Phonological coalescence, understood as a type of synchronic alternation in which two phonological elements seem to fuse into one, presents a prima facie challenge for versions of Optimality Theory that assume the principle of containment. If all underlying material has to be present in the output form, replacing two input elements with a single output element is not straightforward. I argue that, under the assumptions of Autosegmental Coloured Containment Theory, a distinct operation of coalescence is unnecessary, as all major types of coalescence patterns can be analysed in terms of (i) adding new association lines between some autosegmental nodes, and (ii) the underparsing of other nodes, leading to their phonetic non-realisation. The proposed analysis accurately reflects the heterogeneity of coalescence alternations, which are shown to fall into three different types.
In the present study, we report on an artificial language learning experiment aiming to test the idea that it is easier to learn palatalization before a front vowel than it is to learn depalatalization in the same context. The motivation for the study comes from recent work by Czaplicki (2013), who provides a detailed analysis of palatalization-related effects in Polish, showing that they have no phonological basis. The conclusion he reaches is that ‘phonological naturalness does not play a role in linguistic computation’ Czaplicki (2013:32). It is nevertheless the case that palatalization is cross-linguistically much more common than depalatalization. If naturalness plays no role in computation, the typological asymmetry must arise from elsewhere, for example, from biases in learning difficulty. Our results provide provisory evidence that there is a small but statistically significant advantage for learning palatalization over depalatalization for adult Hungarian speakers.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.