Epenthetic Inheritance
Kate Mooney
October 2024
 

In this paper, I examine the typology of epenthetic consonants, and I observe that in the most general patterns, epenthetic consonants tend to inherit quality from surrounding sounds. To capture this, I argue that epenthetic consonants are made by constricting or lengthening existing gestures into new sounds (cf. Gick 1999). The basic mechanism of consonant epenthesis is thus transformation (as in Splitting Theory, Staroverov 2014), not insertion. This proposal contrasts with markedness-based theories of epenthesis (e.g. Lombardi 2002), since epenthetic quality is thus primarily constrained by faith. It also contrasts with Splitting Theory, since I demonstrate that gestures, and not segments, must be the relevant representational unit for consonant epenthesis. These claims are supported by a novel typological survey and several in-depth case studies, which demonstrate that the typology of consonant epenthesis cannot be constrained by markedness alone.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/008524
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:
keywords: consonant epenthesis, gestures, segments, assimilation, typology, phonology
Downloaded:350 times

 

[ edit this article | back to article list ]