Patterns of segmental modification in consonant inventories: Contrastive vs. redundant systems and...

Patterns of Segmental Modification in Consonant Inventories: Contrastive vs. Redundant Systems

Jeroen van de Weijer and Frans Hinskens

Leiden University and Meertens Institute

Abstract

Segmental modification types, such as labialization, aspiration and prenasalization, usually appear on natural classes in consonantal inventories. There appear to be two typical situations in which segmental modifications pattern, which can be referred to as ‘redundant’ and ‘con-trastive’: in redundant systems the segmental modification is superimposed on another, pri-mary distinction, and therefore acts like an additional way of making a segmental contrast, while in contrastive systems there is no distinction between two (sets of) segments other than the segmental modification. In this paper we investigate the cross-linguistic occurrence of both types of systems, and offer a formalization couched in Optimality Theory, involving faithfulness constraints relativized for natural class.

1. Introduction: The symmetry of segment inventories*

It has long been recognized that the segments of a language are usually neatly organized into groups, or natural classes, contributing to overall symmetry or similar types of orderliness within segmental systems. For instance, many lan-guages will have voiced counterparts of every voiceless obstruent in their seg-ment system. In other languages every dorsal consonant has a labialized coun-terpart. Of course in many languages there are also exceptions to such gener-alizations. In Dutch, for instance, there is no voiced velar stop phonemically (except in a limited number of loanwords), and other languages lack a voiceless labial stop, to mention two common patterns. Such gaps need to be explained either from a phonetic, i.e. articulatory or perceptual, viewpoint or from a pho-nological perspective. A phonetic account is readily available in these cases. As is well-known, a voiced velar stop is relatively hard to produce, and a voiceless labial stop relatively hard to hear, which can be used to account for gaps such as these. However, the basic symmetry of segmental inventories has not re-ceived the recognition it deserves. In many grammars and analyses, the seg-ments of a language are just listed as a matter of course. However, lists are ar-bitrary and this approach should be avoided, because it presents no hypothesis about what is a possible phoneme system, and what is not a possible phoneme system, and what are possible gaps. Therefore it is necessary to explore the


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question whether the symmetry of inventories can be related to more funda-mental forces of segmental inventory organization.

In the first part of this paper we will present some of the main aspects of the approach to segmental modification pursued in Hinskens & van de Weijer (2003; henceforth HW). This concerned the idea that segmental modification types, such as labialization and aspiration, appeared on natural classes, contrib-uting to symmetry in inventories. We will then present two typical situations in which segmental modification occurred in inventories, referred to as ‘contras-tive’ and ‘redundant’. The distinction between the two made no difference to our earlier investigation, although a formal account of the distinction was briefly discussed. This paper offers a new (partly quantitative) analysis of the data and a more elaborate formalization, which will involve relativizing faith-fulness constraints for phonological class.

HW (2003) focused on three ways of modifying primary articulations, all given in (1). It is possible to modify segments by vowel-like impositions, such as labialization, palatalization, velarization and others, commonly referred to as ‘secondary articulation’. Second, there are laryngeal modifications, such as as-piration, ejectivity, and phonation types such as breathy voice, creak, and so forth. Third, pre- or postnasalization occur. All three of these might be regarded as ways of modifying primary articulations, and together will be referred to as segmental modification (MOD) types.

(1) Segmental modification (MOD):

• supralaryngeal/oral types

• laryngeal types

• nasal types

The exact MOD types that we investigated are given in (2), based on the types described in our source of data, Maddieson (1984). 1

(2) a. secondary articulation (supralaryngeal/oral)

labialization LAB Cw

palatalization PAL Cj

velarization VEL C~

Contrastive vs. redundant segmental modification

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pharyngealization PHA C"

b. phonation types (laryngeal)

aspiration ASP Ch

preaspiration PRA hC

breathy voice BRV C..

with breathy release BRR C+

laryngealization2 LAR C�

ejectivity EJE C'

c. nasality

prenasalization PRN NC

One of the two hypotheses that was investigated in Hinskens & van de Weijer (2003) is given in (3):

(3) Hypothesis: In segmental inventories, segmental modification occurs on a natural class of segments

This hypothesis might seem like an obvious fact. However, we still wanted to see if it could be supported or disproved, given a large-enough sample of lan-guages. Investigating the hypothesis proved more complicated than one might have thought at first sight (see below). The data are based on Maddieson (1984), which lists segment inventories of 317 languages, which constitute a properly constructed quota sample of languages on a genetic basis of the world’s extant languages (Maddieson 1984:5), and is itself based on the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID).

