Abstract
This thesis aims to investigate on the phonology of Saisiyat, the Taai dialect in particular. To account for the phonology of this language in a principled and motivated way, Optimality Theory (OT, set forth by Prince & Smolensky 1993, McCarthy & Prince 1993a) has been adopted as the theoretical framework. Among the detected phonological phenomena, variations of vowels found in the interactions between phonology and morphology are especially concentrated on. Similar to the southern dialect, the modern Taai dialect has also lost the voiced flap /L/. In our data, loss of this consonant results in various syllable types and word-final long vowels. With OT, we can systematically account for the synchronic grammar: it is preferred for syllables to have onset but no complex margins, but onsetless syllables persist because no deletion (MAX-IO), insertion of a consonant (DEP-IO-C), or long vowels (*LONG-V) are allowed to satisfy this requirement. The occurrence of word-final long vowels are attributed to metrical factors: based on Stress-To-Weight Principle (Prince 1990), stressed syllables should be heavy; as stress in Saisiyat predictably falls on the word-final syllable, a vowel in the word-final open syllable is lengthened to carry the stress. Therefore, all vowels in Saisiyat are underlyingly short and consonantal codas are moraic. With this analysis, certain vowel variations found in the interactions between phonology and morphology can be captured at ease. Stem-final long vowels are shortened after suffixed because they are no longer word-final and carry the stress; certain stem-internal vowels deleted in infixed or prefixed forms can be explained as underlyingly absent but are epenthesized to rescue violation of *Complex in un-affixed forms. The phenomena of vowel harmony (VH) in Saisiyat constitute an interesting issue to formal analysis. First, VH in Saisiyat is a total harmony process that is driven by an absolute constraint AGR[V]. Besides, it not only affects affixes containing mid vowels but also vowel epenthesis: VH in words containing PF suffix -□n (referred to as PF harmony) can be triggered by mid and high vowels, while VH in words containing AF infix –om- can only be triggered by mid vowels. Epenthetic vowels are harmonized with adjacent mid vowels but it is uncertain if the high vowel /i/ triggers VH in this case. To account for the asymmetry between the two affixes, a theoretical mechanism—Local Constraint Conjunction (Smolensky 1993, 1995, Itô & Mester 1998)—has been employed. By conjoining two IDENT-IO[F] constraints, the weak alternation in AF harmony lies in the restriction that a segment can not simultaneously alter [high] and [round], which is what would happen if /i/ also triggered VH in AF harmony. Likewise, the asymmetry that high vowels do not become mid to achieve harmony but mid vowels do become high are accounted for by another constraint conjunct that forbids high vowels to alter [high] and yield a more marked mid vowel. Such an approach is purely phonological and successfully captures the harmony and disharmony patterns among affixes. Nevertheless, considering VH in vowel epenthesis, due to lack of decisive evidence, the purely phonological analysis might be insufficient and to adopt morpheme-specific OT would be possible: if VH in this case patterns together with more restricted AF harmony, the strong-alternating PF harmony would be an exceptional process. Bearing this uncertainty in mind, cophonology and lexically-indexed constraint approaches are under discussion in this thesis. Nevertheless, to justify either of the above analyses, more language-internal and cross-linguistic evidence are awaited.