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Antigemination, assimilation and the determination of identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2006

Eric Baković
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego

Abstract

Avoidance of adjacent consonants that are ‘sufficiently identical’ – that is, identical except for possible differences in a small subset of specific features – is argued to result from joint satisfaction of a constraint against geminates (identical adjacent consonants) and other active constraints that independently require assimilation with respect to those features ignored in the determination of identity. The crux of the proposal is the dependence of antigemination on independent assimilation processes, a prediction that is independently verified in case studies from English and Lithuanian. The factorial typology of constraints at the core of the proposal is demonstrated to closely fit a significant range of observed cases.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I thank Jessica Barlow, Ed Keer, John McCarthy, David Perlmutter, Alan Prince, Sharon Rose, Colin Wilson, three anonymous reviewers and an associate editor of Phonology, and the audiences at WECOL 2004, SWOT 6 and UBC for constructive discussions of and feedback on the facts and issues addressed in this paper (not to mention important points of argument and style). These have all led to vast improvements in the paper, and any remaining shortcomings are my own responsibility.