As has been pointed out in a number of reviews of the book, the descriptions provided in Maddieson (1984) are not always completely accurate. This is partly a result of the fact that his survey represents an inevitable homogeniza-tion of different descriptions, differing among themselves in phonetic detail and accuracy, of typologically very different languages. In addition, there are mis-prints and other errors. Inadequacies in Maddieson’s sources may have been


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improved in later analyses. However, Maddieson’s book is reliable in a great majority of the cases. So the results we found are statistically robust enough to test a hypothesis like (3), even if there is a certain margin of error in the input data.

There were two categories of problems that had to be overcome when the hy-pothesis in (3) was tested. Although the concept of natural class remains diffi-cult to define, in most cases it was straightforward to determine if a particular MOD type occurred on a natural class or not. The class of voiceless stops was very much predominant, for instance. However, some questionable cases re-mained, as to what should be counted as a natural class and what should not, some of which are discussed in the paper (see HW 2003: section 2.1). Second, it was necessary to define what should be counted as counterevidence against the hypothesis in (3). Counterevidence went into two directions: first, there are cases in which a specific type of MOD occurs on all relevant members of a natural class as well as on (a) single additional consonant(s) which cannot be considered as a member of that class; in the second case there is a natural class consisting of more than two consonants in which one or more segments do not show the expected MOD type. HW 2003 adduce strict general criteria to dis-tinguish between “mild” counterevidence and “genuine” counterevidence against (3). For instance, if only one segment behaved erratically, this was scored “mildly”, but if two or more segments were aberrant, it was scored as a “genuine” counterexample.

It would go too far to discuss the results in great detail here. Some of these are presented in (4):

(4) Some results:

• over 52% (n=165 languages) of the languages in Maddieson’s (1984) sample (317 languages) had at least one type of MOD

• in 74 languages in the sample, two or more types of MOD co-occurred

• whereas the Australian and Nilo-Saharan language groups are relatively poor as far as MOD goes, the Austro-Asiatic and especially the Northern Amerindian groups are particularly rich in MOD proportionately.

• aspiration is by far the most common type of MOD, accounting for over one third of the total number of cases.


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• laryngeal MOD types account for almost two thirds of the total number of occurrences, whereas oral types accounted for less than one third.

• in 182 out of 278 instances, MOD occurs on a natural class of consonants (fully supporting the hypothesis in (3))

• more frequent MOD types support the hypothesis in (3) to a larger degree

• other phonological characteristics (retroflexion; length) also tend to ap-pear on natural classes

• there are three languages which have a type of MOD, viz. aspiration, which occurs in their affricates series only

• affricates pattern with stops as far as MOD types are concerned (;2=25.30, df=1, p<.001)

• affricates do not pattern with fricatives with respect to their MOD types (;2=72.76, df=1, p=.000)

There are a number of topics for further research. First of all these concern the motivation for the fact that some MOD types often seemed to appear together in language systems, and that certain MOD types recurrently appeared on some natural classes. Obviously, there is a phonetic background to this question. Second, a phonetic account may be available for certain counterexamples to our claim. Third, the development of MOD types in diachronic situations could be explored, e.g. in processes of promotion of secondary articulation to primary place, the fate of MOD under debuccalization, and so on. Finally, there is the issue of the distinction between two typical systems, dubbed ‘contrastive’ and ‘redundant’, which is the main topic of the present paper. Briefly, in a contras-tive system, a MOD type occurs on a class of segments which also have plain counterparts. In a redundant system, MOD also occurs on a class of segments, but redundantly, as it where, as the MOD-less counterparts are lacking. The re-sults of our survey and a quantitative analysis as well as a formal description of both types of systems are presented in the next sections.


