LINC02 Midterm Assignment

Overall instructions:
For this assignment, you will be writing a short paper that presents an analysis of the
data from four Western Austronesian languages given on the following page.

You’ll also complete a self-evaluation of your work (posted separately on Quercus).

The paper and the self-evaluation are both due Sunday February 8.

You can work alone or in groups of 2 or 3 students.
A few points to help you with your analysis:
● In each set of data, the first column indicates the UR of the base that the infix attaches
to, and the second column indicates the SR of the infixed form. Assume the UR of the
infix is /m/ for all four languages and that it is inserted after the first consonant in the
base.
● For each language, the data is divided into two sets: (a) and (b). Notice that for each
language, the data in (a) behave differently from the data in (b) when it comes to the
infix. One of your goals for this assignment is to explain what the difference is between
these two sets of data, and to explain their different behaviour.
● Additionally, when you consider the full set of languages:
○ What is particular to each language with respect to the infix?
○ What similarities do all the languages have with respect to infixation?
○ One of your goals is to come up with one or more relevant markedness and
faithfulness constraints that help explain what is going on in each language.
Format of your assignment:
Your assignment should be written in the form of a paper. This means that (in addition to the
main body of the paper) it should have a title, an introduction, and a conclusion.
Typically, an introduction to a phonology paper gives some background information (e.g.
about the languages or the major phenomena under investigation). Therefore, your paper
should also incorporate in-text citations and a reference section. There is no page
requirement, but just to provide a guideline: a reasonable length for this assignment is
approximately four to six pages single-spaced including tableaux.
The body of a phonology paper is organized into meaningful sections. (You will probably find
it easiest to organize the paper by language, but you could also choose to organize it by
phenomenon.) If you choose to organize your paper by language, you should end your
paper with a “Discussion” section in which you compare the four languages and discuss
their differences and similarities.
Your goal for this assignment is to explain/describe in words what is happening in the data
and to propose a phonological explanation for any alternations. You should name and
describe constraints that explain the patterns, and you should illustrate how those
constraints interact by drawing tableaux.
Page 2 of 2

Western Austronesian languages

Sarangani Blaan (Philippines)

(1) a. tiis tmiis
saloʔ smaloʔ
kɔʔɔn kmɔʔɔn
dado dmado
b. bunal munal

Timugon Murut (Indonesia)

(2) a. tuun tumuun
gajo gumajo
b. patoj matoj
bigod migod

Kulalao Piiwan (Taiwan)

(3) a. tulək tmulәk
sapuj smapuj
kan kman
dәt dmәt
gudәm gmudәm
b. pili pnili
burәs bnurәs

Tjuabar Paiwan (Taiwan)

(4) a. tәkәɭ təm(ə)kəɭ
kan kəman
giriŋ gəmiriŋ
b. pajsu pənajsu
təvәɭa tәn(ә)vәɭa

(brackets indicate that the vowel can be optionally deleted,
but you can ignore this for the purposes of this assignment)

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