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Old French Epenthesis and Syllabic Structure*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Rajendra Singh*
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal

Extract

In a provocative article in a recent issue of this journal, Walker (1978) accounts for Old French (OF) alternations of the type ancestre: ancessour, mendre: menour, prendre:prenons, and cosdre: cousons with a synchronic rule of consonant epenthesis given in (1) below:

The purpose of this remark is to argue that even if OF can be said to have consonant epenthesis as a synchronic phonological process (for some convincing arguments to the contrary, see Morin 1980 [above in this volume]), Walker’s formulation of it leaves a lot to be desired.

Type
Remarks/Remarques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1980

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References

Jones, Charles (1976) “Some constraints on medial consonant clusters,” Language 52. 12130.Google Scholar
Kean, Mary-Louise (1975) The theory of markedness in generative phonology. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. MIT.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul (1979) “Metrical structure assignment is cyclic,” Linguistic Inquiry 10. 42142.Google Scholar
Morin, Yves Charles (1980) “Morphologisation de l’epenthèse en ancien français,” CJL/RCL 25: 20425.Google Scholar
Singh, Rajendra (1980) “In defense of the universal syllabic template.” Paper presented at the 1980 annual meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal.Google Scholar
Walker, Douglas (1978) “Epenthesis in Old French,” CJL/RCL 23: 6683.Google Scholar