哈卡倈語聲調規律應用方向與輸出的問題

Directional Rule Application and Output Problems in Hakha Lai Tone

本文探討哈卡倈語的聲調現象。哈卡倈語是緬甸和印度米佐藍州的一種藏緬語，她的語詞大都屬單音節。本文首先指出，出現在雙音節詞中的聲調交替，係出於單一共設，可以用優選理論漂亮地掌握。其次，我們也指出，一旦涉及三個音節以上的語詞，這種“漂亮＂立即消失。特別是由右至左的規律應用方向將會出現嚴重的問題，這個問題將導致輸出含混，並從而與聲調交替的理據相抵觸。最後我們將指出，這個問題的解決完全取決於要如何表現輸入輸出關係而定。

In this paper we discuss some rather interesting tonal facts from Hakha Lai, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Burma and Mizoram State, India, in which words are generally monosyllabic. In the first part of the paper, we show that a single conspiracy underlies all of the tonal alternations occurring in two-word sequences, which can be elegantly captured within Optimality Theory. In the second part we show that this “elegance” appears to dissipate once sequences of three or more words are taken into consideration; in particular, a serious problem arises in predicting the right-to-left directionality of rule application, which produces opaque outputs violating the very conspiracy that motivates the tonal alternations in the language. In the last part of the paper we show how this problem is wholly dependent on the view one takes on how to represent the input-output relations in question.