /-e/ (madrecita) and trisyllabics and longer ending in /-e/ (comadrita,

uniformito) which surface without the /-es-/, her analysis assumes that the final /e/

in both cases is epenthetic and therefore not present in the stem at the time of

satisfaction of the disyllabic foot template. The epenthetic /e/, it is claimed,

23

surfaces as a repair for consonants or consonant clusters that Spanish prohibits in

coda position.

In this way, the stems for madre and comadre at the moment of disyllabic

template mapping are as follows in (16).

(16) [m a d r ] [k o m a d r ]

µ µ µ

σ σ σ

While at this stage they both contain unsyllabifiable consonant clusters in the

coda position, the crucial distinction is that madr- does not satisfy the disyllabic

requirement, thus triggering /e/ epenthesis prior to suffixation as in pan/panecito

above. On the other hand, komadr- satisfies the template and suffixation will

apply in the same manner as libro/librito with erasure of the trapped /s/.

(17) [m a d r e] + sita [ k o m a d r ] s i t a

µ µ µ µ µ µ σ σ σ σ σ σ

With certain words that contain the diphthong [je] in the first syllable

(such as diente), Crowhurst notes an alternation in their diminutive form: both

24

[djentesito] and [djentito] are acceptable variations. She accounts for the two

forms by assuming the two different syllable structures for diente in (18).

(18) a. [djèn.te] b. [dì.en.te]

The first is underlyingly parsed as monosyllabic [dyent-] and therefore unable to

satisfy the minimality constraint, triggering the epenthetic /e/ and /sito/ as in

panecito. In the second, the surface glide is resyllabified as the nucleus of its own

syllable [di.en.ti.to] and in this way satisfies the disyllabic template and

diminutivizes as libro/librito above. However, her informants vary in their

acceptability of these alternating forms, which, she suggests, could indicate that

this alternation and the subsequent resyllabification in (18b) is no longer

productive, but rather residue of a permissible process at an earlier point in the

language. As she claims, this accounts for why it occurs with some words but not

others, (cf. piel “skin” [pyelesita], *[pi.elita]).

In a response to Crowhurst’s analysis, Harris (1994) suggests that

diminutive formation may owe more to morphological and lexical factors than

Crowhurst’s phonological approach acknowledges. One of Harris’ criticisms

concerns Crowhurst’s analysis of words that end in the -io/-ia diphthong:

ebrio/ebriecito, novia/noviecita. Since these words vacuously satisfy the

disyllabic template and therefore predict the suffixation of –itV, Crowhurst

appeals to a ‘well-formedness condition’ proposed by Harris in (19) that prevents

two tautosyllabic homorganic vocoids from occurring in the same syllable, thus

25

precluding the ill-formed [no.βji.ta]. Harris asserts that she has misunderstood his

constraint in that this restriction is only applicable in rhyme position (cf. Harris

1983: 17, 34).

(19) *-ij. *-uw. *-ji. *-wu.

He notes that diminutives such as arro.yi.to and ra.yi.ta (*ra.ye.ci.ta) do

not pose a problem despite the presence of tautosyllabic [+high, +front] vocoids.

However, neither Crowhurst or Harris draws attention to the generalization that

the final diphthong -io/-ia words that are addressed in Crowhurst are all preceded

by one or two consonants (cf. el pa.tjo ~ pa.tje.cito, el gar.fjo ~ gar.fje.cito)

whereas the two examples in the Harris article are not preceded by tautosyllabic

consonants. The relevant question, then, may not be whether homorganic vocoids

are permissible tautosyllabically (clearly they are), but rather if [.Cji] is an

allowable syllable. Indeed, Harris (1983) (also see Hualde 1992, Kaisse 1999)

analyzes pre-vocalic glides as part of the nucleus in syllables that contain another

segment available for onset position. Thus, the glide in ra.yi.ta is in onset

position, but part of the nucleus in e.brje.ci.to. One needs only to alter slightly

Crowhurst’s definition to state that tautosyllabic homorganic vocoids in rhyme

position are prohibited. This would account more precisely for the relevant data

presented in Crowhurst without impacting her argument for the ungrammaticality

of *[no.βji.ta].

26

Of related interest, Prieto (1992) notes variation on these types in

diminutive formation, such as radiecita and radita from radio. Miranda (1999)

reports that in Nicaraguan radita is the norm. The lack of the form *radyita offers

prima facie evidence in favor of such a constraint.8

Problematic, perhaps, are Crowhurst’s proposed repairs of this restriction

against homorganic vocoids. For disyllabic words that end in the diphthong [jo]

or [ja] (novio “boyfriend”, tapia “wall”), she proposes a repair in which the mora

that attaches to the high vowel [i] in the diminutive following Terminal Element

Deletion is subsequently delinked as a response to the aforementioned well-

formedness constraint. The empty mora then is filled by an epenthetic /e/ and

thus the entire diminutive allomorph can attach without stray deletion of the [s],

as shown with the disyllabic tapia in (20).

(20) Double-/i/ Repair I (Crowhurst 1992: 246)

F F

σ σ σ σ σ σ σ σ µ µ µ µ µ µ µ µ [t a p j ] s i t a [t a p j e] s i t a

This implies some ordering difficulties for her analysis that she does not

address. First, in the diminutive formation of a word such as chamaka “girl”, she

must order stray erasure of the unattached [s] following Terminal Element

8 Although Harris (1994) does cite an informant who accepts labiíto, apiíto and ampliíto, it is not clear from his transcriptions if these are tautosyllabic. This issue will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

27

Deletion, but before syllabification of the suffix. Otherwise, the analysis would

predict *[cha.mak.si.ta]. With a word like tapia, the attachment of the mora to the

high vowel in the diminutive would in turn trigger stray erasure of the [s], as it

does in the chamaka example. Thus the [s] would be unable to surface and we

would be left with the unattested *tapieíta [ta.pje.i.ta].

Since longer than disyllabic words ending in these diphthongs generally

pattern differently than disyllabic words (cf. iglesia~iglesita “church”), Crowhurst

must introduce a second repair strategy to account for the distinct output. In this

case the mora remains attached to the high vocoid in the diminutive and the glide

is delinked from the syllable structure, leaving both the glide and the [s] to be

stray erased.

(21) Double-/i/ Repair II (1992: 247)

F F

σ σ σ σ σ σ σ µ µ µ µ µ µ µ [i g l e s j] s i t a [i g l e s] i t a

Again the question of ordering emerges since both repair strategies must

be taken into account during diminutive formation. If the repair in (20) is ordered

first, then there would be no need for the second repair and all words ending in

[jo] or [ja] would trigger epenthesis, predicting *iglesiecita. If the second repair

is ordered first, then the reverse would occur, with *tapita being the surface form.

28

One remedy would be to propose that the two repairs are simultaneously in play.

However, this would go against the very nature of a serial analysis such as this

one and would still require the introduction of some separate mechanism through

which the second repair strategy (21) applied only to longer bases and ignored

shorter ones and vice versa for the first repair (20).

Beyond the issue I have raised here, Harris (1994) also finds problems

with Crowhurst’s distinction between forms like madre/madrecita and

tigre/tigrito (*tigrecito) and her suggestion that the final /e/ in tigre qualifies as a

Terminal Element and is present in the stem when the disyllabic template is

satisfied, subsequently the /e/ in tigre would undergo Terminal Element Deletion.

In madre, however, Crowhurst analyzes the /e/ as epenthetic and therefore not

present in the stem at the moment of template satisfaction. Harris reiterates his

claim in (1991a) that no such distinction can be made and that all word-final /e/

segments are Terminal Elements. It is not clear, then, how the two above forms

should differ, except that tigrito does not fit into Crowhurst’s analysis.

Finally, Crowhurst’s invocation of the OCP to explain the

ungrammaticality of *arbolcito due to a constraint on adjacent [+continuant]

segments is countered by examples presented by Harris (1994): des + liar; compul

+ sión. In both, neither the heteromorphemic cluster /ls/ or the inverse /sl/ causes

any difficulty for speakers. Harris raises further doubts by noting that the status

of /l/ as [+continuant] is highly controversial.

Without fully developing an analysis of his own, Harris claims that

selection of -itV or -(e)citV cannot be accounted for phonologically, but rather by

29

morphology and that lexical specification of the roots results in an arbitrariness

that confounds attempts at systematic explication.9

One example that Harris provides to support his preferential treatment of

morphology over phonology comes in the form of an alternation between

llorona/lloroncita and corona/coronita. From a phonological standpoint there is

little to suggest that they should behave differently. However, in Harris’ account,

lloroncita is actually derived from llorón, which belongs to his Class III stems

that have a bare root and would therefore select the -citV morpheme. On the other

hand, corona belongs to Class II that includes all words with the Terminal

Element -a. In his view a strictly phonological analysis fails to account for this

distinction.

IV. Ambadiang (1997)

Ambadiang (1997) rejects the claims of previous analyses with respect to

the influence of prosody as well as the adoption of Harris’ declensional classes in

diminutive formation. One of Ambadiang’s critiques of these declensional

classes in the discussion of diminutives is the lack of a one-to-one correspondence

between his five classes and the two diminutive allomorphs that he assumes.

According to Harris, his form classes are based on shared word markers and not

by gender as is sometimes suggested. Thus, masculine mapa “map” (notable for

its canonically feminine word marker –a) is joined to Class II with words such as

hija “daughter” that exhibit no such incongruity between word marker and

9 As an example of such arbitrariness he notes some preference of fres[k]ecito by some speakers when fres[k]ito would be the expected form.

30

gender. However, Ambadiang argues that Harris’ discussion of the structural

differences between corona and llorona actually undermines his motivation for

his five classes based on word markers. He questions the need to establish an

exception for llorona-type words that should, by Harris’ own reasoning, be

included with mapa and hija in Class II based on their shared word marker -a.

According to Ambadiang, one could argue that chico/chica should belong to the

same class in spite of their different word markers, since they both share the same

diminutive allomorph (in their case -itV) in the same manner as

lloroncito/lloroncita.

Ambadiang proposes three morphological classes to correspond to three

diminutive allomorphs: 1) minimal roots take -ecitV; 2) radical morphemes take

-citV; 3) all others take -itV.

Minimal roots refer to those words that do not fulfill the following

‘canonical’ morphological structure of Spanish nouns and adjectives.

[ [ [ _________ ] root ] gen. ] num.

In accordance with this structure the last two segments of a fully inflected noun or

adjective would refer to gender and number respectively. While chicos/chicas

would satisfy this regular structure, soles “suns” (from sol) would not since -e-

makes no reference to gender.

Radical morphemes refer to a class of words that may be interpreted as

satisfying the above morphological structure. The entire reasoning behind the

31

manner in which a word such as rincón “corner” is said to fulfill this structure

will not be recounted here, but it will be mentioned that Ambadiang views some

words that end in accented vowels, /n/ or /r/ as having ‘saturated’ the above

structure while not making reference to gender.

V. Elordieta and Carreira (1996)

Elordieta and Carreira (1996) offer the first account of Spanish Diminutive

Formation within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). In their analysis

they argue that –cit is the base form of the diminutive morpheme and that –it only

surfaces (with the first segment deleted) in order to satisfy certain prosodic and

faithfulness constraints. In particular, they appeal to a faithfulness constraint on

moraic structure, IDENT-IO (Stµ), to account for much of the distribution.

(22) IDENT-IO (Stµ) (Elordieta & Carreira 1996: 54)

Let S1 be a stem in the input representation, and S2 its correspondent in the output

representation. The association of S1 and S2 to moraic structure must be the same.

This constraint interacts with constraints on epenthesis (DEP-IO) and deletion

(MAX-IO) to predict the correct output in consonant-final words of two syllables

or more. In (23) candidate (a) is optimal because it maintains the final consonant

of the base [n] in coda position, whereas candidate (b) with the suffix –it would

32

result in [n] being in onset position and, consequently, a loss of its moraic status

and a fatal violation of IDENT-IO (STµ).

(23) balcón ~ balconcito “balcony”

balkón -cit

µ

IDENT-

IO(STµ)

DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. bal.kon.ci.to µ

b. bal.ko.ni.to *! *

c. bal.ko.n[e].ci.to *! *

Tableau (24) illustrates their analysis for words that end in class markers –o or –a,

such as cana “gray hair.” They introduce an alignment constraint, ALIGN-GM,

which states that the left edge of a gender marker must align to the right edge of

the derived word. This constraint eliminates candidate (d) and the possibility of

the –cit morpheme attaching directly to the base. Candidate (b) is eliminated

because attachment of the –cit morpheme adds a mora, violating IDENT-IO (Stµ).

There are two possible repair strategies to maintain the [n] in non-moraic onset

position: 1) add an epenthetic /e/ (candidate c) or 2) delete the first segment in the

diminutive morpheme. The crucial ranking of DEP-IO over MAX-IO reflects the

preference for the second option.

33

(24) cana ~ canita “gray hair” cana, -cit ALIGN-GM IDENT-IO

(STµ) DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. ka.ni.ta *

b. kan.si.ta µ

*!

c. ka.n[e].si.ta *!

d. ka.na.si.ta *!

For words that end in –e (e.g. calle “street”), they introduce an additional

constraint, GM = Class I-II, which states that a gender marker as understood in

ALIGN-GM must only be of Harris’ form class I or II (i.e. –o or –a). The sole

purpose of this constraint seems to be to eliminate outputs such as candidate (c) in

Tableau (25) (1996: 57).

(25) calle ~ callecita “street”

{[kaʝ]-e, -sit} GM = CLASS I-II

ALIGN-GM DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. ka.ʝe.si.ta * b. ka.ʝi.ta * *!* c. ka.ʝi.te * *!

This tableau introduces some confusion into their analysis because it implies two

separate definitions for gender markers (GM). If GMs refer only to [o] and [a],

then it is unclear why candidates (a) and (b) should violate ALIGN-GM. Since

they do and candidate (c) does not, we must assume that they want the GM in this

constraint to refer to any class marker. This confusion of terms taken together

with the oddness of a constraint that defines rather than constrains suggests a

more efficient approach in which GM = CLASS I-II is eliminated and where

34

“GM” in ALIGN-GM is defined more narrowly as referring to only [o] or [a]. This

adjustment would not fundamentally change their analysis and candidate (a) still

wins (26).

(26) calle ~ callecita

{[kaʝ]-e, -sit} ALIGN-GM DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. ka.ʝe.si.ta

b. ka.ʝi.ta *!*

c. ka.ʝi.te *! *

Both of these approaches, however, propose a role for morphology in their

analysis and return us to the question of the existence of a fundamental difference

between words that end in –o or –a and those that end in –e. This difference in

Diminutive Formation is undermined somewhat by the behavior of words of more

than two syllables that end in –e, such as comadre, whose diminutive is

comadrita.

In Tableau (27), their analysis would incorrectly predict candidate (b),

comadrecita, due to the MAX-IO violations for candidates (a) and (c).

(27) comadre ~ comadrita

{[komadr-] –e, -sit} GM = CLASS I-II

ALIGN-GM DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. ko.ma.dri.ta * *!*

b. ko.ma.dre.si.ta *

c. ko.ma.dre.i.ta * *!

Furthermore, for those words that end in diphthong –io/a, such as radio,

Elordieta and Carreira again appeal to IDENT-IO(STµ) to account for the

35

diminutive form radiecito. As Tableau (28) illustrates, they argue that the glide in

radio is non-moraic and only candidate (a) preserves the original moraic structure,

at the expense of a DEP-IO violation due to [e] epenthesis.

(28) radio ~ radiecito “radio” (1996: 56) radio, -sit µ σ

ALIGN-GM IDENT-IO (STµ)

DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. ra.dj[e].si.to µ σ

*

b. ra.di.í.to µ σ

*!

*

c. ra.di.sí.to µ σ

*!

While it is true that candidates (b) and (c) fundamentally change the status of the

glide to the head of its own syllable, epenthesis in candidate (a) is not the only

possible solution. Their analysis does not consider a candidate such as radito, in

which the glide and the first element of the diminutive is simply deleted. As

Tableau (29) indicates, this candidate (d) would in fact be optimal based on their

constraints and rankings. Since DEP-IO is ranked above MAX-IO without any

other intervening constraints, their rankings predict that, all things being equal,

epenthesis is always a less-favored repair strategy than deletion.

36

(29) radio ~ radiecito “radio” radio, -sit µ σ

ALIGN-GM IDENT-IO (STµ)

DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. ra.dj[e].si.to µ σ

*!

b. ra.di.í.to µ σ

*!

*

c. ra.di.si.to µ σ

*!

d. ra.di.to10 **

Evidence that deletion is a viable repair strategy in diminutive formation is

found in longer than disyllabic words that end in the diphthong –io/a, such as

dinosaurio “dinosaur.” These types are not addressed in their analysis, but

Tableau (30) shows that their constraint ranking does predict the attested

candidate (d) dinosaurito. However, as with the problems in their analysis for

disyllabic calle vs. longer comadre types, there is no mechanism for adequately

differentiating between the behavior of radio~radiecito and

dinosaurio~dinosaurito types—correctly predicting dinosaurito, but incorrectly

*radito.

On the surface the generalization seems to relate to the number of

syllables. In both cases the disyllabic bases maintain the –cit morpheme

10 I assume the high vowel here to be part of the diminutive morpheme. It is possible to consider the vowel to be part of the base, but IDENT-IO (STµ) would eliminate that candidate in the same manner as candidates (b) and (c), still leaving (d) as the optimal candidate.

37

(following the assumption of Elordieta & Carreira that there is just one

morpheme), while undergoing deletion of two segments in the longer bases.

(30) dinosaurio ~ dinosaurito “dinosaur” dinosawrjo, -sit µ σ

ALIGN-GM

IDENT-IO (STµ)

DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. di.no.saw.rj[e].si.to µ σ

*!

b. di.no.saw.ri.í.to µ σ

*!

*

c. di.no.saw.ri.si.to µ σ

*!

d. di.no.saw.ri.to **

While Elordieta & Carreira do not successfully account for the different

outcomes for these cases, they do integrate a constraint, DISYLLST/B, which refers

to the number of syllables in a word.

(31) DISYLLST/B: The base of suffixation must be disyllabic, or the stem must

be underlyingly disyllabic.11 (1996: 59)

11 The stated reason for this distinction between the base and the stem is to account for disyllabic words such as cana, in which the base would be monosyllabic can and therefore would trigger epenthesis under their analysis *canecita. Since this does not occur, they assume that the stem ca.na must be disyllabic for these words. It is not clear why the constraint does not simply state that the stem must be disyllabic. It would not seem to impact their basic analysis.

38

This constraint accounts for epenthetic [e] in monosyllabic types such as

pan~panecito.12

(32) pan ~ panecito “bread” (1996:58)

pan, -sit µ

DISYLL IDENT-IO(STµ)

DEP-IO MAX-IO

a. pa.n[e].-si.to

* *

b. pan.-si.to µ

*!

c. pa.n-i.to *! *

Candidates (b) and (c) both violate DISYLL since their pre-suffixal stems are

monosyllabic. Candidate (a) satisfies this constraint through epenthesis, but

comes at the price of a violation of IDENT-IO(STµ) because the nasal [n] that had a

mora in the base is now in non-moraic onset position of the following syllable.

VI. Miranda (1999)

In an OT analysis of Nicaraguan, Miranda (1999) proposes two

allomorphs -ito/a and -cito/a and argues that the process is an output to output

correspondence relation in which “the standard of comparison...is not the

underlying representation, but an output form which has been footed, has received

stress, and has been assigned gender” (1999: 131). Selection of the diminutive is

determined through an evaluation of the base. Miranda identifies three main

12 As noted previously, some dialects exhibit a preference for pancito. Unfortunately, Elordieta & Carreira do not indicate to which dialect(s) their analysis refers. It is not clear how their analysis would account for dialectal variation such as the panecito/pancito distinction.

39

elements that are evaluated: (a) the size of the base; (b) the syllabic structure of

the last syllable; and (c) the characteristics of final vowels (134).

She analyzes the basic patterns of diminutivization through the following

ranking and constraints in (33).

(33) STEMMIN, MAX-HEAD, IDENT-OO (STµ) >> ALIGN-DIM

STEMMIN: STEMMIN = WORDMIN: The stem must at minimum be a prosodic

word, that is, a bimoraic foot (1999: 135).

