<OT> New Posting: ROA-1023

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 1023-0409

Retroflex harmony in Kalasha: agreement or spreading?

Paul Arsenault <paul.arsenault at utoronto.ca>
Alexei Kochetov <alexei_kochetov at sfu.ca>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1023


Abstract:
In this paper we investigate co-occurrence restrictions
on coronal obstruents in Kalasha, an Indo-Aryan language
with contrastive retroflexion in three manners of articulation:
stops, affricates and fricatives. Our study reveals that
Kalasha roots exhibit a pattern of retroflex consonant harmony
that is sensitive to the similarity of coronals in terms
of their manner of articulation. Stops harmonize with stops,
affricates with affricates, and fricatives with fricatives.
We evaluate two current theories of consonant harmony in
light of this finding: local feature spreading (Gafos 1999)
and long distance agreement by correspondence (Hansson 2001;
Rose & Walker 2004). We argue that the data are consistent
with the typology and predictions of the agreement by corresponde
nce model, which encodes featural similarity, but are not
predicted by the feature spreading model in its current form.

Comments: to appear in the proceedings of NELS 39
Keywords: consonant harmony, coronal, retroflexion, agreement by correspondence
Areas: Phonology
Type: Conference Proceedings Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=1023