Strict CV: proper government and the Empty Category Principle

In Strict CV the skeleton is a strict sequence of CV units, so the nuclei of a domain form a sequence. A nucleus has associated melody, floating melody, or none, and only associated melody must be pronounced. Any other nucleus may stay silent only when its silence is licensed: by proper government from the nuclei after it, by enclosure in a domain of infrasegmental government, or at the end of the domain where the language allows an empty final nucleus. This is the Empty Category Principle. Government is discharged from right to left by lateral actors: pronounced nuclei and, where the language allows it, an empty final nucleus. A realized stretch pairs each nucleus with whether it is pronounced, and the lateral relations of a nucleus are read off the stretch after it. The standard realization, computed from the right, pronounces a nucleus exactly when it has associated melody, is required, or nothing licenses its silence.

Main definitions

• StrictCV.Melody, StrictCV.Nucleus: the melody of a nucleus, whether it is required, and whether its flanking consonants may contract infrasegmental government.
• StrictCV.FinalNucleus: whether a final nucleus may be empty, and whether it then acts.
• StrictCV.Acts, StrictCV.Enclosed, StrictCV.Governs, StrictCV.ProperlyGoverned, StrictCV.SilenceLicensed: lateral actors and the ways a silence is licensed.
• StrictCV.SatisfiesECP, StrictCV.standard.

Main results

• StrictCV.satisfiesECP_standard: the standard realization satisfies the Empty Category Principle.
• StrictCV.standard_drop: the realization of the last nuclei of a domain is computed from them alone.
• StrictCV.standard_append_of_floating: in a run of floating melodies every other one is pronounced, counting from the right, which is Havlík's Law.

Implementation notes

The lateral actors are the pronounced nuclei, an epenthetic one included, as in Scheer's "only phonetically expressed Nuclei can govern and license"; Cavirani's alternative grants actorship to unpronounced nuclei with melody and is not built. An empty final nucleus either acts, governing and licensing, or does not, a single parameter, as Scheer and Ziková conclude. Government passes over a nucleus enclosed in a domain of infrasegmental government and binds the first nucleus whose silence is not licensed otherwise. Only a nucleus without melody is enclosed: a vowel that alternates with zero, a "hidden" zero, breaks up the cluster around it. Whether two consonants may contract infrasegmental government is a fact about their melody, supplied with the nucleus between them; that the governing consonant must be licensed by its own nucleus is built in. The distribution of government and licensing over onsets, which the two versions of the Coda Mirror state differently, is not modelled: proper government of nuclei is the same in both. A nucleus can be required on independent grounds, as a guttural needs a pronounced licensor or an initial empty CV unit needs a pronounced first nucleus to govern it.

References

• Lowenstamm 1996, CV as the Only Syllable Type
• Kaye et al. 1990, Constituent Structure and Government in Phonology
• Charette 1991, Conditions on Phonological Government
• Scheer 2004, A Lateral Theory of Phonology: What is CVCV and Why Should It Be? formalized
• Scheer & Ziková 2010, The Coda Mirror v2
• Cavirani 2022, Silent lateral actors: The role of unpronounced nuclei in morpho-phonological analyses