Phonology Circle returns this week with a presentation will be by Gillian Gallagher
Title: Identity and laryngeal phonotactics
Time: Mon Mar 31, 5pm, 32-D831
In this talk, I look at phonotactic restrictions on the cooccurrence of laryngeal features (aspiration, ejection and implosion). Many languages disallow roots or words with two distinct consonants with the same laryngeal feature, *k’-t’. Some languages with this restriction also disallow identical consonants with the same laryngeal feature *k’-k’, while other languages allow identical consonants, k’-k’. I show that the (un)grammaticality of identical consonants sharing a laryngeal feature (k’-k’) correlates with the (un)grammaticality of consonants differing only in that laryngeal feature (k’-k). In all the languages in MacEachern’s (1999) survey, one of these forms is ungrammatical and one grammatical. The trading relationship is shown in (1).I argue that the pattern in (1) results from the interaction of phonotactic constraints with *two* kinds of laryngeal faithfulness constraints: faithfulness to individual features (standard Ident[F] constraints) and faithfulness to word level laryngeal contrasts (this is a new idea).
- k’-k’ <—> *k’-k
*k’-k’ <—> k’-k