MAX-HEAD: The prosodic head of the base must be present in the output

(1999:143).

IDENT-OO (STµ): Outputs must be faithful to the syllabic structure of the base

(1999: 137; cf. Elordieta & Carreira 1996: 54).

ALIGN-DIM: The left edge of the diminutive must align to the right edge of the

stem (1999: 132).

In the case of the constraint STEMMIN, it is worth examining in detail the

definitions for stem and base put forth by Miranda in order to better understand

the following discussion of her analysis. In a footnote, Miranda states that the

“[b]ase refers to the unaffixed surfaces forms. Stem is the part of the base

prosodically determined to which diminutive allomorphs attach” (1999: 101).

Therefore, by this definition the base of casa, for example, is ca.sa and the base

of clase is cla.se. It is not clear, however, what the stems of these two words

should be. Based on their respective diminutive forms, casita and clasecita, it

40

stands to reason that the stems are cas- in the case of casa and clase- in the case

of clase. However, if this were the case then none of the disyllabics that end in –o

or –a would satisfy STEMMIN and we might expect epenthesis to form a stem

such as *case- and a diminutive form of *casecita.

Every analysis must deal in some way with the fundamental difference

between casa types and clase types that share the same prosodic and phonological

structure, but exhibit distinct diminutive forms: casita and clasecita. For her part,

Miranda argues that for those words that end in unstressed –o or –a, the final

vowels are part of the stem when diminutives attach (1999: 103). Her evidence is

that non-canonical masculine words that end in an –a instead of an –o, such as

poema (m.) “poem,” or vice versa for feminine words ending in an –o, foto (f.)

“photo” tend to maintain the marked vowel in their diminutive forms:

poema~poemita, foto~fotito. While interesting, this does not in itself seem to

constitute sufficient evidence to postulate two separate processes. The fact that

Miranda offers no Tableaux for words that end in unstressed –o or –a confounds

the matter further, since we are left to guess how the various candidates for a

word like casa would fare against her constraints and rankings.

Apart from the incomplete nature of Miranda’s analysis, there is also

suspect treatment of disyllabics ending in –e and their lengthier counterparts, such

as comadre (Adopted from Miranda 1999: 136). Miranda illustrates two possible

analyses of disyllabics that end in –e. In (34), she assumes that the base-final [e]

is retained in the stem in candidate (a) but is not in candidate (b).

41

This tableau raises two questions about the violations for candidate (b). The first

concerns the evaluation of the stem. Since the clasita candidate violates

STEMMIN, we must assume that the evaluation of the stem occurs only after

affixation. Otherwise, the stem [klas-] would satisfy the bimoraic requirement to

fulfill STEMMIN. If evaluation occurs after affixation (which, incidentally, strips

the constraint of any meaning), then this invalidates the argument that the

unstressed –o or –a is present in the stem of words like casa. As Tableau (35)

illustrates, this would wrongly predict *casecita. For Miranda’s analysis to work,

we must assume that stem evaluation of casa types occurs before affixation, but

after affixation for clase types. Her analysis provides no theoretical basis for such

a move.

(34) clase ~ clasecita “class” Base: [klá.se] STEMMIN ALIGN-DIM

a. [kla.se.-sí.ta]

b. [kla.sí.ta] *! *

(35) casa ~ casita “house”

Base: [ká.sa] STEMMIN ALIGN-DIM

a. [ka.se.-sí.ta] *

b. [ka.sí.ta] *!

The second issue in (34) is related to the ALIGN-DIM constraint that

dictates that the left edge of the diminutive attach to the right edge of the stem. In

disyllabics like clase, this constraint is not a factor and seems to be introduced to

42

deal with longer words, like comadre. According to Miranda, there are two ways

to analyze the stem of comadre. In Tableau (36), the stem is analyzed as

maintaining the base-final /e/. This approach, however, wrongly predicts

candidate (a), *comadrecita.

(36) comadre ~ comadrita

Base: [ko.ma.dre] STEMMIN ALIGN-DIM

a. [ko.ma.dre.-sí.ta]

b. [ko.ma.drí.ta] *!

Therefore, she argues that the base-final /e/ must not be retained in the stem, as in

(37).

(37) comadre ~ comadrita

Base: [ko.ma.dr-e] STEMMIN ALIGN-DIM

a. [ko.ma.dr-[e].-sí.ta] *!

b. [ko.ma.dr-í.ta]

This explanation seems ad hoc and serves more to validate her constraints and

their rankings rather than a consistent analysis of the data. In order for this

analysis to function, we must establish at least three distinct processes:

A) Disyllabics ending in unstressed –o or –a:

casa Base: ka.sa

Stem: ka.sa

1) STEMMIN evaluation of candidates prior to affixation

43

2) Attachment of diminutive –it and “relocation” of stem-

final [a]

Optimal output: casita

B) Disyllabics ending in unstressed –e:

clase Base: kla.se

Stem: kla.se

1) Attachment of diminutive

2) Stem evaluation of candidates following affixation

Optimal output: clasecita

C) Trisyllabics or longer ending in unstressed –e:

comadre Base: ko.ma.dre

Stem: ko.ma.dr-

1) Attachment of diminutive

2) Stem evaluation of candidates following affixation

Optimal output: comadrita

Process A differs from B and C in that STEMMIN must evaluate the length of the

candidates’ stem prior to affixation in A, but after affixation in B and C. This is

antithetical to the principles of the framework of Optimality Theory in which she

44

is working in that all possible candidates must be evaluated at the same time.13

Finally, B and C establish two separate processes for words ending in unstressed

–e, in which base-final /e/ is retained in the stem in disyllabics, but dropped from

the stem in longer words in C.

VII. Colina (2003)

In contrast to the analyses in Elordieta and Carreira (1996) and Miranda

(1999), Colina (2003), in her analysis of Northern/Central Peninsular Spanish

diminutive formation, assumes that –e, -a, and –o are all Terminal Elements (TE)

and therefore subject to the same constraints. She proposes that -it is an infix that

attaches to words that end in a TE and -citV attaches to those without a TE.

However, in a word such as clase, the latter is exceptionally selected to form

clasecita due to the emergence of an unmarked prosodic structure of two binary

feet (clà.se) (cí.ta) and the segmental identity of final -e with that of the

epenthetic vowel -e in Spanish. Although the aforementioned potential candidate

for casa, *casa-cita, would share this preferred prosodic structure, it is eliminated

by a higher-ranking constraint against TEs in non-final position. Under this

analysis, clasecita, avoids this constraint because the TE /e/ is re-analyzed as

epenthetic.

38) *TE-: Terminal Elements shall not surface in non-final position.

13 It is possible to handle this issue in the Lexical Phonology model of OT, such as Stratal OT (Bermúdez Otero 2007) in which constraints can be reranked at different strata, but Miranda offers no indication that she is working from such assumptions.

45

-citV TO PrWd: Align left edge of -citV to the right edge of the

prosodic word.

DIM TO PRWD: Align the left edge of the diminutive to the right

edge of the prosodic word.

The ranking of these constraints *TE-, -citV TO PRWD >> DIM TO PRWD reflects

Colina’s view that diminutives want to attach at the word level and that –citV

would actually be the preferred allomorph were it not for the fact that so many

words end in a TE, which must always emerge in word-final position. This

comes at the expense of the alignment constraint DIM TO PRWD, which favors

attachment of the suffix to the prosodic word, as in canción/cancioncita.

Tableaux (39) and (40) illustrate this basic constraint ranking.

(39) vaso ~ vasito “(drinking) glass” bas-o + DIM *TE- -citV TO PRWD DIM TO PRWD

a. bas-it-o *

b. bas-sito *! *

c. bas-o] sito *!

Candidate (c) in (39) is eliminated because TE [o] is in non-final position,

a violation of highest ranking *TE-. Candidate (b) satisfies this constraint, but

fails to emerge as the winner due to the stronger preference for –citV to attach to a

prosodic word. Therefore, candidate (a) is the optimal choice.

46

(40) rincón ~ rinconcito “corner” rinkón + DIM *TE- -citV TO PRWD DIM TO PRWD

a. rinkón]-sito

b. rinkón]-it-

Colina (2003: 58) notes that candidate (b) in Tableau (40) would not be

eligible because she claims that the right edge of the -it- allomorph must align

with the TE of the base, but since candidate (b) lacks a TE it cannot be the

optimal candidate. The constraint Colina proposes in order to eliminate (40b) is

–it- TO VTE: “The right edge of the –it- allomorph must be aligned to the left edge

of a vocalic [+syllabic] TE of the base.” (2003: 59)

There are a couple of issues with her application of this constraint. First,

this constraint is never integrated into any of her tableaux nor is it clear where it

fits into her constraint rankings. Second, this constraint precludes the addition of

a candidate in (40), such as *rinconito, in which there is a TE [o] aligned to the

right edge of –it-. The legitimacy of such a candidate is supported by the many

disyllabic and longer words that end in /l/ (e.g. árbol) and lack a TE in the base,

but that select for the –it- allomorph (arbolito).

Another potential problem for the basic analysis in (39) and (40) concerns

disyllabic words ending in TE [e], such as clase/clasecita. The diminutive form

would seem to leave the TE -e in non word-final position, a violation of a high-

ranking constraint under Colina’s analysis. She resolves this issue by proposing

47

that the -e segment in clasecita is no longer considered a TE and has been

reanalyzed as an epenthetic -e, thus averting any violation of *TE-. This move, in

turn, incurs a violation of a low-ranking constraint LINEARITY-BSF in which the

“precedence structure” between the base and suffixed form must align.14

Colina also introduces a series of prosodic constraints that she

incorporates into PRWD-MINWD, which is a cover term to represent the effects of

the following four constraints in (41) (Colina 2003: 59).

(41) PARSE SYLL: All syllables must be parsed.

FTBIN: All feet must be binary.

ALIGN-L (FOOT, PRWD): Every foot stands in initial position in the

prosodic word.

ALIGN-R (FOOT, PRWD): Every foot stands in final position in the

prosodic word.

One issue with the PRWD-MINWD constraint (again, actually a cover term

for the constraints in (41)) is that it necessitates an additional layer of evaluation

beyond the two extant levels traditionally proposed in Optimality Theory: input-

to-output evaluation and output-to-output evaluation. For example, in the latter

the output candidate casita would be evaluated against the output form of its pre-

suffixal form casa. A candidate such as casecita, in which the segmental identity

of the word-final vowel [a] is changed to [e], is a violation of output-to-output

faithfulness. Colina’s constraint IDENT-SEG. PRWD formalizes this restriction. 14 See Colina (2003: 61-63) for a full discussion of this issue.

48

PRWD-MINWD, however, does not evaluate an output-to-output

correspondence, but rather the stem to which the diminutive attaches.

Additionally, it only evaluates those stems that form a prosodic word. For

example, candidates (a) and (b) in Tableau (42) vacuously satisfy PRWD-MINWD

because kas- is not a prosodic word.

(42) casa ~ casita “house”

*TE- IDENT. SEG.

PRWD

PRWDMINW

D

-citV TO

PRWD

DIM TO

PRWD

DEP-BSF

LINEARITY BSF

a. kas-it-a * b. kas-sita *! * c. [kas-a] sita *! d. [kas_1,2e2,1] sita *! *

Essentially, Colina establishes a constraint set (PRWD-MINWD) that is

extremely limited in terms of the candidates to which it applies. Colina merely

stipulates that this constraint set does not apply to non-prosodic words, but does

not explain why that should be so. Recall that PRWD-MINWD is not a constraint

in and of itself, but a cover term for four constraints that make no specific

reference to prosodic words. In addition, one would presume that these prosodic

constraints must be ranked in some way, yet it is unclear from the analysis how

they are to be ranked. Finally, as Stephenson notes (2004: 35-36), if we accept

that the constraint applies to the pre-suffixal stem, then it still must also apply to

the entire prosodic word.15 In which case, an unattested form for casa, *(cà.se)

(cí.ta), is more prosodically sound than the winner casita, which would violate

both PARSESYLL and ALIGN-L (FOOT, PRWD). 15 This again would force a cyclical application of the constraint set: applying first at the stem level and then at the word level.

49

Even if we accept that the prosodic structure of “prosodic words” can be

evaluated for markedness (i.e. PRWD-MINWD) prior to suffixation, there are still

puzzling inconsistencies in Colina’s use of the term “prosodic word.” In her

evaluation of pan~panecito in Tableau (43), the right hand brackets indicate the

boundary of the prosodic words. Since neither of the candidates violates DIM to

PRWD, it is clear that she assumes both [pan] and [pan-e] to be prosodic words.

This raises the question of what constitutes a prosodic word in her analysis. If it

is a word that actually exists in the lexicon, then [pan-e] could not be considered.

In a later tableau for the word clase (2003: 63), clas- is not considered a prosodic

word, but non-existent [clas-a] is. Therefore, we must assume that, with respect

to the constraint set PRWD-MINWD, by “prosodic word” Colina means not a

word, but a stem that has a particular prosodic shape. This runs counter to

prevailing definitions of “prosodic word.”16

(43) pan ~ panecito “bread”

*TE- IDENT. SEG.

PRWD

PRWD MINWD

-citV to

PRWD

DIM to PRWD

DEP-BSF

LINEAR-BSF

a. pan –cito *! b. pan-e] –cito *

Colina’s ranking of the constraints *TE >> –citV TO PRWD >> DIM TO

PRWD illustrate her argument that diminutive allomorphs prefer to attach at the

word level. The ranking –citV TO PRWD >> DIM TO PRWD reflects her claim that

–citV would actually be the preferred allomorph, if not for the fact that so many

16 Hall (1999:2) notes in his introduction to Studies on the Phonological Word that “almost all of the contributors operate under the assumption that the phonological generalizations that refer to the pword are ‘concrete’ in the sense that they refer to the surface level of representation and not to an abstract stage in the derivation.”

50

words end in a TE, which in her analysis requires selection of the –it- allomorph,

due to an undominated alignment constraint, -it- TO VTE: The right edge of the –it-

allomorph must be aligned to the left edge of a vocalic [+syllabic] TE of the base.

One possible objection to these constraints and their rankings concerns the

redundancy in positing two constraints that are basically identical, –citV TO PRWD

being more specific and DIM TO PRWD more general. Therefore, a candidate such

as (42b) cas-cita incurs a violation of both constraints for the same issue of non-

attachment to a prosodic word. In addition, the –it- allomorph never attaches to a

prosodic word (understood in Colina’s terms), so that it always violates DIM TO

PRWD. The sole purpose of this ranking seems to be to eliminate candidate like

(42b) cas-cita over the winner (42a) casita.17

VIII. Stephenson (2004)

Stephenson (2004) moves the discussion somewhat back to phonology

from morphology in her OT account of diminutives. She assigns bases to one of

two class systems based on their phonological and morphological properties.

Interestingly, these classes are not divided by whether they take one allomorph or

another, but by their sensitivity to a constraint on minimality. In particular, the

distinction between the two systems is determined by whether a class of bases

distinguishes between long and short in terms of allomorph selection. That is, if a

stem prior to suffixation has a minimality requirement of two syllables, then it

would belong to System II. Table 1 shows her division of the relevant data. 17 The issue Colina seems to have uncovered here concerns how to formalize the fact that, at least with some word types, -it- is the preferred allomorph. The analysis outlined in Chapters 3 and 4 of this work offers another approach.

51

Base Assignment to System I or II (Stephenson 2004: 30)18

In some dialects only short bases (one syllable before suffixation) ending in

unstressed -o/-a are not subject to a minimality requirement. In Stephenson’s

analysis, those words ending in a TE (unstressed -o,-a,-e) will have it deleted prior

to suffixation.

(44) casa: kas- + DIM clase: klas + e (epenthetic) + DIM

18 Stephenson does not include Prieto (1992) in this table or in her bibliography.

Peninsular Colina (2003)

Paraguayan Jaeggli (1978)

Sonoran Crowhurst (1992)

Nicaraguan Miranda (1999)

short o-/a-final bases: /libr-o/

System I System I System I

System I

long o-/a-final bases with short allomorphs: /el-o/ ~ /iel-o/

System II ??? System I System I

long o-/a-final bases: ventana, rad/jo/

System II System II System II System I

short e-final bases: /klas-e/

System II System II System II System II

long e-final bases: /komadr-e/

System II System II System II System II

C-final bases: /pan/, /ademán/

System II System II System II System II

52

This approach accounts for the thorny issue of why the pre-suffixed stem klas-

would require an epenthetic -e, but not cas-, since both are monosyllabic prior to

suffixation, under an analysis in which all TEs are initially deleted.

In terms of her OT analysis that accompanies this dual-system approach,

she assumes the following constraint ranking with the constraint definitions

provided below.

(45) a. panecito dialects:

PHON, *HIATUS, *TE (NON-FIN), MIN, IDENT [± SYLLABIC] » IDENT SYL-POS »

DEP-V » MAX-V

(45) b. pancito dialects:

PHON, *HIATUS, *TE (NON-FIN), IDENT SYL-POS, IDENT [±SYLLABIC] » MIN »

DEP-V » MAX-V

PHON: Refers to basic high-ranking phonotactic constraints (that rule out

such malformed items as *madrcita).

*HIATUS: No two adjacent vowels in a heterosyllabic relationship.

*TE (non-fin): Terminal Elements cannot appear in non-final word

position.

MIN: A stem must contain a minimum of two syllables prior to suffixation.

IDENT [± SYLLABIC]: The feature [syllabic] in the diminutive form of a

segment must correspond to its status [±] in the base form.

53

IDENT SYL-POS: A segment’s syllabic position in the diminutive form

must correspond to its position in the base form.

DEP-V: A vowel in the output must correspond to a vowel in the input.

MAX-V: A vowel in the input must correspond to a vowel in the output.

The crucial ranking distinction between pancito dialects (Paraguayan (Jaeggli

1978) and Nicaraguan (Miranda 1999)) and panecito dialects is between MIN and

IDENT-SYLPOS. Under Stephenson’s analysis pancito dialects would rank them

IDENT-SYLPOS » MIN due to the lack of an epenthetic –e that if present would

alter the syllable position of /n/ from coda to onset position. In panecito dialects,

on the other hand, the minimality requirement MIN would outrank the conflicting

constraint of input-output correspondence of a segment’s syllabic position. As

Colina (2003) has noted, one of the advantages of an OT approach is its ability to

account for this type of dialectal variation through re-ranking of the relevant

constraints.

Tableau (46) offers an example of Stephenson’s OT proposal for Spanish

diminutives (panecito dialects).

(46) mesa ~ mesita “table”

/mesa/ + DIM PHON *HIATUS

*TE (non-fin)

MIN IDENT [± SYL]

IDENT [Syl-Pos]

DEP-V MAX-V

a. mes-ita (*) * b. mesa-ita *! * c. mes-sita */ok *! * d. mese-ita *! * e. mesa-sita *!

54

In Tableau (46) the apparent fatal violation of MIN for the mesita candidate would

appear to disqualify it. Stephenson settles this matter by placing mesa-type words

(disyllabics with TE –o/-a) in System I. She suggests two ways of formalizing

this system. One, as above, is to have the MIN constraint apply only in System II,

which would leave mesita as the optimal candidate. Another option is to stipulate

that only the –ito/a allomorph is available to System I, as in Tableau (47).

(47) mesa ~ mesita “table”

/mesa/ + DIM PHON *HIATUS

*TE (non-fin)

MIN IDENT [± SYL]

IDENT [SYL-POS]

DEP-V MAX-V

a. mes-ita (*) * b. mesa-ita *! * c. mese-ita *! * *

One problem with this analysis, as Stephenson freely admits, concerns the dual-

system approach and how it might have arisen historically. She remarks that

some of the dialectal variation (as seen in Table 1) might be attributed to Sonoran

and Nicaraguan operating at a different stage in the language, one in which

System I still holds more ground. She suggests that a search of the historical

record may reveal a time when System I covered more of the domain of

diminutive formation than it does today.

55

Chapter 3

Class Marker Selection in Diminutive Formation

I. Introduction

One of the major difficulties that all of the aforementioned analyses of

diminutivization must grapple with is the incongruent behavior between disyllabic

words that end in unstressed final /o/ or /a/ and that invariably select the –it{o, a}

allomorph (pato ~ patito “duck”) and those disyllabics that end in unstressed /e/

and select –cit{o, a} (madre ~ madrecita “mother”). The most obvious possible

solutions to this quandary must be found either in the phonology, the morphology,

or some combination of the two.

