Variation and Opacity in Singapore English Consonant Clusters
Arto Anttila, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
Singapore English consonant clusters undergo phonological processes
that exhibit variation and opacity. Quantitative evidence shows that
these patterns are genuine and systematic. Two main conclusions
emerge. First, a small set of phonological constraints yields a
typological structure (T-order) that captures the quantitative
patterns, independently of specific assumptions about how the grammar
represents variation. Second, the evidence is consistent with the
hypothesis that phonological opacity has only one source: the
interleaving of phonology and morphology.
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