Chameleon affixes in Sekani produce strictly layered stratal domains

Katie McCann

Keywords: strata, phonological domains, optimality theory, affix order, tone

TL;DR: submission can be considered for a talk or poster in the main session

Abstract: This article presents a study on the domains of morphological tone association in Sekani (Athabaskan, Hargus 1985). I identify a chameleon affix (Kiparsky 2020) in Sekani that shows diverging domain integration, which I claim follows from its variable stratal affiliation. Allowing variable stratal affiliation upholds the assumption of strict layering, dictating that all word-level operations follow all stem-level operations, which is empirically supported by tone association in Sekani. Strict layering follows directly from the proposed analysis of chameleon affixes, couched in OT morphology, which treats chameleon affixes as affixes that violate their default stratal affiliation to accommodate higher-ranked morphological constraints.

Submission Number: 116