Jaeggli’s (1978) derivational account appeals to purely phonological

information to account for this distinction in that an infix -it- will attach only to

unstressed [+ back] vowels (i.e. /o/ or /a/) and –cito/a attaches to words ending in

other vocalic elements. As noted in Chapter 2, this approach leaves us with

several descriptive and explanatory gaps.

Some analyses that have included a role for morphology (Crowhurst 1992,

Prieto 1992) have argued for a fundamental difference in terms of form class for

those words that end in unstressed /o/ or /a/ and those that end in /e/. In this

chapter, we will explore some of the literature on Spanish non-verbal word types

in order to determine to what degree (if any) such divisions play a role in a unified

analysis of Spanish diminutive formation.

In Section II, I review the development of Harris’ Spanish word form

classes. Section III considers the possibility of using Harris’ form classes to

56

delineate the selection of one diminutive allomorph over another. I argue that the

data do not support such an approach and propose dividing Spanish non-verbal

words into two classes for the purposes of diminutivization. Section IV presents

the underlying principles that I will assume about the process of diminutivization

as I move forward to my OT analysis of Spanish diminutive formation in Chapter

4. I argue that Spanish diminutivization is a stem-level process and that all

diminutive allomorphs are suffixes. Furthermore all diminutive allomorphs are

underlyingly available for selection by any word type.

II. Review of Harris’ Word Classes

Many authors have pointed out in the literature (Harris 1991a, Klein 1989,

and Roca 1989 to name a few), that there is sufficient contradictory evidence to

refute the traditional notion of a relationship between a Spanish noun’s final

vocalic element and its grammatical gender. While the assumption that word-

final /a/ is associated with the feature [feminine] and word-final /o/ with

[masculine] will serve as a reasonable rule of thumb, this method will fail the

learner of Spanish on some of the most commonly used words in the language: el

problema, el programa, el clima, la mano, etc. Worse yet, those substantives that

end in a consonant or in vowels other than /o/ or /a/ are even less reliable markers

of grammatical gender.19

Not surprisingly, this fact has led linguists to propose alternative

classifications of Spanish nouns and other non-verbal elements in the language

19 See Teschner & Russell (1984) for a helpful analysis of the statistical relationship between word-final segments and gender in Spanish substantives.

57

(adjectives, adverbs, etc.). Harris (1985) first sketched out a proposal for

classifying these words based on his concept of a “word-marker” and his claim

that “[they] make no syntactic or semantic contribution to the words they are a

part of; their only grammatical properties are their phonological form and their

distribution, which is unlike that of any other class of morphemes (34).” The

common denominator of the words in (1) is the presence of a final word-marker

that takes the phonological shape of an unstressed vowel /V/ or /V/ + [s]. Harris

argues for the peripheral status of these segments (in both a semantic and

phonological sense) due in large part to their absence in derivational morphology.

(1) herman[o] “brother” cas[a] “house” part[e] “part”

dos[is] “dosage” lej[os] “far” (2) A B C

herman[o] herman-dad *herman[o]dad “brother” “brotherhood”

dos[is] dos-ificar *dos[is]ificar “dosage” “to measure out” lej[os] lej-anía *lej[os]anía

“far” “distance” The derived words in column (2b) lack the word markers that appear in (2a)

suggesting that the morphological structure of the words in (2a) is the following:20

20 Harris actually analyzes this process through an autosegmental representation (1985: 40-41). Omission of these details has no bearing on the current discussion.

58

(3) a. [[[herman]stem o]word marker ]word

b. [[[lej]stem os]word marker ]word

c. [[[dos]stem is]word marker ]word Under this analysis, derivations are formed through attachment of derivational

affixes to stems that crucially lack the word marker:21

(4) a. [[herman]stem dad]derived word b. [[lej]stem anía]derived word With the peripheral status of word markers established, in a later work Harris

(1991a: 33) then proposes a lexical hierarchy based on the regularity of the word

markers:

(5)

Regular Irregular

Inner Core Outer Core Residue [masc] [fem] [masc] [fem]

hij[o] hij[a] padre mujer problem[a] m. ‘son’ ‘daughter’ ‘father’ ‘woman’ ‘problem’

cedr[o] sidr[a] mar liebre lej[os] ‘cedar’ ‘cider’ ‘sea’ ‘hare’

trib[u] f. ‘tribe’

As shown in (5), he divides words into a canonical inner core in which masculine

and feminine words end in the expected word markers /o/ and /a/, respectively.

The outer core consists of those words that end in an epenthetic /e/ (e.g. padre, 21 Bermúdez-Otero (2007) advocates for an analysis in which the word marker (‘stem formative’ in his terminology) is present and then deleted by the phonology: [[[herman] o] dad]. I will address his analysis in more detail later in this chapter.

59

liebre) or those that lack a word marker (e.g. mujer, mar). Lowest on the

hierarchy are words that are lumped into a “residue,” which he classifies as a

series of subclasses noted for their irregularity (in the case of words such as

problema that end in /a/, but are masculine) and relative lack of productivity and

token frequency (such as those ending in word markers /u/ or /i/).

This rough classification system is refined into the five form classes in

Harris (1991b) already presented in Chapter 2, but reprinted in (6) for

convenience.

(6) I. pas-o “step” II. pas-a “raisin” guap-o “handsome” guap-a “beautiful” dentr-o “inside” cerc-a “near, close” IIIA. jef-e “boss” IIIA´. as “ace”

verd-e “green” común “common” delant-e “in front” atrás “back, behind (adv.)” IIIB. pas-e “pass”

inmun-e “immune” adred-e “on purpose”

IV. dos-is “dose” V. trib-u “tribe” vival-es “bon viveur” tax-i “taxi” lej-os “far” esnob “snob” In contrast with the earlier partition based on regularity and presented in (5),

Classes I and II now include all items that end in word marker /o/ or /a/,

respectively, regardless of the syntactic gender of the word. In Harris’ view, his

morphological form classes and syntactic gender are two separate, but related,

domains. Therefore, a word like casa belongs to Class II and is syntactically

60

[feminine] in the sense that it triggers feminine gender agreement in the relevant

modifiers: casa amarilla, “yellow house.” However a word such as mano ‘hand’,

which is syntactically [feminine] (i.e. mano amarilla, “yellow hand”), belongs to

morphological Class I due to its termination in /o/. Class IV includes those words

that end in word marker /Vs/; whereas Class V is reserved for those words, such

as xenonyms and those lexemes with non-canonical word markers /i/ and /u/, that

do not fit in the other four classes.

Harris groups together Classes I, II, and IV in the sense that the relevant

stems “are bound to the (semantically empty, syntactically nonfunctional,

phonologically noncyclic) suffixes /o/, /a/, and /Vs/, respectively (1991b: 81).”

Class III, however, includes those stems that require an epenthetic /e/ for

syllabification purposes (Class IIIA), lack a word marker (Class IIIA´), and those

that end in an [e] that is not readily attributable to syllabification issues (Class

IIIB).

According to Harris, the difference between words in Class IIIA and Class

IIIA´ is related to the acceptability of word-final codas in Spanish. Final coda

position is a more restrictive subset of allowable codas in general in Spanish.

Typically, complex codas are disallowed in word-internal position with the

exception of glide + consonant (veinte [beyn.te] “twenty”) or consonant + [s]

clusters (instante [ins.tan.te] “instant”); while in word-final position all complex

codas—with the exception of a limited number of [Cs#] types: biceps [bi.seps]

“biceps”—are forbidden and the allowable set of single segment codas is limited

to /d s θ n l r/. Thus, he proposes that the words in Class IIIA are those that would

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otherwise end in an unacceptable coda without the addition of the epenthetic [e]:

*jef/jef[e], *verd/verd[e], *delant/delant[e]. Class IIIA´ corresponds to words that

end in the acceptable set of final codas /d s θ n l r/. In this way, Class IIIA and

IIIA´ are in complementary distribution.

However, Harris must address two inconsistencies in the data. The first is

the number of words in Class B that end in [e] but are preceded by consonants

that could be syllabified as word-final codas and, therefore, should not trigger

epenthesis. Harris argues that these exceptions must have an unspecified vowel in

their lexical entry that manifests as [e], the default vowel in Spanish (1989: 73):

inmune /inmun + V/ “immune.”

The second issue regards relatively recent borrowings into the language

that do not adhere to the final coda condition described above. For example, a

borrowing from English, esnob [esnob] “snob,” and one from French coñac

[koñak] “cognac” illustrate that final epenthesis is not activated even though they

end in the otherwise illicit final codas [b] and [k], respectively. Furthermore, they

do not form plurals in the typical manner of Spanish lexemes that end in a

consonant: esnobs/*esnobes, coñacs/*coñaques (cf. árbol ~ árboles/*árbols,

escritor ~ escritores/*escritors).

Harris accounts for these contrasts by assuming two separate grammars:

one for xenonyms and one for “domestic” substantives (as Harris labels them).22

22 This latter approach, of course, begs the question if and when a word like esnob would ‘graduate’ from the xenonymic grammar into the domestic grammar. Since many non-patrimonial Latinate words in Spanish were at some point xenonyms, one wonders if all such words remained for a time in the xenonymic grammar before being accepted as “Spanish.” Conjecturing into the future, if the plural form esnobs never transforms into esnobes or the singular esnob into esnobe, are these types of lexemes destined to remain forever in a xenonymic linguistic limbo?

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Harris groups these words, along with words that end in /i/ or /u/, together into

Class V.

III. Harris’ Word Classes & Diminutivization

For the purposes of diminutivization, it is worth taking a moment to

evaluate these form classes to determine what, if any, correspondence can be

made between them and the selection of diminutive morphemes. For the purposes

of clarity, I have chosen the Sonoran data in Crowhurst (1992) as the basis for this

evaluation. Relevant dialectal variants are included and will be integrated in the

full analysis in Chapter 4.

On the face of it in (7), there seems to be little evidence to suggest a one-

to-one correspondence between the diminutive suffixes and Harris’ form classes.

The –it{o, a} suffix appears in Class I, Class II, and all the subsets of Class III.

Meanwhile, the –cit{o, a} suffix plays a prominent role in Class I and Class II,

and can be found in all the subsets of Class III.23 This lack of one-to-one

correspondence is not surprising since none of the previous analyses of Spanish

diminutives has proposed a strictly morphological account in which form class

alone dictates diminutive selection without any appeal to prosodic or phonological

restrictions.

(Interestingly, the word for “snob” in Portuguese has been borrowed into that language as esnobe with an apparent final epenthetic [e]). 23 Surprisingly, the diminutives for words that end in [l] in Class III A´ (e.g. árbol, canal) select the –it{o, a} suffix (arbolito, canalito) instead of –(e)cit{o, a}, generally selected by other consonant-final words. Previous analyses have either left the issue unsettled or proposed a condition/constraint on the heterosyllabic cluster [ls] (or [lθ] for Peninsular). I place the present work among the former group.

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(7) Class I = -ito pasito “step”

guapito “handsome” Exceptions: novio ~ noviecito/*novito24 “boyfriend/groom” Dialectal: miedo ~ miedecito/miedito “fear” Class II = -ita casa ~ casita “house”

pelota ~ pelotita “ball” Exceptions: llorona ~ lloroncita “crybaby” ladrona ~ ladroncita, etc. “thief (f.) novia ~ noviecita “girlfriend/bride” Dialectal: puerta ~ puertecita/puertita, etc. “door”

Class III A = -cito/a (disyllabics)

madre ~ madrecita “mother” Exceptions: None. = -ito/a (longer than disyllabic)

uniforme ~ uniformito “uniform” Exceptions: Occasional. chocolate ~ chocolatecito/chocolatito Class III A´ = -(e)cito/a (monosyllabics) pan ~ panecito/pancito25 “bread”

24 Harris (1994: 186) notes that for many speakers the diminutive fresquecito of fresco “fresh” is as or more accepted than the expected fresquito. In a footnote, Harris elaborates that it “is a fact, however, that some classes of stems have fewer arbitrary lexicalised diminutives than others, and we would like an explanation for that” (189). I take those words that end in unstressed /o/ to be highly regular in their formation of diminutives, both inter- and intradialectally.

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Exceptions: Words ending in [l] árbol ~ arbolito “tree” papel ~ papelito “paper” = -cito/a (disyllabics or longer)

balcón ~ balconcito “balcony” corazon ~ corazoncito “heart” Class III B = -cito/a (disyllabics) clase ~ clasecita “class” = -ito/a (longer than disyllabics) envase ~ envasito “container” Class IV Limited data available. virus ~ virusito/?viruscito/?viritus “virus” brindis ~ brindisito “toast” Socrates ~ Socratitos/?Socratesito “Socrates” lejos ~ lejitos “far” dosis ~ dosisita “dosage” Class V Limited data available. esnob ~ esnobito/esnobcito “snob” *esnobecito tribu ~ tribucita/?tribita “tribe”

Leaving aside for a moment the data available for Class IV and V, in the

following section I will discuss the data and issues for Classes I-III that must be

25 The difference between these two monosyllabic forms is dialectal: panecito for North Central Peninsular and Sonoran; pancito for Nicaraguan and Paraguayan. For present purposes it is crucial that *panito is not an attested option.

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considered in order to arrive at an adequate assessment of both a specific role for

Harris’ form classes and for morphology in general. The conclusions reached in

this section will form the basis for the morphological assumptions that underpin

my analysis of diminutives in Chapter 4.

Class I The data reflect that –ito is the suffix most associated with Class I. In the

Sonoran dialect presented by Crowhurst (1992), the only exceptions to this

generalization to be found are disyllabic words that end in the diphthong [jo]:

(8) gafio ~ gafiecito “hook” patio ~ patiecito “patio” ebrio ~ ebriecito “tipsy” The data in (8) illustrates an inherent limitation of the –it{o, a} suffix. Normally,

as a vowel-initial suffix, it attaches with ease to a consonant-final stem, as in (9).

(9) chango “monkey” [ʧang] -it] -o] However, as discussed in Chapter 2, tautosyllabic homorganic vocoids are illicit

in Spanish when onset position is occupied: *[ji]Rhyme. Direct attachment of -it{o,

a} to the words in (8) would create precisely such an environment:

(10) *ga.fji.to *pa.tji.to *e.brji.to

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Data presented in Harris (1994: 185) from a speaker of a Mexican (non-Sonoran)

dialect suggests that this phonotactic constraint might be resolved in a non-

systematic fashion.

(11) 1 2 3

ind[j]o *ind[i.í]to *ind[je]cito ind[i]to “Indian” sab[j]o *sab[i.í]to sab[je]cito *sab[i]to “wise” lab[j]o lab[i.í]to lab[je]cito ?lab[i]to “lip” ap[j]o ap[i.í]to ap[je]cito *ap[i]to “celery” ampl[j]o ampl[i.í]to *ampl[je]cito *ampl[i]to “ample” At least in the case of this individual speaker, there are three available repair

strategies in order to avoid the illicit syllable structure. In Column 1, the glide

found in the stem surfaces as the head of its own syllable, creating a hiatus. The

data in Column 2 is consistent with what is presented in Crowhurst and shows that

selection of the –(e)cit{o, a} suffix has the benefit of avoiding *[ji]Rhyme while at

the same time conserving segmental identity through maintenance of the glide.

Complete elimination of the stem-final segment—the repair strategy in Column

3—appears to be the least-favored of the three options, judged as fully acceptable

only for indio.

It is revealing to note the absence of another possible candidate,

*sab[i]cito, in which -cit{o, a} attaches to a stem in which the glide has lost

segmental identity and heads its own syllable. This negative evidence suggests

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that attachment of –cit{o, a} to this class of words is only acceptable to the extent

that it resolves any conflict that would otherwise be created by attachment of

–it{o, a}. Whereas sab[je]cito maintains the non-syllabicity of the glide, the

hypothetical candidate *sab[i]cito, in a sense, brings nothing to the table. It

neither maintains the glide (as in Column 2) nor does it allow for selection of the

(presumably) preferred suffix of Class I (as in Column 1 and 3). While the data in

(11) at first blush does little but underscore the idiosyncratic nature of diminutive

formation for some speakers, closer examination strengthens the case for a

morphological preference of the –it{o, a} allomorph to Class I words. The

acceptability of competing forms such as api.ito and labi.ito suggests the

willingness of speakers to sacrifice segmental identity of the glide in order to

maintain the association between –it{o, a} and this class of words.

Further evidence that supports this notion that the idiosyncratic and

“fringe” nature of words such as sabio is due to the incompatibility of the glide

with the first segment of the suffix –it{o, a} can be found in an analysis of Class I

stems that end in a vowel (12a-b) or the back glide [w] (12c).26

(12) a. feo [[[fe-] it] o] fe.íto “ugly” b. tío [[[ti-] it] o] ti.íto “uncle” c. antigüo [[[antigw-] it] o] antigüito “ancient” In (12a), the attachment of the –cit{o, a} suffix to the vowel-final stem [fe-]

would afford a distinct phonological advantage over –it{o, a} attachment because

26 I present these examples for the purpose of illustration. Although they do not appear in Crowhurst, there is nothing in her data to indicate that they form their diminutives in an exceptional manner.

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the unattested candidate *fecito avoids the creation of a dispreferred onsetless

syllable that we find in the actual output [fe.i.to]. However, the critical distinction

to keep in mind is between the notion of “dispreffered”—in the case of onsetless

syllables in Spanish—and that of “disallowed”—in the case of the never violated

constraint *[ji]Rhyme. As the data in (8) and (11) indicate, the –cit{o, a} suffix is

clearly available to speakers for Class I words, but we must conclude that

avoidance of an onsetless syllable is not a severe enough condition for its

selection.

Meanwhile, the diminutive form in (12b) is arguably more marked than

the form in (12a). Not only does –it{o, a} attachment to tío create an onsetless

syllable as in (12a), but the hiatus is of homorganic vowels [i.i]. Independent

evidence that Spanish employs mechanisms to avoid such a hiatus of homorganic

vowels can be found in the behavior of the definite article for certain [+ feminine]

nouns.27 For the overwhelming majority of feminine nouns in Spanish, the

definite article is la, as in la chica “the girl.” However, in cases in which the

noun begins with stressed /a/, the canonically masculine definite article, el, is

selected: el agua [el ágwa]; *la agua [la ágwa]. In the plural form, Spanish

reverts to the standard feminine definite article since the final /s/ breaks up the

adjacent homorganic vowels: las aguas [las ágwas] “the waters.” In words that

begin with an unstressed /a/ the phenomenon is not triggered and presumably the

two unstressed vowels coalesce: la almeja [lal.mé.xa] “the clam.” In the case of

el agua, then, Spanish permits selection of a marked definite article (el for

27 See Kikuchi (2001) for an OT analysis of this phenomenon couched in Correspondence Theory.

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feminine nouns) in order to avoid a marked structure.28 As with the example of

noviecito, in which the –cit{o, a} allomorph is selected instead of expected –it{o,

a} in order to avoid *[ji]Rhyme, Spanish tolerates a degree of irregularity in the

service of the phonology.

Again, as in the case of feo, there are distinct advantages to an unattested

candidate *ticito [ti.si.to] for tío “uncle” in which the first element of the

diminutive suffix works to break up the adjacent homorganic vowels present in

tiíto [ti.í.to]. Any analysis of diminutivization that relies purely on phonological

information will have difficulty explaining how [ti.í.to] and [fe.í.to] are more

well-formed than their unattested counterparts *[ti.si.to] and *[fe.si.to].

Consequently, it is becoming clear that the evidence points to a tightly bound

morphological relationship between Class I words and the diminutive suffix –it{o,

a}. This relationship will be formalized in Chapter 4.

Finally, it might be argued that the glide-final stems are somehow

responsible for selection of the –cit{o, a} suffix. However, in (12c) the stem for

word antigüo ends in a back glide [w] that is not homorganic with the high front

vowel [i] in –it{o, a}. Since the cluster [gwi] is well formed and markedness is

not at stake, we would predict the standard selection of the -it{o, a} suffix for a

Class I word, which it indeed selects: antigüito [an.ti.gwi.to].

