<OT> New Posting: ROA-768

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ROA 768-0805

Systemic Markedness and Phonetic Detail in Phonology

Travis G. Bradley <tgbradley at ucdavis.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=768


Abstract:
This paper presents a case study of external sandhi in Spanish
that bears directly upon the status of gestural representations
and constraints in the synchronic grammar. Spanish has a
contrast between a tap and trill between vocoids within
the morpheme, which is neutralized in coda position. In
the northern Peninsular Spanish varieties spoken in the
Cantabrian province around Los Montes de Pas and Tudanca,
infinitival -r is lost before a consonant-initial clitic
pronoun or determiner but surfaces as a tap or trill in
other coda environments, depending on the dialect (Penny
1969, 1978). While tap + consonant clusters exhibit an intrusive
vowel between the two consonants, other consonants appearing
in first position fail to trigger vowel intrusion. The proposed
analysis draws upon recent developments in gestural Optimality
Theory (Davidson 2003, Gafos 2002, N. Hall 2003), as well
as Padgett's (2003a,b,c) version of Dispersion Theory (Flemming
1995). Conflicting gestural constraints generate different
patterns of temporal coordination in consonantal sequences.
Minimal overlap produces vowel intrusion in tap + consonant
clusters, partial overlap favors unreleased other consonant
clusters, and complete overlap yields deletion of infinitival
-r in the appropriate prosodic contexts. The central claim
is that the phonology must incorporate phonetically detailed
gestural representations in addition to segmental and prosodic
structure. In Dispersion Theory, systemic markedness constraints
regulate the perceptual distinctiveness of contrasts, making
it possible to incorporate phonetic detail without overgenerating
contrasts.

Comments: (To appear in Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Romance Linguistics, ed. by Randall Gess and Ed Rubin. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.)
Keywords: Dispersion Theory, gestural coordination, Spanish, rhotics, external sandhi deletion
Areas: Phonology,Phonetics,Morphology
Type: Book Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=768