Andalusian vowel harmony: Weak triggers and perceptibility. Presented at OCP 4

Eastern Andalusian Vowel Harmony (EAVH) takes place in words ending in s, when –s is the plural marker or a person verbal marker. In this variety, final s weakens as [] or deletes completely. Both processes generally induce opening of the final vowels e and o, and further fronting of a, which become [], [] and [æ], respectively (high vowels behave alike although they do not often occur in final position). In addition to that, the [RTR] feature of the final vowels of words ending in s spreads leftward, and either all vowels become lax or the spreading takes over up to the stressed syllable (cf. (1)). (Cf. Alonso et al. 1950, Zubizarreta 1979, Zamora Vicente 1985, Sanders 1998.) In this work we offer an OT account of EAVH, focusing on the following three issues: (i) the trigger of EAVH, (ii) the target of the spreading, and (iii) the scope of the spreading. (i) The trigger of EAVH. In many patterns of harmony, the relevant features spread from strong positions to weak positions (e.g. from the stressed syllable to the unstressed ones, from the root to the affixes; cf. Beckman 1998, Baković 2003). However, in EAVH the harmonizing features spread from an element that appears in