28 A similar situation occurs in Spanish with o [o] “or” becomes u [u] and y [i] “and” becomes e [e] when the following word begins with a homorganic stressed or unstressed vowel: uno u otro “one or another;” Tristano e Isolda.

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Class II In terms of diminutive formation, there is little to distinguish the behavior

of Class II words from that of Class I words. The distribution of –it{o, a} and

–cit{o, a} is nearly identical within the two classes. However, there is one point

of contention with respect to the classification of the seemingly exceptional

diminutive types in (13a) versus the classification of those in (13b).

(13) a. ladrona ladroncita “thief (f.)” patrona patroncita “boss/landlady” b. corona coronita “crown” persona personita “person” The issue is whether a minimal pair such as corona ~ coronita / patrona ~

patroncita are members of the same word class or not. If all lexemes that end in

/a/ belong to Class II, then the answer is simple. Yet the exceptional behavior of

ladrona and patrona indicates that they are adhering to the diminutive pattern of

their masculine counterparts, which Harris groups into Class IIIAˈ (14).

(14) ladrón ladroncito “thief (m.)” patrón patroncito “boss/landlord” Harris reconciles this inconsistency precisely by appealing to the shared

morphological structure between the words in (13a) and (14). In his argument he

presents the contrast between Llorona ~ Lloronita and llorona ~ lloroncita

“crybaby”. The former is the name of a character in Mexican folklore and has no

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masculine counterpart in the lexicon (*Lloron) and therefore is properly classified

as a Class II noun that selects the –it{o, a} suffix. The latter is the [+ feminine]

manifestation of llorón, which belongs to Class IIIAˈ and consists of the stem

llor- and the suffix –ón. Therefore, “in llorona (lower case)...the acccessibility of

the Class III suffix determines the choice of allomorph –citV, though llorona is

segmentally identical to Llorona (1994: 187).”

While this argument appears to strengthen Harris’ form class partition,

Ambadiang (1997: 108) is critical of this explanation and wonders why the same

appeal to internal structure could not be made for the pair niño/niña ~

niñito/niñita “boy/girl,” which Harris divides into Class I and Class II

respectively. If llorona is simply a [+ fem.] instantiation of the Class IIIAˈ noun

llorón, then it could be argued that niña is simply a [+ fem.] instantiation of niño.

Thus, niño/niña would both be placed in Class I.

Whether or not this issue is grounds for a radical reworking of Harris’

form classes is a debate that is beyond the scope of the present work. However, it

is clear from Harris’ approach to the Llorona/lloroncita issue that he implicitly

accepts the conclusion that the final word marker is not always the ultimate

arbiter of form class distribution. Thus, I propose that his Class IIIAˈ be

amended to include this subset of feminine nouns:

(15) Class IIIAˈ ladrón29 [+/- fem] escritor [+/- fem], etc. 29 It is not immediately clear whether the –ón in ladrón and patrón is related to the augmentative suffix –ón in llorón, which is derived from the verb llorar [[llor-] ar] “to cry.”

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With this movement of the previously exceptional ladroncita types from Class II

into Class IIIAˈ, it is now clear that—at least with respect to the distribution of

the diminutive suffixes—Class I and II exhibit precisely the same behavior. From

the available evidence for Sonoran, all words in these two classes select the –it{o,

a} suffix (16a) except under the severe phonotactic conditions wrought by the

incompatibility between the stem-final glide and the initial segment of the

diminutive suffix, in which case –citV is (variably) selected (16b). The fact that

diminutive forms of these words maintain their respective word marker, /o/ or /a/,

is not germane to the selection of the suffix and therefore not a reasonable

criterion for partitioning them into two separate classes. Therefore, at least for the

purposes of diminutivization, I propose the merger of these into a single Class D1,

as shown in (17).

(16) a. chamaka chamakita “girl” molacho molachito “toothless” b. novio noviecito “boyfriend” novia noviecita “girlfriend” (17) Class I Class D1

Class II

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Class III

Within the three subclasses that Harris establishes for Class III, the suffix

–(e)cit{o, a} is dominant in terms of its distribution. The –itV suffix is selected

only by trisyllabic or longer stems in Class IIIA (uniforme ~ uniformito

“uniform”) and Class IIIB (envase ~ envasito “container”). Trisyllabic or longer

stems in Class IIIA´ select the –cit{o, a} suffix (corazón ~ corazoncito “heart”).

That said, whatever ties that one might establish between –citV and Class III

words, it is clear that this relationship is considerably less constrained than the

bond between –it{o, a} and Class D1 words. As discussed above, the –cit{o, a}

suffix only manifests itself in Class D1 as a response to a severe phonotactic

constraint. On the other hand, the evidence does not support an analogous

situation between Class III and –(e)cit{o, a}. In fact, Prieto (1992: 173) indicates

that some speakers will use and accept both suffixal options for trisyllabic or

longer words ending in /e/ (18a). Crowhurst also indicates that some disyllabic

words in the Sonoran dialect, such as sangre “blood” and tigre “tiger,” select the

–itV suffix: sangrita, tigrito. Yet, no such variation has ever been attested for

Class D1 words (18b).

(18) a. chocolate chocolatito/chocolatecito “chocolate”

envase envasito/envasecito “container”

pupitre pupitrito/pupitrecito “(school) desk”

b. casa *casacita/*casecita “house”

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libro *librocito/*librecito “book” With respect to members of the form Class IIIA´, that is those words that end in

any of the segments in the consonant set /d s θ n l r/, there is little consistency

with respect to their diminutive formation. All monosyllabics in the Sonoran

dialect select the –(e)cit{o, a} suffix (pez ~ pezecito “fish,” miel ~ mielecito

“honey”), while disyllabics or longer vary greatly. For example, /l/-final words

select –itV (papel ~ papelito “paper”), /n/- and /r/- exclusively select -citV (balcón

~ balconcito “balcony,” pintor ~ pintorcito “painter,” corazón ~ corazoncito

“heart”). Meanwhile, Crowhurst notes that speakers reject either possibility for

the /d/-final word pared ~ *paredcita/*paredita “wall”).

Given this state of affairs, it would be imprudent to propose any type of

morphological association between the words that make up Class III (or any of its

subsets) and either the -(e)cit{o, a} or –it{o, a} suffix. However, for the purposes

of notational clarity, I will assign them to Class D2. This designation is not meant

to imply any uniformity of the membership it contains, but merely to exclude it

from those words in Class D1 that I propose are subject to stringent

morphological restrictions.

Class IV & V

Crowhurst (1992) offers no examples of Class IV types in her article, but

Prieto (1992: 177) offers several from an unspecified dialect, which I have

divided into two groups based on the lack of change (19a) or change (19b) of the

word marker (-Vs, as Harris understands it) in the diminutive form.

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(19a) a. -Vs = /-os/ or /-as/

lejos lejitos “far” Carlos Carlitos “Charles” Marcos Marquitos “Mark” Lucas Luquitas “Lucas” Honduras Honduritas “Honduras” b. -Vs = /-es/ or /-is/

Dolores Dolorsitas “woman’s name” Mercedes Merceditas “woman’s name” lunes lunecito “Monday” Gertrudis Gertruditas “woman’s name”

Upon examination of the data in (19a) it is tempting to analyze –it{o, a} as

an infix rather than a suffix, since the –os in Carlos is carried over into the

diminutive form Carlitos. However, there are several reasons to doubt such a

conclusion. The first concerns the data in (19b), particularly the names Mercedes

and Gertrudis. If –it is an infix, then there is no way to explain why the

diminutive forms of these words would not be *Mercedites and *Getruditis. Of

course these are proper nouns and it is reasonable to expect some erratic behavior,

yet the same logic would apply to those Class III nouns that variably accept –it{o,

a}. For example, an analysis that assumes –it is an infix would need to explain

why the diminutive for uniforme is uniformito and not *uniformite. One possible

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explanation is to assume that –it is a suffix in some environments and an infix in

others; but this adds an unnecessary level of complexity when compared to an

approach that assumes across the board suffixation.

Under the assumption of universal suffixation, both diminutive suffixes

must remain faithful to those word endings that they are able to replicate: -/o/,

-/a/, -/os/, -/as/. The final -/es/ in Mercedes is not an available diminutive ending,

so the closest possible ending -/as/ is selected.

As has been noted elsewhere, diminutives seem to be unique among

affective affixes in that, with few exceptions, they maintain the marked /a/ word

marker for masculine nouns, such as el problema ~ problemita “problema,” and

the /o/ for feminine nouns, la modelo ~ modelito “(fashion) model.” In (20a) the

canonical feminine word marker /a/ of the masculine noun poema is maintained in

the diminutive form. Yet, in (20b) the masculine option of the augmentative –azV

is selected even though a form –aza is available that would maintain the /a/ word

marker in the base.30

(20) a. el poema el poemita “the poem” b. el poema el poemazo “the poem” This implies that the diminutive suffixes, although limited to either of the

canonical word markers, would seem to have the flexibility to accommodate any 30 Unfortunately, Crowhurst (1992) does not present poema/problema types in addressing the –ote/ota augmentative. An informal Google search, however, strongly suggests that problemota is more common than problemote. While this is not a completely analogous case to this –azo/aza augmentative since there is no –oto variant of the affix, the data in Crowhurst’s article makes it clear that –ote is the preferred suffix for masculine nouns. Additional searches have revealed the less frequent usage of unexpected poemito and poemaza. This fact does not alter the basic assertion that Spanish diminutive forms of poema/problema types are able to maintain the final vowel.

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idiosyncrasies of the base form as long as they are in line with the inflectional

possibilities afforded by the diminutives. In the example of el uniforme ~

uniformito, the diminutive suffix cannot reproduce the base-final /e/ and so it

selects the canonical word marker /o/ for masculine nouns. In the case of lejos,

the diminutive form can easily replicate the final /os/ because of its similarity to a

canonical masculine, plural ending as in pat/os/ ~ patitos “ducks.” With Mercedes

~ Merceditas, the diminutive form reflects the base form to the degree possible by

maintaining the final /s/ and respecting the gender by selecting word marker /a/,

since /e/ is not available.31 The segmental similarity between [lex-os] and [pat-os]

and their identical diminutivization is sufficient justification to include the former

in Class D1 with the latter.

The limited data available on diminutives for Class IV (and the

inconsistencies therein), the wide range of word markers assumed by Harris for

this form class (-as, -es, -is, -os, -us), and the apparent resistance of some /s/-final

words to diminutivization all combine to create highly unfavorable conditions for

postulating that the class as a whole should be associated with one or another

diminutive suffix. The situation is even grimmer for Class V given that Harris

considers this a “catch-all bin” for xenonyms and other words that do not fit into

one of the other four classes. Therefore, I will include all members of Class IV

and Class V in Class D2.

Finally, in addition to these words, I include in Class D2 a group of words

that end in a stressed final vowel—exemplified in (21)—that Harris does not

31 This is similar to the conclusion of Ambadiang (1997) that the morphological structure of the word is analyzed as being saturated, as discussed in Chapter 2.

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address directly. Since the final vowel of these words are maintained in

derivational morphology (as opposed to the situation as described in (2) at the

beginning of this chapter), they do not fit the definition of a word marker as

proposed by Harris. Thus, I assume that he intends them to be included in Class

V. Regardless of word length these words always take the –citV suffix.

(21) matiné matinecito “matinee” menú menucito “menu” In this section I have examined Harris’ five word classes in order to

evaluate to what degree a correspondence can be made between these classes and

their respective diminutive forms. I have argued that in the Sonoran dialect there

is a strong preference among Class I and Class II words for the –it{o, a}

morpheme. Selection of the –cit{o, a} morpheme by these words is only in

response to phonological constraints. Since Class I and Class II words exhibit

identical behavior with diminutivization, I combined them into a single group,

Class D1. All other word types are placed in Class D2.

In a sense, this division hearkens back to Harris’ earlier work on word

markers mentioned in Section II in which he proposes a division based on a

lexical hierarchy (1991a: 33). My proposal for diminutives, however, differs in

that I include in Class D1 all words that end in canonical unstressed /o/, /a/, /os/,

or /as/, regardless of their regularity; this includes words such as problema

“problem” that end in /a/, but are actually masculine, and those that end in /o/, but

are actually feminine, such as modelo “(fashion) model.” Although problema and

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lejos “far” are arguably irregular in some sense, this issue does not play a role in

diminutivization. What matters is that they are marked with the canonical

unstressed vowels and therefore subject to the morphological association with

–it{o, a}.

While some word types that I have placed in Class D2 may exhibit a

strong tendency toward a particular diminutive morpheme, the key distinction that

I will develop in Chapter 4 is that these preferences are revealed to be

phonological in nature and not a result of a morphological bond of the type I

propose for Class D1.

IV. Underlying Assumptions Now that I have established the two word classes for diminutivization, in

this section I present my assumptions concerning the input. The chief issue

concerns whether diminutivization should be modeled as a word-level process

(22a) in which the terminal element is deleted by the phonology upon suffixation

(Bermúdez-Otero 2007) or if suffixation occurs at the level of a stem that lacks

the final vowel (22b).

(22) a. casa Input: [[kasa] DIM] casita b. casa Input: [[kas-] DIM] casita I argue that the deletion position illustrated in (22a) is insufficient to account for

the behavior of much diminutive formation and that the evidence points to an

analysis in which the final vowels are not present in this morphological process.

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The persistence of the stressed final vowels in the diminutivized words in

(21) (menú~menucito) underscores again the apparent status of the terminal

element as a separate morphological entity in Class D1 words. As previously

stated, forms such as *casacita or *casaíta are unattested due to an apparent

restriction on terminal elements appearing in non-word-final position.32 This is

also true for derivational morphology in general, as seen in other morphological

processes (23).

(23) casa + ero/a casero/a *casa-ero/a “homemade” casa + ona casona *casa-ona “big house” There are several issues, however, in the suggestion of such a restriction that are

worth addressing with an eye toward the assumptions I will make for my

Optimality Theory analysis in the following chapter. The first concerns how to

analyze the potential output candidates for casa in (24).

(24) a. casacita b. casaíta c. casita

d. casecita As we know, candidate (c) is the winning candidate; and if our constraints and

their ranking are correct, then the tableau should illustrate the superiority of

candidate (c) over candidates (a), (b) and (d).

32 Colina (2003: 57) formalizes this restriction with the following constraint:

*TE-: No word markers (or terminal elements) in positions other than word final (as an alignment constraint: The right edge of a terminal element must be aligned with the right edge of a word).

Colina assumes that –it{o, a} is an infix.

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At the most basic level—between a single lexical input and its

corresponding winning output—Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky

1993/2004) provides us with a rather straightforward framework for modeling the

relative costs involved in the violation of universal constraints. In Tableau (25),

candidate (a) removes the segment /l/ from the input and thus fatally violates the

constraint MAX, which legislates against such removal. Conversely, candidate (b)

fatally violates DEP through the addition of the vowel /e/; the improbable

candidate (d) violates both. Assuming no markedness constraints are factored

into the equation, candidate (c) is the optimal candidate through its most faithful

reflection of the input.

(25) INPUT: árbol MAX DEP a. árbo *! b. árbole *! c. árbol d. cárbo *! *

Modeling a morphological process such as diminutivization depends to a great

degree upon the assumptions that are made about the input. In the case of árbol

“tree” in (25), Spanish offers no independent evidence to suggest that the input

form be at variance with the output. With respect to diminutive formation,

however, the evidence available to us—the forms that speakers produce—

suggests between one and three diminutive allomorphs. On the one hand, we can

assume an underlying –cit{o, a} allomorph, in which the first segment [s] or [θ] is

deleted in some contexts, surfacing as –it{o, a}; in other contexts an epenthetic [e]

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produces a third allomorph –ecit{o, a}. Other approaches might assume all three

allomorphs are available in the input or some combination of two out of the three.

Obviously, whatever assumptions are made about the input will impact the types

of constraints that are in play and the respective violations that each candidate

incurs.

The question of underlying assumptions must also be extended to the

lexeme to which the diminutive attaches. Bermúdez-Otero (2007), for example,

argues within a Stratal OT framework that diminutivization is a word-level

process in which the terminal element (“stem formatives” in his terminology) is

present in the input (26).

(26) casa “house” [[kas - a]stem it - a

Under this approach, a candidate such as casaíta is not eliminated through some

morphological constraint that requires final placement of /a/, but rather due to the

following alignment constraint:

ALIGN (suffix, onset): If an input vowel V is initial in a suffix attached to

a stem, then assign one violation mark for every segment intervening

between the output correspondent of V and the nearest preceding onset

segment. (Bermúdez-Otero 2007: 295).

Thus, the stem formative /a/ is essentially deleted.

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(27) kas-a]stem it-a ALIGN (s, o) MAX-V a. ka.sa.í.ta *! b. ka.sí.ta *

While this is an attractive approach, it raises more questions than it answers. First

among them concerns an explanation of why consonant-initial –citV is not

available to attach to the stem [kas-a] and thus vacuously satisfy ALIGN (s, o).

Tableau (28) illustrates that a candidate (28c) casacita would actually be

predicted. If there is no morphological constraint against terminal elements/stem

formatives in non-final position as Bermúdez-Otero contends, then we must

presume that the grammar exacts a cost for their deletion; in effect, this is the

purpose of MAX-V in his analysis. Candidate (28c) is able to satisfy MAX-V and

maintain the stem formative. The fact that *casacita is not an attested form

among speakers remains unexplained in his analysis.

(28)

kas-a]stem it-a, sit-a ALIGN (s, o) MAX-V a. ka.sa.í.ta *! b. ka.sí.ta * c. ka.sa.sí.ta

As we have seen previously in this chapter with respect to the

diminutivization of certain diphthong-final words (patio~patiecito “patio”,

novia~noviecita “girlfriend”), Spanish reveals a willingness to select a diminutive

morpheme that (from a statistical standpoint) is not generally associated with a

class of words if such a selection produces desired effects—in this case,

avoidance of the *[ji]Rhyme constraint and maintenance of the glide in the

diminutive form.

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These cases prove difficult to explain within an account that analyzes the

final vowel –o/a as a stem formative that is deleted in the phonology. Assuming

the underlying structure in (29a), it is incumbent on such an account to explain

why –cit{o, a} does not simply attach to the stem (29b). This unattested form

would afford certain advantages: non-deletion of the stem formative, avoidance of

the illicit *[ji]Rhyme structure, and preservation of the glide in the output.

(29) a. [nobj-a]Stem b. [nobj-a]Stem [–sit-a] = *[nobjasita] Instead, the deletion analysis must explain why noviecita is a more advantageous

form than *noviacita. I submit, however, as in (28), that the deletion analysis

actually predicts the latter form and would need to account for a rather peculiar

and far more complex process in order to arrive at the attested output, noviecita.

Recall that the deletion analysis as proposed by Bermúdez-Otero (2006) assumes

that diminutivization occurs at the word level and that the stem formative is

deleted by the phonology. In the case of novia (30a), the selected morpheme [–

sit-a] is not vowel initial and therefore will always vacuously satisfy the constraint

ALIGN (suffix, onset). This leaves the analysis with no justification for [a]

deletion. At any rate, the requirement for word-level attachment leaves us to

assume that either [a] transforms into [e] by some unexplained process (30ai) or

that [a] is deleted (unjustifiably) and then an epenthetic [e] is added (31aii).

On the other hand, the analysis in (30b), which assumes a never-violated

constraint on non-final placement of Terminal Elements, obviates these issues and

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eliminates the complexity inherent in (30a). It requires only a well-documented

process of [e] epenthesis in order to arrive at the attested output form.

(30) a. Stem Formative Deletion Analysis

[nobj-astem] [–sit-a] i. [a] → [e]

ii. [a] → [ø]; [ø] → [e] [nobj-e] [–sit-a] [nobjesita]33 b. Morphological Constraint on Non-Final TE Analysis

[nobj-stem] [–sit-a] [ø] → [e] [nobj-e] [sita] [nobjesita]

In defense of the deletion analysis, Bermúdez-Otero (2007) is not meant to

be a full-fledged analysis of Spanish diminutive formation and many word types

are not addressed. That said, the diminutive analysis presented in the article is

offered as support for the phonological deletion of stem formatives in derivational

morphology and as evidence for a Stratal OT approach more generally.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to extrapolate the approach across other word

types as I have done here.

