Stress and vowel harmony in Telugu

This thesis presents a study of vowel harmony in Telugu, a Dravidian language. Vowel harmony in this language is manifest primarily in the form of vowel alternations in paradigms triggered by suffixes. I present a robust factual generalization that holds true of alternations in different types of nominal and verbal stems- vowels in unstressed syllables change to agree with a suffix vowel, with respect to either backness or height. Stress is the main conditioning environment for blocking of harmony. I show that secondary stress in Telugu can be inferred based on the pattern of vowel harmony. I account for this pattern of stressed vowels resisting harmony using positional faithfulness. Since stress-conditioned harmony is relatively uncommon in natural language, the account of vowel harmony in Telugu presented here helps to fill out the typology of stress-harmony interactions. I also report a production experiment which shows that secondary stress has a significant effect on syllable duration and is therefore, phonetically 'real' in this language.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Kolachina, Sudheer

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Edward Flemming.

• Linguistics and Philosophy.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/107081

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/107081