Variable vowel epenthesis in Picard
Julie Auger, Department of Linguistics, Indiana University
One striking feature of Picard (a language closely related to French) concerns the regular insertion of
epenthetic vowels in order to break up consonant clusters and syllabify
word-initial and word-final consonants. This corpus-based study focuses
on word-initial epenthesis. It provides quantitative evidence that
vowel epenthesis applies categorically in some environments and variably
in others. Probabilistic analysis reveals that the variable pattern is
constrained by a complex interplay of linguistic factors. Following
Labov (1972) and Anttila & Cho (1998), I interpret this result as
evidence that this variation is a reflection of a grammatical competence
that generates variable outputs. An Optimality Theory analysis that
generates both categorical and variable aspects of vowel epenthesis is
proposed. Finally, an analysis of individual patterns of epenthesis by
members of the community reveals that, even though all speakers share
the same basic community grammar, their use of epenthesis differs
qualitatively as well as quantitatively. This paper shows that
individual grammars can be derived from the community grammar and that
OT thus allows us to formalize the idea that individual grammars
constitute more specific versions of community grammars.
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