33 This approach would create similar issues for puerta ~ puertecita types in Peninsular dialects.

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With respect to those words that end in /e/, such as clase or madre, whose

diminutives are clasecita and madrecita, it might be asserted that the presence of

the [e] in the diminutives suggests a word-level process. These examples would

run counter to my claim that diminutivization is a stem-level process. So, if it is

assumed that the final /e/ in clase and madre is a terminal element on par with /o/

and /a/, then either the [e] present in the diminutives severely undermines the

morphological constraint approach in (30b) or it is not the same [e].34

Whether the concept to which we refer be called a Terminal Element,

Stem Formative, Class or Word Marker, in a sense, these terms are all shorthand

for that (those) segment(s) appearing at the end of the base form of a word, but in

a word derived from that base either does not appear at all (31a), does not appear

in the same position (31b) or in the same form (31c).

(31) a. Base: cabeza ‘head’ k a β e s a X Derived: cabezón ‘pig headed’ k a β e s _ o n ø b. Base: perro ‘dog’ p e r o X

34 Another potential issue with the proposal that diminutivization is a word-level process concerns plurals. One must assume that there is some constraint on plural markers appearing within morphological boundaries, but not for TEs/stem formatives/word markers, etc. i.e. [cas-as] –it-a or [cas-a] –it-a-s.

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Derived: perrito ‘tiny dog’ pe r i t o X

c. Base: casa ‘house’ k a s a X

Derived: caserío ‘hamlet’ k a s e ɾ i o Y In (31a) the augmentative suffix –ón transforms the noun cabeza into the

masculine adjective cabezón. In this case, the base contains a terminal element

that is not present in the derived form.35 The fact that a phonotactically-sound

suffix that contains the canonical masculine terminal element /o/ is unattested,

such as *-ono (*cabezono), suggests that preservation of a slot for terminal

elements in derivational morphology does not trump faithfulness to the form of

the morpheme. Of more import for our current discussion, none of the derivations

in (31a-c) precisely reflects the structure of the base with respect to the final

vowel. Indeed, the debate between phonological deletion and morphological

restriction of the unstressed final vowel concerns why the segment does not

surface word-medially, but not whether it surfaces word-medially. In other

words, both approaches assume that terminal elements do not appear word-

medially, regardless of the motivation. Thus in the case of the unstressed final /e/

35 The feminine form of the augmentative –ona does manifest the Terminal Element /a/, as in cabezon/a/.

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in clase and madre, there is no basis to believe that it is exceptional in this regard;

the word-medial [e] in clasecita and madrecita is not the same [e] as in the

respective bases, clas[e] and madr[e]. Any confusion arises simply because the

epenthetic vowel in Spanish happens to be phonologically identical to the final

unstressed vowel of these words. It is fortuitous, perhaps, that the optimal outputs

are clasecita and madrecita (for reasons that will be explained fully in Chapter 4)

and that they appear to preserve the structure of the base, but the medial /e/ is not

a carryover from the base. In a similar way, the medial /i/ in dosificar “to

measure out” is part of the verbal morpheme –ificar (cf. clase~clasificar

“class~classify,” diverso~diversificar “diverse~diversify”) and should not be

analyzed as deriving from the base, dosis, just as the medial /e/ in broncear “to

tan” and cobardear “to act cowardly” are part of –ear and do not come from

bronce “bronze” and cobarde “coward” (cf. gato~gatear “cat~climb like a cat,”

plata~platear “silver~plate with silver”).

Essentially, we must conclude that the [e] present in the diminutive form

is epenthetic and that the stems have the structure in (32).

(32) [klas-]Stem [madr-]Stem This is an attractive assumption because it establishes parity between –o, –a and

–e final words, in that the diminutive morphemes attach at the stem level in all

these cases.36

36 See Colina (2003b) for arguments in support of the Terminal Element status of word-final /e/.

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Note that even if we assume that the final /e/ in the base is not a Terminal

Element but epenthetic, this would not change the assumption about the

underlying forms since the epenthetic [e] would be analyzed as falling outside the

domain of the stem, as in (33).

(33) [klas-]Stem [e] [madr-]Stem [e] To summarize, I argue that the input for words in both Class D1 and D2

do not contain the unstressed, final vocalic element. The difference between the

behavior of (34a-b) and (34c) is that the final vowel in café is stressed and,

therefore, analyzed by speakers as critically forming part of the stem. This is

essentially analogous to the case in (34d), balcón “balcony,” in which there is no

base-final vowel and the entire word acts as the stem.

(34) a. Base: casa Input: [[kas-]Stem]DIM casita b. Base: clase Input: [[klas-]Stem ]DIM clasecita Base: uniforme Input: [[uniform-]Stem]DIM uniformito c. Base: café Input: [[kafe-]Stem]DIM cafecito d. Base: balcón Input: [[balkon-]Stem]DIM balconcito With the input of the stems established, it is now necessary to discuss the

input of the diminutive morpheme. By strictly looking at the outputs, one can

postulate a maximum of six forms.

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(35) a. -ito gato “cat” gatito -ita mesa “table” mesita

b. -cito balcón “balcony” balconcito -cita mujer “woman” mujercita

c. -ecito pan “bread” panecito -ecita flor “flower” florecita As argued previously in Section III, I consider –it{o, a} to be a suffix rather than

an infix. In the masculine word poema “poem,” the diminutive form poemita

retains the idiosyncratic word marker /a/ because it falls within the inflexional

possibilities of the morpheme. As a point of comparison, consider the

augmentative morpheme –ote/ota. In (36a), -ote is not a suffix for gatote and an

infix for grandote. Maintenance of word-final /e/ in the latter is only a reflection

of the inflectional possibilities of the suffix. Note that the feminine augmentative

of grande is grandota. Thus, an assumption of infixation for grandote would

require a separate process of suffixation for grandota and gatote. A far simpler

system assumes suffixation in all cases and analyzes the grandote example for

what it is: a coincidental correspondence between the base-final vowel grand[e]

and the augmentative-final vowel grandot[e].

(36) a. -ote gato “male cat” gatote grande “large (m.)” grandote b. -ota gata “female cat” gatota

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grande “large (f.) grandota Of course as an adjective, grande is syntactically bound to respect the

gender of the noun it is modifying (although this fact is not visible, since final /e/

does not have a canonical gender correspondence). Nouns, on the other hand, are

under no such jurisdiction. The diminutive form of poema is free to replicate the

word-final vowel /a/ without additional consequences. In other words, poemita is

no more “irregular” than poema. Again, rather than assume infixation and its

inherent complexity, I argue that diminutive allomorphs are suffixes that

accommodate the base form to the degree possible. When there is a clash

between the base form and the diminutive suffix, the inflectional limitations of the

suffix will always trump faithfulness to the base form.

Since diminutive forms always end in either /o/ or /a/, in Tableaux (37)

and (38) I establish the available set of inflectional markers for diminutive

morphemes {o, a} as part of the input. This move allows for the exchange of a

morpheme-specific constraint IDENT-DIM (of dubious universal status) for the

universal constraint IDENT-VOWEL.

IDENT-VOWEL: Any vowel in the input must have an identical correspondent in the output.

IDENT-BASE-FINALV: The final vowel in the Base form of a word must have an identical correspondent in the Derived form of a word.

Crucial Ranking: IDENT-V >> IDENT-BASE

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In Tableau (37), the above crucial ranking has the effect of eliminating candidate

(b) through a violation of IDENT-VOWEL since word-final /e/ is not part of the

input set {o, a} for the diminutive morpheme. Although candidate (a) violates

IDENT-BASE by selecting word-final /o/ instead of the base conforming /e/, this is

the best option based on the inflectional capacity of the diminutive.

(37) uniforme (m.)

uniform- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V IDENT-BASE

a. uniformito * b. uniformite *!

While this constraint ranking prohibits final /e/ in diminutive forms, it

does allow for maintenance of base-form idiosyncrasies that fall within the

possibilities of the diminutive morphemes. The non-canonical final vowel /a/ for

the masculine word poema in (38) is preserved in this analysis. Neither candidate

(a) or (b) incurs a violation of IDENT-V because their respective final vowels are

included in the diminutive set.37 Candidate (b) is judged less optimal since

candidate (a) better preserves the base form.

(38) poema (m.)

poem- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V IDENT-BASE

a. poemita b. poemito *!

The above analysis of poema essentially argues that the diminutive

morpheme is not strictly bound to canonical instantiations of gender. For

37 A third possible candidate poemite violates higher-ranked IDENT-VOWEL and has been omitted for purposes of clarity.

93

example this is in contrast to the phrase la modelo bonita “the beautiful fashion

model.” Even though the feminine head of the phrase modelo is marked by

idiosyncratic /o/, both the form of the modifier (bonita) and the definite article

(la) adhere to their feminine forms.

The analysis in (38), however, poses problems for /e/-final words as in

(37), reproduced in (39) with the additional candidate (c), *uniformita. Since {o,

a} is an unordered set and selection of either results in a violation of IDENT-BASE,

there is no mechanism for distinguishing between the optimal candidate (a),

uniformito, and candidate (c) that selects the final vowel /a/.

(39) uniforme (m.)

uniform- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V IDENT-BASE

a. uniformito * b. uniformite *! c. uniformita *

Clearly, when faced with a choice of final vowels, the diminutive morpheme

adheres to the canonical values of /o/ for masculine and /a/ for feminine. In fact,

if we take an inventory of the diminutive data, we find, with few exceptions, that

the derived form contains all segments present in the base form:

(40) casa: casita libro: librito madre: madrecita “house” “book” “mother”

padre: padrecito café: cafecito poema (m.): poemita “father” “coffee” “poem”

modelo (f.): modelito pan: panecito balcón: balconcito “fashion model” “bread” “balcony”

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nov[j]a: nov[j]ecita ladrona: ladroncita “girlfriend” “(female) thief” menú: menucito “menú”

Exceptions:

uniforme: uniformito dinosaur[j]o: dinosaurito “uniform” “dinosaur”

From the standpoint of the recovery of the base, this pattern makes complete

sense. Within highly productive derivational processes, such as diminutivization,

functionality is dependent on the interlocutors’ ability to “agree” on the base form

of the derivation. The most suitable derivation is the one that is best able to

reflect the base form within the confines of the morphology. The existence of

certain exceptional types is just an indication that other variables are present (see

Chapter 4). I propose to formalize this concept with the following constraint:

REFLECT: Segments present in the Base form are reflected in the Derived

form.

Crucially, this constraint makes no reference to position fidelity or to origin of the

segments. For example, the diminutive poemita receives the final vowel /a/ from

the diminutive suffix, but satisfies REFLECT because it reflects the segment /a/

present in the base. As illustrated in Tableau (41), REFLECT makes the decision

between *poemito and poemita. Candidate (b) incurs one fatal violation of

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REFLECT since the final vowel /a/ of the base is not reflected in the diminutive

form.

(41) poema (m.)

Base: poema poem- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT

a. poemita b. poemito *! c. poemite *! *

Nevertheless, to this point the analysis is still unable to predict the final vowel of

/e/-final bases (42). While candidate (c) fatally violates IDENT-V by selecting a

final vowel not available to the diminutive morpheme, neither candidate (a) or (b)

violates REFLECT because the /e/ in the base is present in both, albeit not in word-

final position. Again, note that the constraint REFLECT makes no reference to the

origin of the /e/ in the diminutive form; whether it be epenthetic, part of the stem,

or part of the diminutive, its presence is enough to satisfy the constraint.

(42) madre (f.)

Base: madre madr- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT

a. madrecita b. madrecito c. madrecite *!

In order to distinguish between candidates (a) and (b), I propose the following

constraint:

FEMININE = /a/: Feminine derived forms and only feminine derived forms

are marked by final vowel /a/.

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Although the masculine of suffix types may end in /o/, /e/, or lack a final vowel

(llorar~llorón “to cry” ~ “crybaby”), this constraint speaks to the generalization

that their feminine counterpart often ends in /a/. In (43), *madrecito is now

eliminated and the correct candidate (a) is predicted.

(43) madre (f.)

Base: madre madr- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. madrecita b. madrecito *! c. madrecite *! *

This approach also accounts for the masculine noun, poema, which ends in

unexpected /a/.

(44) poema (m.)

Base: poema poem- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. poemita * b. poemito *! c. poemite *! *

FEM = /a/ must be crucially ranked below REFLECT in order to maintain the

correct output for idiosyncratic poema (44) and modelo (45).

(45) modelo (f.)

Base: modelo model- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. modelita *! b. modelito * c. modelite *! * *

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Finally, Tableau (46) illustrates the analysis for uniforme. Neither candidate (a)

or (b) satisfy REFLECT, so the decision is passed down to FEM = /a/. Since

uniforme is a masculine noun, candidate (a) fatally violates this constraint.

(46) uniforme (m.)

Base: uniforme uniform- + DIM {o, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. unformita * *! b. uniformito * c. uniformite *!

The legitimacy of such an approach is strengthened if it holds up in the

evaluation of similar morphological processes. Returning to the earlier example

of the augmentative –ote/ota, we find that this approach makes the correct

predictions. In the case of the masculine word gato “cat” in Tableau (47),

candidate (a), gatota, is eliminated by FEM = /a/, since gato is masculine.

Candidate (b), gatoto, is eliminated by IDENT-V because the suffix-final [o] is not

part of the available set of final vowels available to this augmentative suffix {e,

a}. Candidate (c) is the winner and the only candidate to satisfy all of the

constraints. Note that all three candidates satisfy REFLECT because the initial

vowel of the augmentative suffix reflects the final vowel of the masculine word

gat/o/.

(47) gato (m.) Base: gato gat- + AUG {e, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. gatota *! b. gatoto *! c. gatote

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In Tableau (48), REFLECT is violated by both candidates (b) and (c) since

the final /a/ in gata is not present in the augmented form, a fatal violation in the

case of gatote (c). Again the winning candidate (a), gatota, is the only candidate

able to satisfy all of the constraints.

(48) gata (f.)

Base: gata gat- + AUG {e, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. gatota b. gatoto *! * * c. gatote *! *

Tableaux (49) and (50) illustrate that this constraint ranking also

successfully accounts for the augmentatives of /e/-final words.

(49) padre (m.) Base: padre padr- + AUG {e, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. padresota *! b. padresoto *! c. padresote

All candidates for both padre and madre satisfy REFLECT because the final /e/ is

present in all of the diminutive forms. Thus, the selection is left to IDENT-V and

FEM = /a/.

(50) madre (f.) Base: madre madr- + AUG {e, a}

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. madresota b. madresoto *! * c. madresote *!

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From the above discussion, it is now clear that the number of diminutive

morphemes can be reduced to three: -it {o, a}, -cit {o, a}, -ecit {o, a}. In Chapter

4, I argue that the [e] is epenthetic, thus reducing the number of morphemes to

two: -it {o, a} and –(e)cit {o, a}. Given their collective presence in both Class D1

and D2 words, it seems prudent to assume that they are available to attach to all

stems and must be evaluated accordingly in the output. Therefore, I will continue

to utilize the shorthand DIM {o, a} to denote all of the possible inputs of the

diminutive morpheme.

This chapter has argued for the following:

1) For the purposes of diminutivization, Spanish non-verbal words are divided

into two classes. Class D1 includes all non-verbal words that end in unstressed

/o/ or /a/. Class D2 includes all other words.

2) All diminutive morphemes are analyzed as suffixes. 3) Diminutive suffixes attach to stems that crucially do not contain the final

vocalic element from the base.

4) The final vocalic element in the output of diminutives is determined by the

interaction of three constraints: a) IDENT-VOWEL limits the final vowel in derived

forms to the inflectional capacity of the diminutive suffix, indicated by {o, a}; b)

REFLECT mandates that derived forms reflect all segments present in the base

form; and, finally, c) FEM = /a/ requires the selection of the final vowel /a/ for

100

feminine derived forms and prohibits its selection for non-feminine derived

forms.

5) All diminutive suffixes are present in the input, as well as an unordered set of

both final vocalic elements: DIM {o, a}.

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Chapter 4

Morphological and Phonological Interactions in Diminutive Allomorph Selection

I. Introduction

As illustrated in Chapter 3, I assume the ranking IDENT-V >> REFLECT >> FEM =

/a/ is responsible for selection of the final vocalic element in diminutive

formation. In Tableau (1), casita is the winning candidate because it reflects the

final vocalic element /a/ from the base, casa.

(1) casa ~ casita

/kas- + DIM {o, a}/

IDENT-V REFLECT FEM = /a/

a. kasit-a b. kasit-o *! * c. kasit-e *! *

In the following sections, I present an analysis that accounts for the selection of

the diminutive allomorphs themselves. The fact that the –(e)cit{o, a} and the

–it{o, a} allomorphs are both present in Classes D1 and D2 precludes the

possibility of a purely morphological approach in which one allomorph is

associated exclusively with one class. However, I will argue for a role for

morphology within Class D1, based on a novel application of morphological

subcategorization frames (Bonet et al 2007, Bonet 2006, Paster 2005, 2006).

I propose placing a subcategorization frame on Class D1 words that

indicates that they are idiosyncratically marked to select for a particular

diminutive morpheme, specifically –it{o, a}.

102

(2) Class D1/it/ casa /kasit/ “house” palo /palit/ “stick” problema /problemit/ “problem” modelo /modelit/ “model” No other subcategorization frames are required and all other patterns are

determined by the ranking of phonological constraints, resulting in no loss of

generalizations.

As with Bonet’s analysis of class marker allomorphy, the constraint

RESPECT will be violated whenever a member of Class D1 chooses a diminutive

other than –it{o, a}. However, I leave the diminutive allomorphs as an unordered

set and, as a result, obviate the need for the PRIORITY constraint. Instead,

RESPECT interacts with universal faithfulness and markedness constraints to select

the correct output. Crucially, the present analysis places limitations not on the

–it{o, a} allomorph itself, but rather on Class D1, which exhibits a strong (non-

optimizing) preference for selection of –it{o, a}. In this way, -it{o, a} is not

constrained and, indeed, does attach to words outside of Class D1, for example

uniforme ~ uniformito.

II. Analysis of Diminutive Class D1 Words in Sonoran

As stated in the conclusion to the previous chapter, one of the principle

assumptions in my analysis is that all diminutive allomorphs are present

underlyingly. Thus, DIM represents the unordered set {it (o, a), cit (o, a)}. I view

the process as an example of suppletive allomorphy (see Paster 2006 for

103

discussion) in which one form is not related through phonological processes to the

other. In other words, -it{o, a} is not the result of deletion of the first segment of

–cit{o, a} and, conversely, -cit{o, a} is not an augmented form of –it{o, a}.

Therefore, beginning with the Class D1 word, casa, it is necessary to determine

what forces are involved in the selection between the two candidates casita and

*casecita.

I will adopt Bonet’s (2006) approach to Spanish gender allomorphy, in

which she established an ordered set of class markers for masculine and feminine

nouns based on markedness.

(3) Masculine: {o > e, ø > a} Feminine: {a > e, ø > o} For masculine nouns, /o/ is the canonical gender marker and is ordered highest, /e/

and words without a gender marker (ø) are equally more marked, and the class

marker /a/ is analyzed as most marked and ordered last. Feminine nouns are

similarly ranked, with /o/ and /a/ inverted. Those words that do not end in the

canonical marker for their respective gender receive a subcategorization frame

that indicates this idiosyncratic selection.

(4) Masculine: nombre /nombre/ “name” pan /panø/ “bread” problema /problema/ “problem”

104

Feminine: noche /noche/ “night” flor /florø/ “flower” modelo /modelo/ “model” Bonet appeals to two constraints, RESPECT (Bonet et al 2007) and PRIORITY

(Bonet et al 2003, 2005; Mascaró 2007), to account for the allomorphy (Bonet

2006: 327).

RESPECT: Respect idiosyncratic lexical specifications. In an example from (4), /nombre/, RESPECT requires that the idiosyncratic lexical

information present in the subcategorization frame /e/ be present in the output.

PRIORITY: Respect lexical priority (ordering) of allomorphs. Based on the ranking for masculine words {o > e, ø > a}, PRIORITY states that

those words that end in /e/ or ø will incur one violation mark, and those that end

in /a/ will incur two violations. The constraint ranking RESPECT >> PRIORITY

ensures that idiosyncratic markings are present in the surface form.

