<OT> New Posting: ROA-755

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 755-0705

Sonorancy and geminacy

Shigeto Kawahara <kawahara at linguist.umass.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=755


Abstract:
This paper establishes the claim that geminate sonorants
are cross-linguistically marked, and furthermore, that the
relative sonority of a geminate positively correlates with
its markedness, i.e., the universal ranking *GEMGLIDE >>
*GEMLIQUID >> *GEMNASAL holds. This ranking is supported
by a cross-linguistic survey of geminate inventories (Podesva
2002; Taylor 1985) as well as by a number of phonological
alternations. Second, this paper proposes that this markedness
hierarchy derives from the confusability of geminacy contrasts
for sonorant segments: the more sonorous a segment is, the
more difficult it is to perceive its segmental duration,
and hence the less perceptible its geminacy contrasts are.
A perceptual experiment on Arabic is reported to support
this proposal, which shows that discriminability of geminacy
contrasts negatively correlates with relative sonority.
The results add to a growing body of literature that claims
that languages avoid making a phonological contrast that
is not very perceptible, as in Adaptive Dispersion Theory
(Flemming 1995; Liljencrants and Lindblom 1972; Padgett
2003) and Licensing-by-Cue (Steriade 1997).

Comments: Manuscript submitted for publication. A version of the paper appears in UMOP 32.
Keywords: geminate sonorants, perceptual contrast, phonetics-phonology interface, laboratory phonology
Areas: Phonetics,Phonology
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=755