Phonology cannot transpose: evidence from Meto

Abstract

Metathesis poses challenges for a typologically constrained theory of phonology: despite being simple to describe, its distribution is highly restricted, making it difficult to create analyses that make predictions while not overgenerating. Here, I investigate metathesis in Uab Meto (Austronesian; Indonesia), an understudied language with CV metathesis that is synchronic and productive. Drawing on original fieldwork, I argue that metathesis is not transposition, but instead a serial delete-and-spread mechanism (cf. Takahashi 2018, 2019). To support this, I present a deep case study into the language’s phonology, showing that metathesis arises from spreading, deletion and epenthesis patterns. I propose that synchronic metathesis systems like Uab Meto’s can only emerge from the successive application of these mechanisms, and hypothesise that true transposition, if it exists, only arises through morpheme-specific operations. This study thus presents a new look onto the typology of synchronic metathesis, and offers an explanatory account of its typological rarity.