THE REPRESENTATION OF HEBREW WORDS - EVIDENCE FROM THE OBLIGATORY CONTOUR PRINCIPLE

The Hebrew root morpheme typically consists of three consonants. Hebre w allows a gemination of a root consonant, but constrains its location [McCarthy, J. (1979). Formal problems in semitic phonology and morpho logy. Cambridge, MA; MTT Ph.D. dissertation. Distributed by Indiana Un iversity Linguistics Club. Garland Press, New York, 1985], A geminatio n of a root-consonant is permitted at the end of the root (e.g., [mss] ), but not at its beginning (e.g., [ssm]). Two experiments examined re aders' sensitivity to the structure of the root morpheme by obtaining ratings for nonwords derived from nonroots. Root-initial gemination (e .g., [ssm]) was judged unacceptable compared to root-final gemination (e.g., [mss]) or no gemination controls (e.g., [psm]). The sensitivity to root structure emerged regardless of the position of the root in t he word. These results have several implications. (I) Our findings dem onstrate morphological decomposition. Hebrew speakers' ratings reflect a phonological constraint on the location of geminates. Being the dom ain of this constraint, the root morpheme must form a separate constit uent in the representation of Hebrew words. (2) The rejection of root- initial gemination supports the psychological reality of the Obligator y Contour Principle, a pivotal constraint in autosegmental phonology. (3) A sensitivity to the location of geminates presupposes a distincti on between the representation of geminate and nongeminate bigrams. Suc h a distinction, however, requires the implementation of a symbol. Our findings converge with numerous linguistic evidence in suggesting tha t the representation of constituency structure is necessary to account for linguistic generalizations. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.