(5) nombre (masc.)

/nombre + {o > e, ø, > a}/

RESPECT PRIORITY

a. nombro *! b. nombre * c. nombr *! * d. nombra *! **

Candidate (5a) satisfies PRIORITY through selection of the highest ordered marker

/o/, but at the expense of a fatal violation of RESPECT since nombre is lexically

105

specified to end in /e/. Candidates (5c) and (5d) fatally violate RESPECT for the

same reason, in addition to one and two PRIORITY violations respectively for

selection of markers ordered below /o/. Candidate (5b) also incurs one violation

of PRIORITY, but is able to satisfy highest ranked RESPECT via selection of the

lexeme’s idiosyncratic marker /e/.

While I do not adopt this analysis to account for surfacing class markers in

diminutive forms (as stated in Chapter 3, I view the “class markers” as

inflectional endings that are part of the diminutive allomorph), I do propose that a

lexical specification approach is able to capture the non-optimizing nature of

certain diminutives. Specifically, I propose that Class D1 words (those ending in

canonical unstressed /o/ or /a/) are lexically specified to select –it{o, a}.

(6) Class D1/it/ casa /kasit/ “house” palo /palit/ “stick” problema /problemit/ “problem” modelo /modelit/ “model”

The ranking P >> M in Prosodic Morphology (McCarthy and Prince

1993a, b) argues that some phonological constraint P must outrank some

morphological constraint M; otherwise, one must abandon the influence of

prosody (and phonology more generally) on allomorphy. In view of their

constraint PARSE-SYLL (McCarthy & Prince 1993a, b), [ka.se.si.ta] is clearly the

least-marked of the two candidates.

PARSE-SYLL: All syllables must be parsed into feet.

106

(7) casa ~ casita

/kas- + DIM {o, a}/

PARSE-SYLL

a. ka (sí.ta) *! b. (kà.se) (sí.ta)

The first syllable of candidate (7a) is left unparsed, a violation of PARSE-SYLL,

and unattested *casecita is wrongly predicted. From a purely phonological

standpoint, there is no reason to believe that the form *[ka.se.si.ta] is less well

formed than [ka.si.ta]; on the contrary, the former is, at least, prosodically better

formed than the latter.

My use of the subcategorization frame /it/ and the constraint RESPECT

provide a mechanism to isolate the optimal candidate. The crucial ranking of

RESPECT >> PARSE-SYLL in Tableau (8) illustrates the fact that it is more critical

to respect the lexical specification that Class D1 words select –it{o, a} than to

satisfy the prosodic constraint that dictates parsing of all syllables. Again, there

seems to be no phonological motivation for selection of casita over casecita,

therefore some other mechanism must account for the intuitively clear preference

for Class D1 words to select –it{o, a}.

(8) casa ~ casita

/kasit + DIM {o, a}/

RESPECT PARSE-SYLL

a. ka (sí.ta) * b. (kà.se) (sí.ta) *!

One alternative to lexical specification is to establish morpheme-specific

constraints. This is the approach that Colina (2003) proposes for Spanish

diminutives; but, as Bonet et al (2007: 915) point out, this opens up the possibility

107

of positing as many constraints as there are morphemes in a language. Of course,

it would be difficult to argue for the universal status of constraints that refer to

specific morphemes in specific languages.

As I mentioned in my discussion in Chapter 3, examination of

Crowhurst’s Sonoran data indicates that Class D1 words select for the –it{o, a}

allomorph except when such a selection would create an insurmountable

phonological conflict. Such a conflict arises with words whose stems end in a

front glide [j], such as nov[j]-a “girlfriend” and pat[j]-o “patio;” the resultant

homorganicity underscores the one limitation of the –it{o, a} allomorph. A never

violated OCP constraint in Spanish on tautosyllabic homorganic vocoids in rhyme

position (Harris 1983) (i.e. *.Cji. or *.Cwu.) overrides the requirement to respect

the lexical specification on these words to select –it{o, a}.

(9) nov[j]- + -it{o, a} = *[no. ßjí. ta] pat[j]- + -it{o, a} = *[pa.tjí.to] However, the constraints introduced to this point are insufficient to account for

the correct output. While *.Cji. eliminates candidate (10a), both candidates (10c)

and (10d) satisfy the constraint ranking better than the actual output in (10b), in

which (nò.ßjé) (sí.ta), fatally violates high-ranking RESPECT, since novia is a

Class D1 word lexically specified to select the –it{o, a} allomorph.

108

(10) novia ~ noviecita /nobj-it + DIM {o, a}/

*.Cji. RESPECT PARSE-SYLL DEP-V

a. no (ßjí.ta) *! * b. (nò.ßje) (sí.ta) *! * c. no (ßí.ta) *! d. (nò.ßi) (í.ta)

Candidates (10b-10d) reflect three possible repair strategies to avoid the Cji

structure. Candidate (10b) selects the –ecit{o, a} allomorph, which allows it to

maximally reflect the base through maintenance of the glide in the diminutive

form. Candidate (10c) satisfies the constraint by simply deleting the glide and

selecting –it{o, a}. Meanwhile, candidate (10d) avoids the illicit structure through

conversion of the glide into a syllabic vocoid [i].

In Tableau (11) I introduce MAX, an input-to-output faithfulness

constraint, IDENT (SYLL) an output-to-output faithfulness constraint (also used in

Colina’s 2003 and Stephenson’s 2004 accounts of Spanish diminutives), and

ONSET, a markedness constraint on syllable structure:

MAX: Every segment S1 present in the input must have a corresponding segment

S2 in the output.

IDENT (SYLL): Non-syllabic vocoids in the input must remain non-syllabic in the

output. Syllabic vocoids in the input must remain syllabic in the output.

ONSET: All syllables have an onset.

109

(11) novia ~ noviecita /nobj-it + DIM {o, a}/

RESPECT MAX IDENT-SYLL

ONSET PARSE SYLL

DEP-V

a. (nò.ßje) (sí.ta) * * b. no (ßí.ta) * * c. (nò.ßi) (í.ta) * *

I claim that the top three constraints are crucially unranked as well as the bottom

three constraints: RESPECT, MAX, IDENT-SYLL >> ONSET, PARSE SYLL, DEP-V.

The state of affairs in Tableau (11), in which each candidate appears to be

equally flawed, is not terribly surprising given the type of variation that Harris

(1994: 185) reports for the diminutive forms of disyllabic words ending in the

diphthong [jo] (discussed in Chapter 3).

It is instructive to test the current constraint ranking on the behavior of

longer than disyllabic words that end in the troublesome diphthong, particularly

since no variation has been reported for them. In Tableau (12), the current

constraint ranking predicts the correct output for iglesia. Although candidate

(12a), *iglesiecita, preserves the glide through selection of the –(e)cit{o, a}

allomorph, it comes at the cost of creating an unparsed syllable. Compare this

result with that of noviecita in (11a). In this case, selection of –(e)cit{o, a}

affords the advantage of forming a prosodically unmarked word of two trochaic

feet, (`σ σ) (σ´ σ) ~ (nò.βje) (sí.to). Interestingly, the winning candidate in (12)

shares the same prosodic structure (ì.gle) (sí.ta).

(12) iglesia ~ iglesita “church”

/iglesj-it + DIM {o, a}/

RESPECT MAX IDENT-SYLL

ONSET PARSE SYLL

DEP-V

a. (i.gle) sje (sí.ta) * * *(!) *(!) b. (i.gle) (sí.ta) * * c. (i.gle) si (í.ta) * **(!) *(!)

110

The loss of both the glide and the segment in the winning candidate (12b) is

somewhat surprising given the data reported by Harris in (13). Of course, one

must take care given the small sample size, but it is worth noting that the least

accepted repair strategy (both glide and segment lost) for these disyllabic words

is, conversely, the chosen strategy for longer than disyllabic words (iglesita).

(13)

Lexeme Glide loss (segment retained)

Glide maintained Glide loss (segment loss)

ind[j]o ind[i]to “Indian” sab[j]o sab[je]cito “wise” lab[j]o lab[i.í]to lab[je]cito ?lab[i]to “lip” ap[j]o ap[i.í]to ap[je]cito “celery”

ampl[j]o ampl[i.í]to “ample” This does make intuitive sense in that segmental loss should have a greater impact

on shorter words than longer words in terms of recovery of the base. For

example, if for the word patio “patio” speakers were to choose the segmental loss

repair strategy, resulting in *patito instead of attested patiecito, then there would

exist an unnecessary merger with the diminutive for pato “duck,” patito. On the

other hand, segmental loss between pairs such as iglesia ~ iglesita and dinosaurio

~ dinosaurito are less costly and the respective diminutives unlikely to elicit

confusion as to the base to which they refer.

More to the point, however, I concur with Colina (2003) that the tendency

of certain diminutive forms to emerge as two trochaic feet suggests a process of

the Emergence of the Unmarked (TETU). The divergent repair strategies of

iglesia and the disyllabics in (13) funnel into this prosodic structure. In this way,

111

the incompatibility of the stem-final glide [j] and the diminutive suffix initial [i]

provides the environment for an unmarked prosodic structure to emerge as

speakers settle on repair strategies. I formalize this process through two

constraints: ALIGN-FT-L and ALIGN-FT-R (McCarthy and Prince 1993).

ALIGN-FT-L (FT, L, PRWD, L): Align the left edge of a foot with the left edge of

the prosodic word.

ALIGN-FT-R (FT, R, PRWD, R): Align the right edge of a foot with the right edge

of the prosodic word.

Given that the process of TETU expresses a preference for an unmarked structure

that is essentially latent in the grammar and only emerges under certain

circumstances, the above constraints must be low ranking. Finally, I integrate a

markedness constraint on identical adjacent segments: OCP (Colina 2009).

OCP: No identical adjacent segments. (14) novia ~ noviecita

/nobj-it + DIM {o, a}/

RES

PECT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PARS

E SY

LL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a.(nò.ßje) (sí.ta) * * b. no (ßí.ta) * * *! c. (nò.ßi) (í.ta) * * *!

The free variation present in (13) is admittedly difficult to formalize in a

framework such as OT, but it does serve to justify the peripheral status of the

OCP constraint. It also provides evidence for crucial unranking of the top three

112

constraints. As will become clear in the presentation of the analysis of other

words types, these three constraints do not interact to decide the optimal candidate

except within the context of the stem-final [j] words, precisely where we

encounter variation and multiple repair strategies. For example, crucially ranking

RESPECT above MAX and IDENT-SYLL would only serve to eliminate entirely the

selection of –cit{o, a} for noviecita and similar words (a move not justified by

their appearance in the data), but would have absolutely no impact on evaluation

of all other word types.

The clash between the homorganic vocoids can only be resolved through

the selection of one of three violations on faithfulness. A close comparison of the

tableaux for iglesia and novia (15) reveals that the number of syllables in their

respective stems inadvertently plays a role in their evaluation. The fact that

iglesia has one more syllable than novia ensures that the glide deletion repair

strategy for iglesia (15) results in all syllables parsed, but does not have the same

result for novia (15). The area shaded gray for iglesia indicates that no further

evaluation of candidates is relevant, whereas the matter is not resolved for novia.

(15) iglesia ~ iglesita / novia ~ noviecita

/iglesj-it + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (ì.gle) sje (sí.ta) * * *(!) *(!) b. (ì.gle) (sí.ta) * * c. (ì.gle) si (í.ta) * **(!) *(!) * /nobj-it + DIM {o, a}/ d.(nò.ßje) (sí.ta) * * e. no (ßí.ta) * * *! f. (nò.ßi) (í.ta) * * *!

113

III. Analysis of Diminutive Class D2 Words in Sonoran

Tableau (16) compares the diminutive formation of the minimal pair

madre / comadre. Since Class D2 words are not lexically bound to any particular

allomorph, they are free to choose the option that results in the least-marked

structure. As with the novia/iglesia pair, we see that the winning candidates

converge into the unmarked structure of two trochaic feet: (mà.dre) (sí.ta) and

(kò.ma) (drí.ta). In both cases, the eliminated candidates are phonologically

sound (certainly madrita (16a) should fare no worse than casita) and are only

slightly more marked than their optimal counterparts. This winning pair provides

the clearest evidence that /e/-final bases have no allomorphic preference and that

both –it{o, a} and –(e)cit{o, a} are available underlying options.

(16) madre~madrecita / comadre~comadrita

/madr- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. ma (drí.ta) * *! b. (mà.dre) (sí.ta) * /komadr- + DIM {o, a}/ c. (kò.ma) (drí.ta) d. ko (mà.dre) (sí.ta) *(!) *(!) * e. (kò.ma) dre (sí.ta) *(!) *(!)

The next type to be addressed includes those words that end in a stressed

final vowel (e.g. menú, café, matiné). These words differ from previous types we

have seen because the final vowel carries the main stress. In an analysis of

Spanish truncated forms, Piñeros (2000a, b) argues convincingly that truncated

forms are sensitive to the foot structure of the source form. Of most relevance for

the purposes of our current discussion is his assertion that vocalic segments in the

114

prosodic head of the source form (the stressed syllable) are maximized in the

truncated form.

(17) Spanish hypocoristic exemplars (Piñeros 2000a: 14) a. Final syllable stress [be.a.(trís)]: [(tí.ča)] Beatríz [se.ßas. (tján)]: [(ča.no)] Sebastián

b. Penultimate syllable stress [kar. (ló.ta)]: [(ló.ta)] Carlota [ar. (mán.do)]: [(mán.do)] Armando

c. Antepenultimate stress

[i. (pó.li). to]: [(pó.lo)] Hipólito

[(mé.li). ða]: [(mé.la)] Mélida

While it is clear from the examples in (17a-c) that not all segments in the prosodic

head are consistently and faithfully reproduced in the truncated form (see Piñeros

2000a for full discussion of this issue; also see Alderete 1995 for prosodic head

correspondence), the examples also make evident that the stressed vowel is

always faithfully maintained in hypocoristics. This is formalized through the

faithfulness constraint HEAD-MAX (Piñeros 2000a: 14).

HEAD-MAX: Every segment contained in a prosodic head S1 must have a

correspondent in S2.

115

A key difference between truncation and diminutivization is that in Spanish

hypocoristics the stressed vowel in the source form is also the stressed vowel in

the truncated form, [ar.mán.do] : [mán.do], but this is not the case in

diminutivization because main stress is always carried by the diminutive

allomorph itself. Crucially, HEAD-MAX legislates only that the segments be

maintained in the input without respect to faithfulness to their prosodic role. With

respect to diminutivization of Spanish words ending in stressed vowels, this

amounts to complete Base-Stem identity.

(18) Base Stem me.nú [me.nu]- ka.fé [ka.fe]- ma.ti.né [ma.ti.ne]- In this way, HEAD-MAX is essentially a subset of already high ranked MAX that

prohibits segmental deletion in the stem; therefore MAX will continue to apply to

any deletion from the input. Candidates (a) and (b) in Tableau (19) fatally violate

this constraint. Although candidate (b) conforms to the unmarked prosodic

structure of exactly two trochaic feet, it does so at the expense of deletion of a

stem segment. Candidates (c) and (d) also conform to the structure, but without

segmental deletion. Notice that in this analysis the winning candidate (d) selects

–cit{o, a} not out of some morphological predisposition on the part of either the

allomorph or the word type, but because the alternative selected by candidate (c),

-it{o, a}, results in an onsetless syllable.

116

(19) menú ~ menucito

/menu- + DIM {o, a}/

MAX

ONSET PARSE-SYLL DEP-V

a. me (ní.to) *! * b. (mè.ne) (sí.to) *! * c. (mè.nu) (í.to) *! d. (mè.nu) (sí.to) e. (mè.nu) e (sí.to) *(!) *(!) *(!)

Tableau (20) underscores this near parity in terms of the candidates’ optimality. (20) menú ~ menucito

/menu- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (mè.nu) (í.to) *! b. (mè.nu) (sí.to)

In the case of trisyllabic matiné, high-ranking MAX disallows deletion of

stem-final [e] and, thus, prevents the diminutive form from conforming to the

unmarked prosodic structure. Unlike with iglesia, the phonological conditions are

not severe enough to justify such deletion. Candidates (21a) and (21b) are

prosodically unmarked and satisfy all low-ranking constraints, but it comes at too

high a price. Again, the ONSET constraint alone is responsible for the decision

between the –it{o, a} and –cit{o, a} options in candidates (21c) and (21d).

117

(21) matiné ~ matinecito /matine- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (mà.ti) (ní.to) *! b. (mà.tin) (sí.to) *! c. (mà.ti) ne (sí.to) * d. (mà.ti) ne (í.to) *(!) *(!)

Under this analysis, it now becomes clear why the final /e/ in words such as

madre and comadre cannot be analyzed as forming part of the stem. If we

compare the behavior of trisyllabic /e/-final matiné with trisyllabic /e/-final

comadre, we see that such an assumption could never predict comadrita. High-

ranking MAX would eliminate candidate (22d). If stem-final vowels were

expendable (suggesting a much lower ranking for MAX), then we would expect

that the prosodically unmarked candidate (22a), *matinito, would emerge as a

winning candidate. Therefore, as argued in Chapter 3, segmental similarity

between the final /e/ in madre and its diminutive form madrecita is coincidental

and not indicative of any attachment preference on the part of –cit{o, a}.

(22) /matine- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (mà.ti) (ní.to) *! b. (mà.ti) ne (sí.to) * c. (mà.ti) ne (í.to) *(!) *(!) /komadre- + DIM {o, a}/ d. (kò.ma) (drí.ta) *! e. (kò.ma) dre (sí.ta) * f. (kò.ma) dre (ít.a) *(!) *(!)

118

Further evidence in this dialect that the [e] is epenthetic and not part of the stem is

found in careful observation of the diminutivization of consonant-final bases, as

in (23). In the case of monosyllabic pan, the [e] is absent in the base, but surfaces

in the diminutive—a clear case of epenthesis.

(23) pan panecito “bread” balcón balconcito “balcony” corazón corazoncito “heart” Not coincidentally, the epenthetic [e] has the effect of creating the same

unmarked structure (`σ σ) (σ´ σ) that we have seen in many of the winning

candidates. I assume that [pan-] is an analogous stem to [madr-] and that the

grammar treats them in the same way. There is nothing inherently “wrong” with

the non-epenthetic candidates; it is simply that the grammar is such that

epenthesis is a relatively low cost procedure if the benefit means a less marked

prosodic structure. In Tableau (24), candidates (c) and (e) win out because all

syllables are parsed and the resulting unmarked structure of two trochaic feet

emerges.

(24) /pan- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-

SYLL

O

NSE

T

PAR

SE

SYLL

D

EP-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. pa (ní.to) * *! b. pan (sí.to) * *! c. (pà.ne) (sí.to) * madr- + DIM {o, a} d. ma (drí.ta) * *! e. (mà.dre) (sí.ta) *

119

As we have seen before, epenthesis is not inherent to any particular word type.

Tableau (25) evaluates the disyllabic, consonant-final word balcón. Simply being

consonant-final is not sufficient to trigger epenthesis. The epenthetic candidate

(25c) actually creates a more marked structure with one syllable left unparsed.

(25) balcón ~ balconcito

/balkon- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-

SYLL

O

NSE

T

PAR

SE

SYLL

D

EP-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (bàl.ko) (ní.to) b. (bàl.kon) (sí.to) c. (bàl.ko) ne (sí.to) *(!) *(!)

However, the current constraint hierarchy is insufficient to distinguish between

candidates (25a) and (25b). In terms of segmental preservation, the two

candidates are equally faithful to the corresponding base balcón and, therefore,

neither violates MAX or DEP-V. In addition, both have the unmarked prosodic

structure with all syllables parsed. What does distinguish them concerns the

syllabic role of the stem-final consonant [n]. Candidate (25b) is able to maintain

the coda position of the base correspondent because the –cit{o, a} allomorph is

consonant initial. Conversely, stem-final [n] in candidate (25a) must be

resyllabified as an onset to the vowel-initial suffix –it{o, a}. This syllabic role

correspondence is governed by the constraint STRUCTURAL ROLE (McCarthy and

Prince 1993a:141; for use with Spanish diminutive analyses see Agüero-Bautista

1998, Elordieta & Carreira 1996, Miranda 1999, and Stephenson 2004).

