Antipalatalization as a systemic effect

Junko Ito and Armin Mester, Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Cruz

5/15/03, 5:30pm, bldg. 460-301 (3rd floor linguistics dept. building---note nonstandard place!!)

This paper explores the development of sibilants and front glides before front vowels in the historical phonology of Japanese. The guiding idea is that wellformedness in this and many other similar cases can be understood only with reference to the larger system of contrasts a form enters into. In OT, this is captured by constraints requiring that contrasts be maintained, and that they be perceptually distinct (as argued in work by Flemming and Padgett, building on earlier ideas and proposals by de Saussure, Martinet, Lindblom, and others).

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