Plural fricative lenisisation in English: testing phonological intuitions and analysing weak suppletion

Abstract

This thesis studies the phenomenon of irregular plural forms in fricative-final count nouns in English, whereby stem-final fricatives are lenis in plurals, despite the fact that they are fortis in corresponding singulars (as in wolf ~ wolves). This phenomenon has not been analysed in depth before and its current state is unclear. The aim of this thesis is to explore the synchronic state of this laryngeal alternation, which I call Plural Fricative Lenisisation (PFL), and to propose a phonological analysis of it.

In Chapter 1, I introduce the phenomenon of PFL and present the research questions and aims. Chapter 2 presents a discussion of laryngeal representations, as part of which I adopt the analysis known as Laryngeal Realism. Previous studies that have touched upon PFL are considered, among which are analyses which either treat this laryngeal alternation as a suppletion which is stored lexically, or as a minor rule targeting a specific group of forms, or as a problem of morphophonemes, or as a possibly productive rule which is able to apply to new items.

Chapter 3 introduces the methodology of a survey-based investigation which aims to explore the current state of PFL by testing the phonological intuitions of participants. The survey consists of 2 experiments. Experiment 1 is an introspection task which examines how participants pronounce the plural forms of fricative-final nouns. Experiment 2 is recording-based, where participants are provided with separate recordings of lenis and fortis pronunciations of the plural forms, from which they choose the one they deem acceptable.

Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 present the results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 respectively. The results show that words which undergo PFL behave significantly differently from words that do not. The behaviours of /f/-final words are significantly different compared to /s/-final and /θ/-final words. I also explore whether there are gender differences and the differences in the responses between Experiment 1 and Experiment 2.

In Chapter 6 I discuss further the results presented in Chapters 4 and 5, and compare the differences between the results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. The results suggest that PFL is still alive in a specific group of words. This shows that PFL is not just a collection of random exceptional plural forms – I argue that there is a distinct pattern behind it.

The theoretical analysis is presented in Chapter 7. I consider a number of possible approaches to PFL, including the potential to analyse it using an Exemplar-Theoretic approach (which I show to be untenable), and as (strong) suppletion (which is simply stored lexically) or as a standard rule through which lenisisation is realised. I also consider another approach which stands in-between these latter two approaches: that PFL involves weak suppletion – the lenisised fricative-final plurals match a pattern of allomorphy which is encoded in a via-rule. I argue for this latter analysis: PFL involves weak suppletion.