<OT> New Posting: ROA-855

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 855-0706

Constraints on the Metathesis of Sonorant Consonants in Judeo-Spanish

Travis G. Bradley <tgbradley at ucdavis.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=855


Abstract:
Judeo-Spanish denotes those varieties of Spanish preserved
by the Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain in 1492
and have emigrated throughout Europe, North Africa, the
Middle East, and the United States. This paper examines
three types of consonant metathesis in Judeo-Spanish: daldo
< dadlo 'give it', terné 'I will have' < tener 'to have',
and tadre < tarde 'late, afternoon'. The first two types
are analyzed in terms of syllable contact optimization,
following Holt's (2004) Optimality-theoretic analysis of
dl and dn metathesis in Old Spanish. Heteromorphemic dm
clusters were immune from metathesis in Old Spanish, and
the same restriction is found in modern-day Judeo-Spanish:
dadme vs. *damde/dande 'give me'. A novel analysis is proposed
in which nasal place assimilation and positional faithfulness
constraints block dm metathesis across morpheme boundaries.
Unlike dl and nr metathesis, transposition of rd clusters
in Judeo-Spanish does not result from syllable contact optimizati
on. This innovation is analyzed as an effect of the Obligatory
Contour Principle, whereby adjacent segments identical in
place, manner, and voicing specifications are prohibited.
The analyses developed in this paper highlight the role
of constraints on segmental features, which interact with
sonority constraints to generate the attested patterns of
consonant metathesis. The paper also considers additional
metathesis patterns from other languages in light of the
proposed analyses, as well as some of the difficulties posed
by the Hispano-Romance data with respect to perceptually-based
alternative approaches.

Comments: 
Keywords: consonant metathesis, syllable contact, Obligatory Contour Principle, Judeo-Spanish
Areas: Phonology,Morphology,Historical Linguistics
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=855