<OT> New Posting: ROA-637

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 637-0104

Gestures and Segments: Vowel Intrusion as Overlap

Nancy Hall <nancyh at linguist.umass.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=637


Abstract:
	This dissertation focuses on a phenomenon that I call vowel
intrusion. There are cases where a vowel can be heard between
two consonants, yet the phonology behaves as if no vowel
is present. These “intrusive vowels” are non-syllabic, and
native speakers are often unaware of their existence.
I argue that intrusive vowels are a percept resulting from
the organization of articulatory gestures. When two consonant
gestures have little overlap with one another, there is
an acoustic release between them; vowel gestures typically
overlap neighboring consonants considerably, and it is possible
for an overlapping vowel gesture to be heard in this period
of release.
Intrusive vowels are not segments. They behave unlike true
epenthetic vowels. A typological survey reveals that vowel
intrusion happens in consonant clusters that contain a sonorant
or a guttural, and that it is always the vowel adjacent
to the sonorant or guttural that is heard during the release.
Intrusive vowels occur primarily in heterorganic clusters,
especially next to geminates; they often disappear at fast
speech rates, and in some languages, they occur only within
or only between syllables. I argue that these characteristics
are best explained in a theory that uses Articulatory Phonology
representations (Browman & Goldstein 1986 et seq.).
	I develop a theory called Timing-Augmented Surface Phonology
(TASP), cast within the framework of Optimality Theory.
TASP contains constraints on the alignment of neighboring
gestures (Gafos 2002) and on the permitted degree of overlap
between different gestures. The theory requires a segmental
representation as well as a gestural representation. Syllables
organize segments rather than gestures, and that inter-segmental
gestural alignment is universally non-contrastive.
	The same gestural framework describes both the short, schwa-like
intrusive vowels often described as “excrescent”, and also
a longer type found in Scots Gaelic and Hocank (Winnebago),
in which the vowel is heard in two long parts on either
side of the sonorant. In the latter cases the sonorant and
vowel together behave like a bimoraic nucleus, and are adjoined
in a structure similar to vocalic diphthongs. The theory
also has implications for the analysis of Hocank accent.

Comments: 
Keywords: svarabhakti, epenthesis, intrusion, articulatory phonology, gestural grammar, Scots Gaelic, Dutch, Finnish, Hocank, Winnebago, copy vowel, echo vowel, transitional vowel, excrescent vowel
Areas: Phonology
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=637