On the Gradient Phonotactics of English
Matthew Adams, Olga Dmitrieva, Jason Grafmiller, Scott Grimm,
Yuan Zhao, Arto Anttila
Previous studies have demonstrated the existence of several
quantitative phonotactic generalizations in the English lexicon. One
such generalization relates to place dissimilation: the number of
monomorphemic monosyllabic words containing two homorganic consonants
separated by a vowel (e.g. "bob", "bomb") is lower than would be
expected if consonants were distributed evenly based on the frequency
of each place of articulation in each position (prevocalic,
postvocalic). In this talk, we present a number of new generalizations
based on data from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary and CELEX2. First,
we provide new evidence for place dissimilation based on accidental
gaps and show that the generalization is independent of prosodic
structure (syllables, feet). Second, we show that stress, vowel
sonority, and place of articulation interact in systematic ways and
provide an optimality-theoretic analysis that derives the observed
quantitative asymmetries.
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