| ROA: | 433 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Uh-Oh: Glottal Stops and Syllable Organization in Sulawesi |
| Authors: | Ellen Broselow |
| Comment: | |
| Length: | 12 |
| Abstract: | Uh-oh: Glottal Stops and Syllable Organization in Sulawesi Ellen Broselow SUNY Stony Brook Glottal stops pattern differently than other consonants in a number of languages spoken on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. In the Makassar languages of South Sulawesi, glottal stop alternates with [k]; in the Kaili-Pomona language Uma of Central Sulawesi, stem-final glottal stop is mobile, apparently metathesizing with material suffixed to the stem; and in the Central Sulawesi Saluan language Balantak, glottal stop is invisible with respect to the second person possessive affix, which is normally suffixed to vowel-final stems but infixed to consonant-final stems (other than those ending in glottal stop). I argue that the various anomalies of the glottal stop result from the fact that glottal stops lack oral place specification. This lack of oral place allows consonants to coalesce with neighboring vowels without loss of place information, and makes glottal stops undesirable onsets in languages (like these) which prefer to locate place contrasts in syllable onsets. |
| Type: | Paper/tech report |
| Area/Keywords: | |
| Article: | Version 1 |