Practice at problem solving

You should now be able to apply this reasoning to data which pose analogous problems; a series of examples are given in this section for practice.

Chamorro vowel alternations. There are alternations in the quality of vowels in initial syllables in some contexts seen in the following data from Chamorro (Mariana Islands).

What underlying representations, and what rule or rules, are required to account for these data? When you answer this question, you should consider two hypotheses which differ in terms of what form is taken to be underlying – what are the two most obvious ways of treating these alternations? One of these hypotheses is clearly wrong; the other is the correct hypothesis.

Korean. Now consider the following data from Korean. The first column in (20), the imperative, seems to involve a vowel suffix. One reason to think that there is an imperative suffix is that every imperative ends either in the vowel a or in ə (the choice between a versus ə is based on the vowel which precedes that suffix, /a/ or /o/ versus other vowels, and can be ignored here). A second reason comes from comparing the imperative and the plain present forms. Comparing ana and annɨnta, or kama and kamnɨnta, we can see that for each verb, the portions common to both the imperative and the plain present are respectively an- and kam-. From this we deduce that there must be a suffix, either -a or -ə, which marks the imperative, and another suffix -ninta which marks the plain present.

What is the underlying form of these verb stems, and what phonological rule or rules are required to account for the variations that are seen in the surface shape of the various stems?

Koasati. What is the underlying form of the first-singular possessive prefix in Koasati (Louisiana), and what phonological rule applies in these examples?

Matuumbi. What phonological rules pertaining to consonants operate in the following examples from Matuumbi? What are the underlying forms of the stems of the words for ‘rope,’ ‘palm,’ ‘tongue,’ ‘piece of wood,’ ‘pole,’ and ‘covered’? Ignore tonal changes.

A certain degree of uncertainty regarding the exact underlying form of the plural prefix is expected. However, the underlying form of the stem should be clear, and should be the focus of your analysis. You should be able to explain these alternations with two rules. In formalizing the rules, pay attention to the concept of structure preservation in rules.