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2. Contrastive vs. redundant systems

A contrastive MOD system is one in which there is a segment with a particular MOD type (abbreviated as MODi) as well as an otherwise identical segment without MODi. An example occurs in (5), where part of the segment system of the language referred to as Nootka3 is presented:

(5) A ‘contrastive’ MOD system: Nootka (730)

voiceless plosive p t� k kw q qw

vl. ejective stop p' t�' k' kw' q' qw'

vl. nonsib. fric. x xw ; ;w

In Nootka ejectivity contrasts on voiceless stops and labialization con-trasts on dorsals.

In this language every voiceless stop has an ejective counterpart, while every velar or uvular has a labialized counterpart: these MOD types contrast for these natural classes of segments.

Redundant systems, on the other hand, are systems in which there is no corre-sponding segment without MODi that matches an otherwise identical segment with MODi. An example is presented in (6), which contains a part of the con-sonant inventory of Klamath, a Northern Penutian language. The Klamath data in Maddieson were checked against the original source, Barker (1984).

(6) A ‘redundant’ MOD system: Klamath (707)

vl. ejective stop p' t' c' k' q'

vl. aspirated stop ph th ch kh qh

voiced stop b d Ñ J G

In this language, ejectivity and aspiration occur on voiceless stops, without there being a plain counterpart, i.e. a non-ejective, non-aspirated [p], etc.

A more straightforward example occurs with prenasalization given in (7). In such systems prenasalized voiced stops contrast with voiceless stops, as in


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Wantoat (615), a language spoken in New Guinea and described by Davis (1969).

(7) Prenasalization as redundant: Wantoat (615)

vl plosive p t k kw

PRN plosive mb nd 1J 1Jw

In many languages with prenasalization, there are no plain voiced stops; rather, both voicing and prenasalization set off this class against the voiceless stops. Prenasalization may in such cases be regarded as a kind of enhancement of voicing. In these cases we refer to the MOD type as ‘redundant’.

It is important to realize that the distinction between contrastive and redundant systems makes no difference with respect to the evaluation of the hypothesis in (3). In both cases MOD either occurs on a natural class or it does not (in which case there is “mild” or “genuine” counterevidence to the hypothesis). Ejectivity in the case of (5) and (6), labialization in the case of (5), aspiration in the case of (6), and prenasalization in the case of (7) occur on natural classes, supporting the hypothesis. The distinction simply does not matter.

Cross-linguistically, there appears to be a continuum between fully contrastive MOD and redundant MOD. In the perfectly contrastive case, all segments with a particular MODi type have a MODi-less counterpart. There are, however, cases in which only a majority or minority of segments with MODi has a MODi-less counterpart. These three possible situations are presented schemati-cally in (8):


8

(8)

‘all’ C1

C1MODi

C2

C2MODi

C3

C3MODi

C4

C4MODi

‘majority’ C1

C1MODi

C2

C2MODi

C3

C3MODi

--

C4MODi

‘minority’ C1

C1MODi

--

C2MODi

--

C3MODi

--

C4MODi

In the ‘all’ case, all plain segments have a MOD-ful counterpart. In the major-ity case, most of them have; in the minority case, most of them do not. All three situations correspond with actual language systems, as we will see, although in the UPSID sample in Maddieson (184) the majority and minority situations are much less common. Following this line of reasoning, redundant MOD can be schematically represented as in (9), where there are no MOD-less counterparts to the segments with MOD:

(9)

‘none’ --

C1MODi

--

C2MODi

--

C3MODi

--

C4MODi

For each instance of MOD in the 165 languages with MOD in Maddieson (1984), we established its place on the contrastive/ redundant continuum. There turned out to be four instances of MOD in which exactly half of the MODi consonants have MODi-less counterparts; these were counted as ‘majority’. In the next section we present some results.


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3. Empirical results

The outcomes of our investigation of the distribution of the eleven MOD types over the contrastive/redundant continuum are presented in Table 1.4

CONTR. RED. total

all maj. min. none

LAR ASP 62 6 28 96

BRR 2 2

BRV 6 1 7

EJE 33 8 2 7 50

LAR 19 4 1 3 27

PRA 2 2

ORA LAB 41 6 47

PAL 12 6 1 1 20

PHA 6 6

VEL 2 1 7

NAS PRN 5 1 1 12 19

total 190 32 6 55 283

Table 1. The contrastive/redundant nature of the 283 instances of MOD in the sample (empty cell = 0)

Overall, perfect contrastiveness (‘all’) clearly predominates, with two thirds of the total number of instances of MOD in the sample (190 out of 283). Less than a fifth of the instances of MOD constitute perfect redundancy (55 out of 283), with a fair number of these cases coming from prenasalization. The two inter-mediate types, majority and minority, appear to be represented rather more marginally, with 32 and 6 cases out of 283, respectively.