STRUCROLE: Corresponding elements have identical syllabic roles.

120

(26) balcón ~ balconcito

/balkon- + DIM {o, a}/

RES

PECT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PARS

E SY

LL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

STRU

C R

OLE

a. (bàl.ko) (ní.to) *! b. (bàl.kon) (sí.to) c. (bàl.ko) ne (sí.to) *(!) *(!)

STRUCROLE is fatally violated by (26a) and balconcito emerges the winner.

This constraint has important implications for trisyllabic consonant-final

words, such as corazón. Whereas the disyllabic balcón has an inherent prosodic

advantage in that attachment of either of the disyllabic diminutive allomorphs

results in all syllables parsed and an unmarked prosodic structure, this is not the

case for trisyllabics. Unless an epenthetic [e] is added to –cit{o, a}, neither of the

allomorphs creates the unmarked structure.

(27) corazón ~ corazoncito

/korason- + DIM {o, a}/

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

STR

UC

R

OLE

a. (kò.ra) so (ní.to) * *! b. (kò.ra) son (sí.to) * c.(ko.ra) (so.ne) (sí.to) * *!

Both candidates (27a) and (27b) leave one syllable unparsed, but the equal

ranking of DEP-V and PARSE-SYLL moves the decision farther down the

constraint ranking. If DEP-V were crucially ranked below PARSE-SYLL, then we

would expect that an epenthetic [e] to always be added in order to have all

121

syllables parsed regardless of the impact lower on the constraint ranking.

Conversely, if DEP-V were ranked above PARSE-SYLL, then an epenthetic [e]

would never be inserted to improve prosodic structure (wrongly predicting

*madrita, etc.). Candidate (27c) satisfies PARSE-SYLL through epenthesis, but

this causes a detrimental effect by changing the structural role of [n] without a

concomitant improvement in prosodic structure (i.e. the ALIGN constraints).

In the case of pan (28), the epenthetic candidate, panecito, has a positive

impact on prosodic structure, but satisfies markedness at the expense of

faithfulness to the syllabic role of the final segment. This competition provides a

crucial argument for the ranking of STRUCROLE below ALIGN-FT-L in panecito

dialects.38

(28) pan ~ panecito

/pan- + DIM {o, a}/

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

STR

UC

R

OLE

a. pa (ní.to) * *! * b. pan (sí.to) * *! c. (pà.ne) (sí.to) * *

IV. Additional Support for High-Ranking RESPECT Constraint

Given its high ranking and elevated importance in my analysis, it is worth

presenting additional data that support the claim that in Sonoran only never

violated constraints (e.g. *Cji) are sufficient justification for violation of RESPECT.

38 As we will see later in this chapter, constraint re-ranking will account for pancito dialects.

122

Crowhurst’s data set provides an interesting contrast between two

disyllabic word types (1992: 242): /e/-final words with an initial alternating

diphthong (29a) and /o/- or /a/-final words with an initial alternating diphthong

(29b).

(29) a. diente > dientecito, dientito “tooth” liendre > liendrecito, liendrito “nit” b. miedo > miedito, *miedecito “fear” cielo > cielito, *cielecito “sky” In set (29a), Crowhurst reports free variation between the two allomorphs, yet in

(29b) selection of the –cit{o, a} allomorph is unacceptable. The common feature

shared by the two sets is the diphthong [je] in the first syllable. Spanish exhibits

an alternation grounded in a historical process in which certain stressed vowels

(/o/ and /e/) diphthongized while etymologically related words with differing

stress patterns did not (see Hualde 2005 chapters 5 and 12 for discussion).

(30) [djén.te] “tooth” [den.tál] “dental” [ljén.dre] “nit” [len.dró.so] “nit-ridden” [mjé.do] “fear” [me.dró.so] “fearful” [sjé.lo] “sky” [se.lés.te] “celestial” In the data from the peninsular dialect analyzed by Colina (2003), disyllabic

words with a diphthong (alternating or not) select the –cit{o, a} allomorph without

123

regard to whether the base ends in /e/ or canonical /o/ or /a/39 (e.g. suave ~

suavecito “soft”, piedra~piedrecita “stone”). One group of words that Colina

does not address, however, is trisyllabic words with a historical alternating

diphthong (31).

(31) abuelo > abuelito, *abuelecito “grandfather” huérfano > huerfanito, *huerfanecito “orphan” escuela > escuelita, *escuelecita “school” abuelo alternates with the word abolengo “ancestry, lineage;” huérfano with

orfanato “orphanage;” and escuela with escolar “school (adj.).” The unattested

selection of –cit{o, a} for these words suggests that simply containing an

alternating diphthong is not a sufficient conditioning factor for –cit{o, a}

selection. The difference between the disyllabics in (30) and the trisyllabics in

(31) is that selection of the –cit{o, a} in the former results in the prosodically

unmarked structure of two trochaic feet, whereas in the former it does not,

*(à.ßwe) le (sí.to).

Colina (2003: 71-72) argues that the selection of –cit{o, a} for these words

in Peninsular responds principally to a pair of constraints referring to stress,

PARSE-DIPHTHONG and FTFORM (TROCHEE).

PARSE (DIP): Diphthongs must be parsed by feet.

FTFORM (TROC): Feet are trochaic; align the left edge of a foot with the

left edge of its head (a stressed syllable).

39 Dialectal variation will be addressed in the relevant section later in this chapter.

124

Without reviewing Colina’s entire constraint set and ranking, Tableau (32)

sketches how these high-ranking constraints eliminate certain candidates. The

winning candidate, piedrecita, satisfies both PARSE-DIPHTHONG and FTFORM

(TROCHEE).

(32) piedra~piedrecita “stone”

PAR

SE

DIP

HTH

ON

G

FTFO

RM

(T

RO

CH

EE)

a. (pje.drí) ta *! b. pje (drí.ta) *! c. (pjè.dre) (θí.ta)

I adopt these constraints in order to account for this variation, which is the

principle distinction between the Sonoran and Peninsular dialects. While I

maintain the constraint FTFORM (TROCHEE) as high-ranking (above even

RESPECT), I propose that PARSE-DIPHTHONG is lower ranking in Peninsular and on

par with RESPECT, essentially canceling each other out. Candidate (33b), then, is

eliminated by ALIGN-FT-L; the claim being that candidate selection is based on

the adherence of candidate (33c) to the unmarked prosodic structure of two

trochaic feet.40

40 An alternative approach entails removing the subcategorization frame from words that contain diphthongs in this Peninsular dialect. This move would mean that all candidates would vacuously satisfy RESPECT and piedrecita would still emerge the winner, with PARSE-DIPHTHONG as the deciding constraint.

125

(33) piedra ~ piedrecita (Peninsular) /pjedr-it + DIM {o, a}/

FTFO

RM

(TRO

CHEE

)

RES

PECT

PARS

E D

IPH

THO

NG

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PARS

E SY

LL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

a. (pje.drí) ta *! * * b. pje (drí.ta) * * *! c. (pjè.dre) (θí.ta) * *

Meanwhile, in the Sonoran dialect (34), I argue that PARSE-DIPHTHONG is

ranked lower than RESPECT.41 Fatal violation of RESPECT removes the possibility

of –cit{o, a} selection and, therefore, piedrita (34b) is the winning candidate. I

submit that from the Peninsular to the Sonoran dialect there is an increasingly

prominent role for RESPECT; in other words, the lexical bond between –it{o, a}

and Class D1 words has grown stronger in Sonoran.

(34) piedra ~ piedrita (Sonoran)

/pjedr-it + DIM {o, a}/

FTFO

RM

(TRO

CHEE

)

RES

PECT

MA

X

IDEN

T SY

LL

PAR

SE

DIP

HTH

ON

G

ON

SET

PARS

E S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

a. (pje.drí) ta *! * * b. pje (drí.ta) * * * c. (pjè.dre) (sí.ta) *! *

The other issue that is raised by the examples in (29) concerns the variation

reported for /e/-final disyllabic words that contain the diphthong [je] in the first

syllable. Crowhurst (1992: 244) notes that there is inter-speaker variation in the

acceptability of these types, with one speaker, for example, finding both dientito

41 It is quite possible that the Peninsular dialect is more conservative in terms of diminutive formation. In this case dialectal variation could be the result of a diachronic process in which once high ranked constraint(s) gradually move down the constraint hierarchy until they are essentially “deactivated.”

126

and dientecito acceptable yet claiming only clientecita as an option, and yet

another speaker accepts clientita but rejects dientito.

This report by Crowhurst again speaks to the level of variation across

dialects and across speakers, and perhaps suggests a process of lexical diffusion in

which the behavior of certain diminutive words begins to impact that of others.42

(35) Stage A Stage B

miedecito → miedito/miedecito dientecito dientecito (North-Cent. Penin.)

Stage C Stage D → miedito → miedito dientecito dientecito/dientito (Sonoran) Stage E

→ miedito dientito

(????)

For example, as in (35), the North Central Peninsular dialect reflects a more

conservative stage (A) in which parsing of diphthongs matters more than the

morphological bond between Class D1 diminutives and –it{o, a}. Whereas

Sonoran represents a later stage (D) where this bond has usurped the requirement

that diphthongs be parsed in Class D1 words and is even beginning to exert an

influence on Class D2 words.

42 Stephenson (2004: 39) makes a similar suggestion based in her two-system account of diminutive formation. However, she proposes that Peninsular is the innovative dialect in this respect, whereas my sketch in (35) assumes it is conservative. I echo her sentiment that investigation of the historical record is needed.

127

If this proposal has merit, then it might be formalized in the following manner.

As the bond between –ito{o, a} and Class D1 strengthens (i.e. RESPECT), it comes

at the cost of a progressively lower ranking for PARSE-DIPHTHONG in the

grammar. Consequently, /o/ and /a/ final words with a diphthong in penultimate

syllable position increasingly select –it{o, a}. This in turn reduces the overall

number of word types and tokens that maintain the unmarked prosodic structure

(mjè.de) (sí.to) → mje (dí.to). The high token frequency of /o/ and /a/-final words

that select –it{o, a} eventually absorb the diphthong containing words into their

ranks. The resultant lower ranking of PARSE-DIPHTHONG begins to have an

impact on /e/-final words that contain diphthongs in the penultimate syllable.

Although Crowhurst does not address diminutive variation among other

diphthongs, the fact that the variation presented occurs among words that all share

the same diphthong [je] indicates that the proper conditions exist for lexical

diffusion through analogical association.

Consider the speaker in Crowhurst’s article that only accepts

diente~dientito (*dientecito) and cliente~clientecita (*clientita43). It is difficult to

imagine a phonologically principled explanation as to why this minimal pair

should be treated in such a disparate manner. Therefore, it is reasonable to

assume that for this speaker there is a subcategorization frame for diente that

lexically specifies selection of –it{o, a}, as with the Class D1 words. The speaker

would maintain no such frame for cliente.

43 This distribution is also a bit puzzling, because the possibility exists that the speaker could parse the base as the common variant containing the canonical feminine final vowel /a/ in la clienta rather than la cliente, thus opening the door for selection of the –it{o, a} alternative.

128

In Tableau (36), candidate (b) violates RESPECT, which essentially

removes the possibility of the lower ranked constraints influencing the matter.

The lack of the subcategorization frame for cliente allows for the prosodically

unmarked candidate to emerge as the winner.

(36) diente ~ dientito / cliente ~ clientecita

/djent-it + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T SY

LL

PAR

SE

DIP

HTH

ON

G

ON

SET

PAR

SE

SY

LL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

a. djen (tí.to) * * * b. (djèn. te) (sí.to) *! * /kljent- + DIM {o, a}/ c. kljen (tí.ta) *! * * d. (kljèn.te) (sí.ta) *

V. Dialectal Variation in Paraguayan and Nicaraguan Spanish

Dialectal variation: pan ~ panecito/pancito

In contrast to the reported data for the Peninsular and Sonoran dialects,

both Jaeggli (1978) for Paraguayan and Miranda (1999) for Nicaraguan report

that consonant-final monosyllabic words select –cit{o, a} rather than the

epenthetic variant –ecit{o, a}. For convenience, Tableau (37) presents the

analysis for pan ~ panecito in Sonoran from (28) above. The critical ranking is

ALIGN-FT-L >> STRUCROLE.

129

(37) pan ~ panecito (Sonoran) /pan- + DIM {o, a}/

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

STR

UC

R

OLE

a. pa (ní.to) * *! * b. pan (sí.to) * *! c. (pà.ne) (sí.to) * *

The pancito variant in Nicaraguan and Paraguayan can easily be captured by a

simple re-ranking of these two constraints: STRUCROLE >> ALIGN-FT-L.

Selection of consonant initial –cit{o, a} by candidate (38b) allows the base-final

[n] to maintain its coda position and thus satisfy higher ranking STRUCROLE.

Since STRUCROLE is now ranked above ALIGN-FT-L, candidate (38c) affords no

advantage by adhering to the unmarked prosodic structure. The epenthetic [e]

forces the final [n] into onset position and a fatal violation of STRUCROLE.

(38) pan ~ pancito (Paraguayan, Nicaraguan)

/pan- + DIM {o, a}/

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

STR

UC

R

OL

E

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. pa (ní.to) * *! * b. pan (sí.to) * * c. (pà.ne) (sí.to) * *!

Disyllabic or longer consonant-final words in the Paraguayan and Nicaraguan

dialects form their diminutives as with the Sonoran dialect. Re-ranking of

STRUCROLE to capture the monosyllabic pattern has no impact on optimal

candidate selection for these lengthier words; the correct candidates are predicted

in (39).

130

(39) balcón ~ balconcito / corazón ~ corazoncito (Paraguayan, Nicaraguan) /balkon- + DIM {o, a}/

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

STR

UC

R

OLE

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (bàl.ko) (ní.to) *! b. (bàl.kon) (sí.to) c. (bàl.ko) ne (sí.to) *(!) *(!) * /korason- + DIM {o, a}/ a. (kò.ra) so (ní.to) * *! b. (kò.ra) son (sí.to) * c. (ko.ra) (so.ne) (sí.to) * *!

Dialectal variation: tap[j]a ~ tapita Pattern in Nicaraguan

The current constraint ranking is unable to account for an additional

variant pattern in Nicaraguan as reported by Miranda (1999). In this dialect, all

words (including disyllabics) that end in the diphthong [jo] or [ja] select the –it{o,

a} allomorph. The constraint ranking established for Sonoran wrongly predicts

*tapiecita (40a) in Nicaraguan.

(40) tapia ~ tapita “mud wall” (Nicaraguan)

/tapj-it + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a.(tà.pje) (sí.ta) * * b. ta (pí.ta) * * *! c. (tà.pi) (í.ta) * * *!

As with the pancito/panecito variation, the present account requires only minimal

constraint re-ranking to account for the Nicaraguan pattern. In this case, I

propose that the constraint MAX is now ranked below RESPECT and IDENT-SYLL.

This captures the fact that speakers in this dialect always drop the glide in order to

131

repair the phonotactic incompatibility that arises when –it{o, a} attempts to attach

to [j]-final stems.

(41) tapia ~ tapita “mud wall” (Nicaraguan)

tapj-it + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

IDEN

T-SY

LL

MA

X

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a.(tà.pje) (sí.ta) *! * b. ta (pí.ta) * * * c. (tà.pi) (í.ta) *! * *

This re-ranking has no impact on longer [jo]- [ja]-final words, since the repair

strategy of glide deletion is consistently applied in Nicaraguan: iglesia ~ iglesita.

VI. Further Evidence for Constraint Rankings

ONSET

In all dialects thus far discussed, ONSET is always ranked below the first

group of constraints.

RESPECT, MAX, IDENT-SYLL >> ONSET (Sonoran, Peninsular, Paraguayan) RESPECT, IDENT-SYLL >> MAX >> ONSET (Nicaraguan)

In this section, I justify this crucial ranking through analysis of a series of words

that have vowel final stems.

(42) Base Stem Dim. feo fe-it [fe.íto] “ugly” correo corre-it [ko.re.í.to] “mail”

132

tía ti-it [ti.íta] “aunt” té te- [te.síto] “tea” In Tableau (43), the winning candidate (43a), fe(í.to), contains an onsetless

syllable because all of the available repair strategies violate higher-ranked

constraints. Selection of consonant initial –cit{o, a} would satisfy ONSET, but

since feo is a part of Class D1, candidates (b), (c), and (f) all incur violations of

RESPECT. The solution of candidates (c) and (d) entails deletion of stem-final

[e]—the right bracket for candidate (c) indicating that the [e] is epenthetic and not

part of the stem. This has the added benefit of resulting in a single trochaic foot;

however, it violates the high-ranking constraint on segmental deletion, MAX.

Finally, candidate (e) avoids hiatus through transformation of the initial /i/ into a

coda position glide, a violation of IDENT-SYLL.

(43) feo ~ feíto “ugly”

/fe-it + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. fe (íto) * * * b. fe (sí.to) *! * * c. f]e (sí.to) *(!) *(!) * * * d. (fí.to) *! e. (féj.to) *! f. (fè.e) (sí.to) *! * * *

Although the grammar is forced to tolerate hiatus creation within Class D1 as the

lesser of several evils, this is not the case for Class D2 words. The monosyllabic

word té “tea” in Tableau (44) is able to avoid hiatus through selection of –cit{o,

a}, since RESPECT is not at issue for this diminutive class.

133

(44) té ~ tecito “tea”

/te- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. te (íto) *(!) *(!) * b. te (sí.to) * * c. t]e (sí.to) *! * * * d. (tí.to) *! e. (téj.to) *! f. (tè.e) (sí.to) *(!) *(!) *

Constraints and their rankings for the various dialects are presented on the

following pages using Hasse diagrams.

134

Constraints and rankings for Sonoran dialect:

*#Cji

FT-FORM(TROCHEE)

RESPECT, MAX, IDENT-SYLL

ONSET, PARSE-SYLL, DEP-V IDENT-V

PARSE-DIP REFLECT

ALIGN-FT-L, ALIGN-FT-R, OCP FEM = /a/

STRUCROLE

135

Constraints and rankings for North-Central Peninsular dialect (variation from Sonoran in bold): *#Cji

FT-FORM(TROCHEE)

RESPECT, MAX, IDENT-SYLL, PARSE-DIP

ONSET, PARSE-SYLL, DEP-V IDENT-V

ALIGN-FT-L, ALIGN-FT-R, OCP REFLECT

STRUCROLE FEM = /a/

136

Constraints and rankings for Paraguayan (variation from Sonoran in bold): *#Cji

FT-FORM(TROCHEE)

RESPECT, MAX, IDENT-SYLL

ONSET, PARSE-SYLL, DEP-V IDENT-V

PARSE-DIP REFLECT

STRUCROLE FEM = /a/

ALIGN-FT-L, ALIGN-FT-R, OCP

137

Constraints and rankings of Nicaraguan dialect (variation from Sonoran in bold): *#Cji

FT-FORM(TROCHEE)

RESPECT, IDENT-SYLL

MAX

ONSET, PARSE-SYLL, DEP-V

IDENT-V

PARSE-DIP REFLECT

STRUCROLE FEM = /a/

ALIGN-FT-L, ALIGN-FT-R, OCP

138

VII. Subcategorization Frames on Allomorphs: An Alternate View

While this analysis proposes a subcategorization frame for Class D1

words, a more common approach in the literature has been to attach a

subcategorization frame to an allomorph itself. Therefore, it is useful to examine

briefly how such an approach might work for Spanish diminutives. I argue that

Spanish diminutive formation does not easily lend itself to such an analysis due to

the uneven distribution of the allomorphs.

Several authors in the literature have argued for the use of

subcategorization frames to account for certain morphological processes. Booij

(1998), for example, argues for the use of subcategorization to account for non-

optimizing allomorphy. We have already seen in this chapter how Bonet (2006)

proposes the use of subcategorization frames to account for Spanish class marker

allomorphy.

Meanwhile, Paster (2006), in a cross-linguistic survey, has noted that

many cases of suppletive allomorphy are not phonologically optimizing and

argues that the P >> M model, by definition, has no mechanism to account for

such cases. She argues that associating subcategorization frames to allomorphs

that specify the phonologically conditioned context in which they appear is a

straightforward approach to apparent shortcomings of the P >> M model in cases

of non-optimizing allomorphy.

