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Constraints on contrast motivate nasal cluster dissimilation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2020

Juliet Stanton
Juliet Stanton*
Affiliation:
New York University
*
*E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

Many languages exhibit nasal cluster dissimilation, in which an illicit sequence of nasal–stop clusters is modified in some way (e.g. NC1VNC2 → N1VNC2). This article discusses generalisations in the typology of nasal cluster dissimilation, and claims that nasal cluster dissimilation is driven by constraints on contrast distinctiveness: it occurs preferentially in those environments where the first NC is most confusable with a plain nasal consonant. I propose an analysis that appeals to auditory factors, and provide acoustic and perceptual evidence that is consistent with it.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 655 - 694
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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Footnotes

This article is a development of Stanton (2016a, 2017: ch. 4). For help in getting it into its final form, I am grateful to Gillian Gallagher for advice and discussion, to Maddie Gilbert for assistance with the acoustic analysis in §3.2 and to three Phonology reviewers (Karthik Durvasula, Shigeto Kawahara and one anonymous reviewer) and the editors for detailed and helpful feedback. The experiment in §4 is IRB approved by New York University as FY2018-2113.

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