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In order to establish if there are any significant differences between oral, la-ryngeal, and nasal MOD types, we added up the data for each of these catego-ries, which roughly correspond to different class nodes in feature geometries such as those by Sagey (1986), Clements & Hume (1995).

CONTR. RED. total

all maj. min. none

LAR 124 18 4 38 184

ORA 61 13 1 5 80

NAS 5 1 1 12 19

total 190 32 6 55 283

Table 2. The contrastive/redundant nature of the 283 instances of MOD in the sample, aggregated for the three categories

Table 2 reveals that the proportions of the distribution of the four values on the contrastive/redundant continuum over the three main MOD categories are un-even; a significance test confirms this impression (;2=35.63, df=6, p<.001). In plain words, oral MOD types in the sample show relatively few instances of redundancy, namely only 5 ‘none’ cases out of a total of 80. This is little com-pared to 38 out of 184 for laryngeal MOD types or 12/19 for Nasal MOD types. Nasal claims relatively few cases of perfect contrastiveness (‘all’), namely 5 of 19, which is little compared to 124 out of 184 for laryngeal MOD types, or 61 out of 80 for oral MOD types. Proportionally, most redundancy occurs among nasal MOD types, and most perfect contrastiveness occurs among oral MOD types. Hence, there are significant differences in this respect between MOD types of different major categories. We will not speculate about possible pho-netic underpinnings of these differences. In the next section, we turn to a formal expression of the difference between redundant and contrastive systems.

4. Formal implementation

In both contrastive as well as redundant systems there is a relationship be-tween a number of segments (typically, a natural class) and a MOD type. Thus, there is a “sympathetic” relation between certain classes of segments, and cer-


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tain MOD features, such as between voiceless stops and aspiration or ejectivity (as in (5) and (6) above), between voiceless stops and aspiration (as in (6)), between voiced stops and prenasalization (in (7)), or between dorsals and labi-alization (as in (5)). This relationship can be expressed as an Optimality Theory constraint; for instance as in (10):

(10) EJE/VCLSTOPS [+cons.gl]/[–son, –voice, –cont] “Ejectives must be voiceless stops, and vice versa”

Such a constraint is a ‘sympathetic’ feature co-occurrence constraint espe-cially in the sense of Pulleyblank (1998): certain features or feature combina-tions must occur together.

In redundant systems, which are the easiest to account for, this constraint would be undominated: in such languages all voiceless stops are ejectives, and there are no ejectives besides voiceless stops. In other words, the constraint functions like a ‘redundancy rule’ in earlier rule-based frameworks. It is imma-terial whether ejectivity is stipulated in underlying representations; the con-straint hierarchy will only select outputs which are ejective. An imaginary re-dundant MOD system is shown in the tableau in (11). The two other constraints besides (10) in this tableau are IDENT-IO([CG]), which is a faithfulness con-straint militating against changing the underlying value for ejectivity ([con-stricted glottis]) and NOMOD: A markedness constraint militating against any type of MOD, perhaps as an instantiation of a constraint against segmental complexity in general. Such a constraint is needed to account for languages without secondary articulation or complex segments.


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(11)

a. input: /t'an/ EJE/VCLSTOPS IDENT-IO([CG]) NOMOD

[tan] *! *

/ [t'an] *

b. input: /tan/ EJE/VCLSTOPS IDENT-IO([CG]) NOMOD

[tan] *!

/ [t'an] * *

c. input: /s'an/ EJE/VCLSTOPS IDENT-IO([CG]) NOMOD

/� [san] *

� [s'an] *! *

For all cases ejectivity is only allowed on stops, and must occur on stops. As (11c) shows, it will be removed from other segments, on the assumption that other segmental changes (in particular: changing a fricative into a stop by a change in the feature [cont]) are dispreferred compared to removing MOD.

Let us turn to a concrete example of a redundant system. In the Bantu lan-guage Luvale (125), prenasalization is fully redundant, both for stops and affri-cates (but not for fricatives).

