The phonology of Welsh cynghanedd

This paper treats the system of rhyme and consonant matching in Welsh poetry known as cynghanedd from the perspective of phonological theory. The system requires that every line of verse exhibit either internal rhyme or consonant matching or both. The consonant pattern is extreme and well outside the norm. We show how this system actually exploits familiar mechanisms from phonological systems and can be described in fairly orthodox terms using Optimality Theory.

[1]  Outi Bat-El.  Consonant Identity and Consonant Copy: The Segmental and Prosodic Structure of Hebrew Reduplication , 2006, Linguistic Inquiry.

[2]  John J. McCarthy,et al.  Sympathy and phonological opacity , 1999, Phonology.

[3]  Noam Chomsky,et al.  The Sound Pattern of English , 1968 .

[4]  Moira Yip.  Reduplication as alliteration and rhyme , 1999 .

[5]  Michael Hammond.  Poetic meter and the arboreal grid , 1991 .

[6]  Nigel Fabb.  Verse constituency and the locality of alliteration , 1999 .

[7]  Joe Pater,et al.  Weighted Constraints in Generative Linguistics , 2009, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  A. Putter,et al.  Approaches to the Metres of Alliterative Verse , 2009 .

[9]  Rachel Walker,et al.  A Typology of Consonant Agreement as Correspondence , 2004 .

[10]  Elizabeth Caroline Sagey,et al.  The representation of features and relations in non-linear phonology , 1986 .

[11]  Bruce Hayes,et al.  A Maximum Entropy Model of Phonotactics and Phonotactic Learning , 2008, Linguistic Inquiry.

[12]  M. Halle,et al.  Meter in Poetry: A New Theory , 2008 .

[13]  P. Boersma.  How we learn variation, optionality and probalility , 1997 .

[14]  Bruce Hayes.  Faithfulness and Componentiality in Metrics , 2000 .

[15]  Michael Hammond,et al.  On deriving the well-formedness condition , 1988 .

[16]  Adam Ussishkin.  The inadequacy of the consonantal root: Modern Hebrew denominal verbs and output–output correspondence , 1999, Phonology.

[17]  P. Kiparsky,et al.  A Parametric Theory of Poetic Meter , 1996 .

[18]  P. Boersma,et al.  Empirical Tests of the Gradual Learning Algorithm , 2001, Linguistic Inquiry.

[19]  Chris Golston,et al.  DIRECT OPTIMALITY THEORY : REPRESENTATION AS PURE MARKEDNESS , 1996 .

[20]  John Coleman,et al.  The “no crossing constraint” in autosegmental phonology , 1991 .

[21]  John J. McCarthy,et al.  A prosodic theory of nonconcatenative morphology , 1981 .

[22]  Briony Jane Williams.  Stress in modern Welsh , 1983 .

[23]  G. Youmans,et al.  GENERATIVE TESTS FOR GENERATIVE METER , 1983 .

[24]  Alan S. Prince,et al.  Faithfulness and reduplicative identity , 1995 .