| ROA: | 230 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Sonority and Reduplication in Nakanai and Nuxalk (Bella Coola) |
| Authors: | Katy Carlson |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 40 |
| Abstract: | Sonority and Reduplication in Nakanai and Nuxalk (Bella Coola) Katy Carlson University of Massachusetts, Amherst Recent work on reduplication has focused on deriving the segmental content and shape of a reduplicant from general, non-stipulative phonological constraints (e.g., work in Generalized Template theory). This paper shows that markedness constraints on sonority, which are independently necessary to explain syllabification in many languages, can account for many properties of reduplication in languages as disparate as Nakanai and Nuxalk. Both of these languages have several patterns of partial reduplication. In the Nakanai patterns, low vowels are preferred over high ones, and falling-sonority diphthongs are preferred over rising-sonority ones. These facts are captured by sonority constraints that favor a maximally sonorous nucleus (the Peak constraints of Prince and Smolensky 1993), and a sharp sonority rise into the syllable. In Nuxalk, a normally prefixal reduplicant is infixed, in order to reduplicate a sonorous consonant or vowel nucleus; this shows a different portion of the Peak hierarchy at work. The differences between the two languages' reduplicative patterns stem from the different rankings of sonority markedness constraints with respect to Faithfulness and positional constraints. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |