The Perceptual Dimensions of Sonority-Driven Epenthesis

Bibliographic Data

ID19572746
AuthorsMichelle Alison Fullwood (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume1
Issue1
Publication date2014-03-19
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueProceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2377-3324 • E-ISSN: 2377-3324
PublisherLinguistic Society of America (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.3765/amp.v1i1.14
OpenAlexW2151101467
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited5

Vowel epenthesis often appears to preferentially target consonant clusters with rising sonority. One explanation for this is perceptual faithfulness (Fleischhacker, 2002; Steriade, 2006): rising sonority clusters are more susceptible to epenthesis because the perceptual distance between the underlying /C1-C2/ sequence and its correspondent output sequence [C1-V-C2] is small, thus incurring a smaller faithfulness cost. This raises the question of how to compute the perceptual distance between two sonority contours /C1-C2/ and [C1-V-C2] in terms of the sonority of C1, C2 and V. In this paper, I propose the metric Sonority Angle, the angle formed by the contours /C1-C2/ and [C1-V]. I apply it in analysing two case studies of sonority-driven epenthesis, Chaha and Irish. A comparison is made to another possible metric, Sonority Rise (Flemming, 2008), the ratio of the gradients of the two contours, as well as to Syllable Contact and Sonority Sequencing, which represent an alternative, markedness-based approach to the problem of sonority-driven epenthesis

Linguistics · Markedness · Optimality theory · Phonology · Sonority hierarchy · Speech recognition · Syllable · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Speech Recognition and Synthesis

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