<OT> New Posting: ROA-808

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ROA 808-0206

Contrast and Markedness in Complex Onset Phonotactics

Travis G. Bradley <tgbradley at ucdavis.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=808


Abstract:
In many languages that permit coronal laterals to follow
labial and velar stops in complex onsets, sequences of a
coronal stop followed by a coronal lateral are prohibited.
Standard accounts rule out coronal-lateral clusters as an
effect of the Obligatory Contour Principle, but this approach
cannot explain languages such as Mong Njua and Katu, which
neutralize the coronal-velar place contrast but still allow
the coronal-lateral clusters to appear. Recent work in Dispersion
Theory (Flemming 1995, 2002, Padgett 2003a,b,c) has argued
that Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993/2004)
must also include systemic constraints that evaluate phonological
forms in the context of the larger system of contrasting
forms in a language. This paper offers a new Dispersion-theoretic
analysis of restrictions on onset clusters involving laterals.
Systemic markedness constraints penalize indistinct coronal-velar
contrasts in different pre-lateral contexts. Directionality
of neutralization is determined by faithfulness constraints
on input place, whose ranking can vary across languages
and dialects (Hume 2003, Hume and Tserdandelis 2002). The
proposed analysis solves problems with earlier accounts
and also encompasses typological patterns from over forty
languages, including velarization in early Romance sound
change and Mexican Spanish loanword adaptations from Nahuatl.

Comments: (To appear in Southwest Journal of Linguistics 25.1)
Keywords: Dispersion Theory, place neutralization, complex onset phonotactics
Areas: Phonology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=808