In this paper, I present novel evidence supporting the claim that there are no right-edge infixes. Based on a typological survey, I demonstrate that all putative right-edge infixes only surface in languages with right-edge prosodic prominences. It is therefore possible to reanalyze all right-edge infixes as prominence-oriented infixes. Infixes, as a result, are highly asymmetric: they can occur in the left edge of a stem or in a prosodically prominent position, but nowhere else. To account for this asymmetric distribution, I propose that infix subcategorization is implemented by Anchor, rather than Alignment. Anchor has been previously argued to also be asymmetric (Nelson 2003), where it can target left edges or prominent positions, but crucially never right edges alone. By contrast, Alignment does not predict this asymmetry. I therefore conclude that affixation is divided into two distinct typologies: reduplication and infixation are governed by Anchor, but generic affixation is governed by Alignment.
The relationship between tone and sonority has been a recurrent theme in the literature over recent years, raising questions of how supraseg- mental features like tone interact with segmental or prosodic qualities, such as vowel quality, sonority, and duration (de Lacy 2006; Gordon 2001). In this paper, we present an original phonetic study that investigates the relationship between tone, vowel quality, and sonority in Burmese. These are not simple to disentangle in Burmese, since the language has a unique vowel alternation system where certain vowels can only combine with certain tones or codas. While some researchers have analyzed these alternations as directly stemming from tone itself (Kelly 2012), we argue that the vowel alternations are tone-independent. We propose that the Burmese vowel alternations follow from general preferences on sonority sequencing (cf. Clements 1990), and so there is no need for tone and segmental quality to interact directly. Not only does this explain the complex vowel system of Burmese, but this proposal casts a new view on recurrent issues in Burmese phonology, such as the representation of underlying tonal contrasts and minor syllables.
In this paper, we argue that metathesis, an underattested phonological operation, is best understood as gestural overlap. Based on two case studies (Sevillian Spanish and Uab Meto), we observe that metathesis is (i) implemented in a phonetically gradient way and (ii) invisible to other phonology. We use these observations to propose that phonology is bifurcated into two major strata: early phonology and late phonology. Early phonology uses atomic representations, whereas late phonology uses gestural representations. While early phonology feeds into late phonology, the output of late phonology is not accessible to early phonology. Under this division, metathesis is therefore strictly late phonology because it uses gestures as its core representational unit. As late phonology, metathesis is therefore expected to be invisible to (early) phonological operations in these languages.
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