139

In one example, she examines the distribution of nominalizing suffixes in

Nakanai, an Austronesian language (2006: 212-213; her Nakanai examples are

from Johnson 1980: 177-178). In Nakanai, the nominalizing affix -il- is found

when it can both form part of the first syllable of the word and be adjacent to the

main stress of the word. The -la form occurs in all other contexts.

(45) au “steer” il-au “steering” peho “die” p-il-eho “death” go-ilo “go in” goilo-la “entrance” vi-kue “fight (v.)” vikue-la44 “fight (n.)” Paster establishes the following two subcategorization frames for these

allomorphs (214).

(46) Nominal construction A [ilnominalizing prefix [V, σ´]verb stem]noun

Nominal construction B (“elsewhere”) [ [ ]verb stem lanominalizing suffix]noun

Essentially the first subcategorization frame lexically specifies the phonological

conditions under which -il- will attach to a verb stem. The second frame indicates

that la will nominalize in all other contexts in which the conditions for -il-

attachment are unmet.

Unfortunately, this approach seems to work best when there is a clear

distribution between the two allomorphs. This is not the case for the Spanish

diminutive allomorphs. As (47) illustrates, a full account of the coverage of the

44 Paster indicates that stress in Nakanai falls on the penultimate syllable. Thus, I take each vowel to be the head of its own syllable. vikue must be syllabified vi.ku.e without a final diphthong.

140

two allomorphs would require a minimum of five separate subcategorization

frames, while missing several key phonologically conditioned generalizations in

the process.

(47) Diminutive allomorph –it{o, a}

[ [Class D1 non-[j] final]non-verbal stemit{o, a}diminutive suffix]diminutive

[ [3+ σ /e/-base]non-verbal stemit{o, a}diminutive suffix]diminutive

Diminutive allomorph –(e)cit{o, a}

[ [1 σ Bare stem]non-verbal stemecit{o, a}diminutive suffix]diminutive

[ [2+ σ Bare stem]non-verbal stemcito{o, a}diminutive suffix]diminutive

[ [2 σ /e/-base]non-verbal stemecit{o, a}diminutive suffix]diminutive

Rather than abandon subcategorization as a means to account for non-

optimizing allomorphy, in this chapter I have proposed placing a frame on Class

D1 words instead of several frames on each allomorph. In this way, words in

Class D1 are idiosyncratically marked to select for a particular diminutive

allomorph, specifically –it{o, a}. No other subcategorization frames are required

and all other patterns are determined by the ranking of phonological constraints,

resulting in no loss of generalizations.

141

Chapter 5

Concluding Remarks

In this final chapter I review the principal elements of my analysis of

Spanish diminutivization. In the first section, I briefly review my underlying

assumptions that diminutivization is a stem-level process in which both

allomorphs are present in the input, but that Class D1 words are lexically-

specified to select the -it{o, a} allomorph. Then, in Section II, I outline the major

elements of my analysis within the framework of Optimality Theory, highlighting

the interaction of the RESPECT constraint with Class D1 words and the

phonological constraints that account for the allomorphic distribution in Class D2

words. Finally, I conclude this work with a brief discussion of a possible

objection of the subcategorization frame and lexical specification approach key to

this analysis and suggest possible avenues for investigation in the historical record

to support my claims.

I. Review of Underlying Assumptions

In Chapter 3 I reviewed Harris’ five word form classes (1991a, b) and

compared them to the data for diminutivization in Sonoran Spanish. While

Harris’ analysis may offer a compelling division of non-verbal words in the

language in general, I argue that, at least in terms of diminutivization, the

distribution of -it{o, a} and -cit{o, a} reveals the limits of the utility of his classes.

Within his first three classes (in which the most abundant and consistent data can

142

be found), both diminutive forms occur with regularity. However, those words

that end in unstressed /o/ and /a/, Harris’ Classes I and II respectively, form their

diminutives in identical fashion.45 Thus, I proposed a merger of these two classes

for the purposes of diminutivization into a single Class D1. In Sonoran, this class

selects -it{o, a} without respect to prosodic shape or more general phonological

factors. The one exception to this generalization occurs with disyllabic words

ending in the diphthongs -[jo] or –[ja] that select -cit{o, a} as a repair strategy to

avoid a never-violated constraint on homorganic vocoids in rhyme position. In

the example of novio “groom, boyfriend,” the phonotactically impossible

candidate *nov[ji]to reveals the one limitation of the -it{o, a} allomorph for this

class of words. That is, its initial segment is a high front vowel [i] that makes it

incompatible with those stems that end in a high front glide [j]. Words from

Harris’ other form classes and those words ending in a stressed vowel (e.g. café)

were placed into Class D2.

The distinction between Class D1 and Class D2 is that those words in the

first are lexically specified to select for the -it{o, a} allomorph, whereas in D2,

diminutive selection is dictated strictly by phonological constraints. That is, the

difference between the behavior of Class D2 words madre~madrecita and

comadre~comadrita is not a case of lexical specification in one but not the other,

but rather that they are funnelling into an unmarked prosodic structure of two

trochaic feet.

45 The one exception, as discussed in Chapter 3, are the ladrona~ladroncita types, which I argue in Section III rightly belong in Class IIIA' along with their masculine counterparts (e.g. ladrón~ladroncito).

143

Due to the strict morphological constraint on Class D1 words, this

emergence of the unmarked only becomes apparent when comparing the behavior

of disyllabic and trisyllabic words that end in the aforementioned diphthongs. In

the case of novio, phonology trumps morphology (P >> M) and -cit{o, a} is

selected to avoid the illicit syllable structure with the added benefit of adhering to

the preferred prosodic structure of two trochaic feet [nò.ßje.sí.to]. Due to its extra

syllable, the trisyllabic iglesia is able to conform to its lexical specification and

the prosodic structure, (ì.gle) (sí.ta). However, with the stem of the disyllabic

casa, [kas-], there are no insurmountable phonological barriers to the selection of

the lexically specified -it{o, a} allomorph, even though the diminutive form casita

reflects a more marked prosodic structure in which one syllable is left unparsed

[ka.(sí.ta)].

Notwithstanding the lexical specification requirements on Class D1, it is

clear that both diminutive allomorphs are present in the input and are available

options to both classes. Spanish diminutivization is a case of suppletive

allomorphy in which one allomorph is not derived through segmental epenthesis

or deletion from the other. I have also argued that all words undergo a process of

suffixation in which the diminutive attaches to a stem that does not contain the

final unstressed vocalic element.46 Those proponents of an analysis of infixation

of -it- are left to explain the transformation of /e/ final words into /o/ or /a/ final

words, such as uniforme or comadre into uniformito and comadrita.

46 As noted previously, the final stressed vocalic element of words such as menú are crucially part of the stem to which the diminutive allomorph attaches.

144

In my analysis the final vocalic element comes not from the base, but is a

part of the diminutive suffix and is represented by the unordered set {o, a}. For

words that end in unstressed /o/ or /a/, the inflexional marker of the diminutive

suffix is constrained by REFLECT, which demands that derived forms of words

contain all segments present in the base form. The input-output constraint IDENT-

VOWEL is ranked above REFLECT and ensures that the final vocalic segment is

faithful to the inflexional possibilities of the diminutive suffix in the set {o, a}. In

other words, high-ranking IDENT-VOWEL ensures that a diminutive-final /e/ would

never be a possible outcome. At the same time, the ranking IDENT-VOWEL >>

REFLECT allows non-canonical words, such as masculine poema that ends in

typically feminine /a/, to preserve their idiosyncratic nature in the diminutive

form, poemita, because /a/ is a part of the inflexional set {o, a}.

Finally, I have argued that the diminutive suffixes attach to a stem that

does not contain the final vocalic element (unless it is stressed). The fact that the

diminutive madrecita appears to maintain its base-final /e/ in this form is simply a

fortuitous outcome due to the segmental similarity between word-final /e/ in

madre and the epenthetic /e/ in Spanish. In the same way, the /e/ in the verb

cobardear “to act cowardly” is a part of the verbal suffix –ear and does not come

from the final /e/ in the noun cobarde “coward.”47

In sum, Spanish diminutivization is a stem-level process of suffixation in

which both suffixes (represented by DIM), with their identical set of inflexional

markers {o, a}, are present in the input. Selection is constrained principally by

47 This is not to say that the final /e/ in the base cobarde does not exert some influence in the selection of the verbal suffix –ear instead of an alternative –ar. The constraint RESPECT could play a role in this selection.

145

phonological factors except in Class D1 words that are lexically specified to select

-it{o, a} and do so unless violation of higher ranking phonological constraints

prevent such selection, as will be reviewed in more detail in the following section.

II. Review of OT Analysis

One of the main goals of the present work has been to establish the

relationship between the morphology and the phonology in this highly productive

process. The fundamental difference in diminutivization between the prosodically

and morphologically identical words casa and madre48—selection of -it{o, a} in

the former and -cit{o, a} in the latter—forces us to consider one of various

solutions. The first, as discussed at the end of the previous chapter, follows

suggestions that subcategorization frames placed on allomorphs can account for

non-optimizing allomorphy (Booij 1998, Paster 2006a, b). Applied to

diminutivization, the assumption here would be that selection of the -it{o, a}

allomorph by disyllabic words ending in unstressed /o/ or /a/ results in a non-

optimal prosodic shape; for example, casita [ka.(sí.ta)] leaves one syllable

unparsed and does not fit into the unmarked pattern of two trochaic feet that we

have seen emerge with so many other examples: madre~(mà.dre) (sí.ta),

comadre~ (kò.ma) (drí.ta), iglesia (ì.gle) (sí.ta), chamaka~(ʧà.ma) (kí.ta), etc.

This approach, however, places too much complexity on the morphology without

dispensing completely with the phonology. No less than three subcategorization

frames would need to be posited for -cit{o, a} and no fewer than two for -it{o, a},

and, at the same time, since the subcategorization frames refer to phonological 48 Recall that I assume that unstressed final /o/, /a/, and /e/ are morphological equals (i.e. all three are class markers and not epenthetic in the case of /e/) and that they are all absent from the stem upon suffixation.

146

information in the base, the allomorphs would still need to “see” the phonological

structure of the words they attach to. This seems far too convoluted an analysis to

account for what amounts to the slightly marked case of one word type.

Another approach to the casita/madrecita issue assumes that there is a

fundamental difference in the behavior of the two allomorphs: -it{o, a} is an infix

and -cit{o, a} is a suffix. Putting aside the already discussed limitations of the

-it{o, a} as infix model, this reasoning also adds an unnecessary level of

complexity in that it creates two separate systems in a situation in which, given a

set of assumptions, it is possible to maintain a unified system.

The principal assumption that my analysis parts from is that what is

idiosyncratic or “different” is a particular class of words, and not the diminutive

allomorphs themselves. The fact that casa selects for -it{o, a} despite the

availability of a more prosodically-optimizing option (*casecita would conform

to the unmarked prosodic structure of two trochaic feet) is the result of Class D1

words being lexically specified for that suffix, which is due, presumably, to some

restriction yet to be unearthed in the history of the language. Put another way,

rather than defining the diminutive allomorphs by their behavior—that is, whether

they attach to one type of word or another—the data suggest that the words

themselves should be defined by their sensitivity to optimizing phonological

constraints (Class D2) or not (Class D1). It is not that the diminutive allomorphs

will only attach to certain words, but that certain words will only select a certain

allomorph.

147

I have formalized this distinction through the placement of the

subcategorization frame it on Class D1 words (e.g. casa /kasit/) and its interaction

with the high ranking constraint RESPECT that mandates adherence to the

idiosyncratic lexical specification of the -it{o, a} allomorph for these words. A

candidate such as *casecita satisfies the markedness constraints on prosodic

shape, such as PARSE-SYLLABLE, ALIGN-FOOT-LEFT and ALIGN-FOOT-RIGHT, but

they are ranked below RESPECT and therefore are not sufficient to “override” the

lexical specification for -it{o, a}.

In contrast to the Class D1 example (casa), the word madre belongs to

Class D2, a group of words that is unified only by its lack of lexical specification

for the -it{o, a} allomorph; a group of words, therefore, that is free to select

whichever allomorph allows for best satisfaction of the relevant markedness and

faithfulness constraints. The winning candidate, madrecita ~ (mà.dre) (sí.ta),

with its prosodic shape of two trochaic feet, satisfies PARSE-SYLLABLE, ALIGN-

FOOT-LEFT, and ALIGN-FOOT-RIGHT, *madrita ~ ma(drí.ta) does not. Tableau (1)

illustrates the contrast between lexically-specified Class D1, casa, and Class D2,

madre.

(1) casa~casita vs. madre~madrecita

/kas-it + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

a. ka (sí.ta) * * b. (kà.se) (sí.ta) *! * /madr- + DIM {o, a}/ c. ma (drí.ta) * *! d. (mà.dre) (sí.ta) *

148

In Sonoran, the only Class D1 words that violate the constraint RESPECT

are those disyllabics that end in the diphthong [jo] or [ja] (e.g. novio) and whose

stems therefore end in the front glide [j]. Selection of -it{o, a}, then, would result

in an illicit syllable structure of two homorganic vocoids in rhyme position *.Cji.

Selection of noviecito over *nov[ji]to reflects the constraint ranking *.Cji >>

RESPECT. In all other cases, RESPECT dominates lower-ranking markedness

constraints.

(2) novio~noviecito

/nobj-it + DIM {o, a}/

*.Cji. RESPECT

a. no (ßjí.ta) *! b. (nò.ßje) (sí.ta) *

As Colina (2003) has noted, the concept of the Emergence of the

Unmarked (TETU) is a key element in the understanding of Spanish Diminutive

Formation, and it plays an important role within my analysis of the data as well.

As it must certainly be, given the number of word types that, following

diminutivization, result in a prosodic structure of two trochaic feet:

Class D1 words Disyllabic ending in [jo] or [ja]: novio “groom” (nò.ßje) (sí.to) Trisyllabics ending in [jo] or [ja]: iglesia “church” (ì.gle) (sí.ta) Trisyllabics ending in /o/ or /a/: ventana “window” (bèn.ta) (ní.ta) Class D2 words

149

Monosyllabics:49 pan “bread” (pà.ne) (sí.to) Disyllabics ending in /e/: madre “mother” (mà.dre) (sí.ta) Disyllabics ending in stressed V: café “coffee” (kà.fe) (sí.to) Disyllabics ending in C: balcón “balcony” (bàl.kon) (sí.to) Trisyllabics ending in /e/: comadre “godmother” (kò.ma) (drí.ta)

The only exceptions in Sonoran are disyllabics that end in unstressed /o/ or /a/ and

those words that are four syllables or longer, which would not be able to conform

to this prosodic structure without deletion of several segments, incurring multiple

violations of MAX, the constraint on segmental deletion. The ranking of PARSE-

SYLLABLE, ALIGN-FOOT-LEFT and ALIGN-FOOT-RIGHT below MAX predicts that

we will not find segmental deletion in order to satisfy the unmarked structure of

two trochaic feet; and with one exception, this prediction is born out. In the case

of trisyllabic iglesia, we find, as mentioned, that the stem-final glide [j] creates an

illicit syllable structure if the lexically specified -it{o, a} allomorph is selected.

The two repair strategies of glide deletion or selection of the -(e)cit{o, a}

allomorph incur violations of equally high-ranking MAX in the former strategy

and RESPECT in the latter. Thus, candidate evaluation moves down the constraint

hierarchy and selection is based on conformity to unmarked structures. This

process is best illustrated by the minimal pairs of nov[ja] and igles[ja] as well as

madre and comadre in Tableau (3) and (4) in which the disyllabic and trisyllabic

words choose different allomorphs to funnel into the two trochaic feet structure.

49 With the exception of the Nicaraguan and Paraguayan dialects, which do not add an epenthetic [e]: pancito.

150

(3) novia~noviecita, iglesia~iglesita

/iglesj-it + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (ì.gle) sje (sí.ta) * * *(!) *(!) b. (ì.gle) (sí.ta) * * c. (ì.gle) si (í.ta) * **(!) *(!) * /nobj-it + DIM {o, a}/ d.(nò.ßje) (sí.ta) * * e. no (ßí.ta) * * *! f. (nò.ßi) (í.ta) * * *!

(4) madre~madrecita, comadre~comadrita

/madr- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. ma (drí.ta) * *! b. (mà.dre) (sí.ta) * /komadr- + DIM {o, a}/ c. (kò.ma) (drí.ta) d. ko (mà.dre) (sí.ta) *(!) *(!) * e. (kò.ma) dre (sí.ta) *(!) *(!)

In the case of disyllabics ending in a stressed vowel or a consonant, both

allomorphs adhere to the unmarked prosodic structure—(kà.fe) (sí.to) ~ *(kà.fe)

(í.to) and (bàl.kon) (sí.to) ~ (bàl.kon) (í.to)—and selection is determined by

additional constraints on onsetless syllables (ONSET) and faithfulness to

segmental structural roles in the base (STRUC ROLE) respectively.

(5) café~cafecito

151

/kafe- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

a. (kà.fe) (í.to) *! b. (kà.fe) (sí.to)

(6) balcón~balconcito

/balkon- + DIM {o, a}/ R

ESPE

CT

MA

X

IDEN

T-SY

LL

ON

SET

PAR

SE S

YLL

DEP

-V

ALI

GN

- FT

-L

ALI

GN

- FT

-R

OC

P

STR

UC

R

OLE

a. (bàl.ko) (ní.to) *! b. (bàl.kon) (sí.to)

III. Possible Objections and Future Work One of the principal objections to the analysis of Spanish diminutives that

I outline in this work, I suspect, will concern the use of a subcategorization frame

on a class of words and the corresponding RESPECT constraint that ensures

adherence to this idiosyncratic relationship. In a sense, one could argue that this

is notational shorthand for the lack of any explanation altogether; in other words,

the reason why Class D1 words select for the -it{o, a} allomorph is simply

because they do. As unsatisfying a response as this may be, it does allow for all

other diminutivization to be captured by established faithfulness and markedness

constraints within a unified system of suffixation to the stem. In other words, the

greatest number of word types is explained through the phonology and the

phonology alone. This approach also obviates the need for an abundance of

allomorph-specific constraints that are necessarily language-specific and of

doubtful universal status.

152

In addition, morphological idiosyncrasies that are unable to be captured by

conventional phonological explanations abound in the language. As just one

example, the masculine word poema “poem,” which ends in the canonically

feminine word marker /a/, must be lexically-specified to end in /a/; which is to say

that it ends in /a/ because it does. This is just as unsatisfactory an explanation, but

no less accurate.

Of course, one could explore the historical record and posit a reasonable

theory concerning the adaptation of Greek borrowings into the Spanish language,

but from a synchronic point of view this knowledge will not change the lexical

specification analysis. In the same vein, a thorough examination of

diminutivization in Latin and throughout the history of the Spanish language

could reveal the origins of the lexical bond between Class D1 words and the -it{o,

a} allomorph and strengthen the current work’s claims, but it would still leave us

with essentially the same non-phonological synchronic analysis.

Since the present analysis hinges squarely on lexical specification,

evidence from such a diachronic investigation would be of great support to this

approach. For example, one wonders if there was a correspondence between

diminutive selection in Latin and the declensional class of a word. If so, does the

diminutive allomorph distribution in modern Spanish reflect such a relationship?

Additionally, it remains to be seen whether the Peninsular dialect is

conservative in its selection of the -cit{o, a} allomorph for disyllabics ending in

unstressed /o/ or /a/ (e.g. puerta~puertecita) or if this is an innovation. This

information has implications for whether the lexical bond between Class D1

153

words and the -it{o, a} is being strengthened or weakened diachronically. In the

same way, does the preference for -it{o, a} in Nicaraguan for disyllabics ending in

the diphthong [jo] or [ja]—radio~radito—reflect a strengthening of the lexical

bond or a weakening of the two trochaic feet structure?

Spanish diminutivization is a complex morphological process with

several variables in play. Its high synchronic productivity makes it a fruitful

proving ground for theories on the morphology-phonology interface. If the

present work’s predictions are correct, there is still much work to be done to

understand how diachronic processes exert an influence on this interface.

154

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