(12) Prenasalization as redundant: Luvale (125)

vl plosive p t k

PRN plosive mb nd 1J

vl. sibilant affricate t6

PRN sibilant affricate nd=

The constraint that is suitable for this kind of system is given in (13):


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(13) PRN/VCDSTOPS [+nasal]/[–cont, –son, +voice] “Prenasals must be voiced stops, and vice versa”

In the tableau in (14) a number of possible imaginary inputs and associated candidate outputs are given. Here the constraint IDENT-IO(voice) is necessary to preclude unmotivated changes from [t] to [d] or vice versa.

(14)

a. input: /tan/ IDENT-IO([VCE]) PRN/VCDSTOPS NOMOD

/ [tan]

� [dan] *! *

[ndan] *! *

b. input: /dan/ IDENT-IO([VCE]) PRN/VCDSTOPS NOMOD

[tan] *!

[dan] *

/ [ndan] *

c. input: /ndan/ IDENT-IO([VCE]) PRN/VCDSTOPS NOMOD

� [tan] *!

� [dan] *

/ [ndan] *

It is more difficult to describe contrastive systems. Let us first illustrate this in general terms. In principle, a constraint like (10) should also play a role here, because in such systems there is also a similar relation between the MOD types and the natural class. The difference is that the MOD type does not have to oc-cur on this class of segments. In an imaginary system with distinctive ejectivity on voiceless stops, voiceless stops (but not other classes) may or may not have


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MOD. Crucially, it cannot occur on any other segments. In other words, we need to retain distinctive marking on stops, but ban it from other segments, so an IDENT constraint of some sort is called for. In particular, the question is how to retain underlying marking for ejectivity on stops but not open the door to al-lowing it on other segments in the output, which a high ranked general IDENT constraint would do.

The key to the solution of this problem would seem to lie in a relativization of faithfulness constraints. It has been proposed that faithfulness can be relativized for phonological position, as proposed by Beckman (1997, 1998) on faithful-ness in phonologically prominent positions, to account for coda-onset asym-metries for instance, or stressed-unstressed asymmetries. It is also well known that faithfulness can be relativized for morphological class: i.e. FAITH con-straints are typically stronger for roots than for affixes, for instance (McCarthy & Prince 1995). What we propose is a step in the same direction, viz. to rela-tivize faithfulness for natural class. Specifically this would involve an IDENT constraint which is sensitive to the natural class on which the MOD type occurs. The IDENT constraint that we propose for the case at hand is given in (15):

(15) IDENT-IO(CG/VCLSTOPS)

“Don’t change the underlying value for ejectivity ([constricted glottis]) in voiceless stops”

If this constraint is high-ranked, then a contrastive system will be described, as seen in (16a,b). The relativized constraint has no effect in (16c,d), so the origi-nal constraint EJE/VCLSTOPS that was given in (10) comes in and removes ejec-tivity from fricatives, again assuming that is preferable to changing the value for [cont], which can easily be accounted for by a high-ranking IDENT con-straint on this feature.5


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(16)

a. input: /t'an/ IDENT-IO([CG]/VSt) EJE/VCLSTOPS NOMOD

[tan] *! *

/ [t'an] *

b. input: /tan/ IDENT-IO([CG]/VSt) EJE/VCLSTOPS NOMOD

/ [tan] *

[t'an] *! *

c. input: /s'an/ IDENT-IO([CG]/VSt) EJE/VCLSTOPS NOMOD

� [s'an] *! *

/� [san]

d. input: /san/ IDENT-IO([CG]/VSt) EJE/VCLSTOPS NOMOD

� [s'an] *! *

/� [san]

Let us illustrate this on the basis of the language Gbeya (129), whose partial segment inventory is given in (17):

(17) Prenasalization as contrastive: Gbeya (129)

vl plosive p t k k�p

vd. plosive b mb d nd J 1J J�E� P�1J�E

As prenasalization occurs contrastively on voiced plosives (and only on voiced plosives), the IDENTITY constraint at issue needs to be related to this natural class of segments – as in (18).


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(18) IDENT-IO(PRN/VCDSTOPS)

“Don’t change the underlying value for prenasalization in voiced stops”

In order to protect the lexical [voice] marking for plosives (and other obstru-ents, for that matter), which is crucial for the proper assignment of prenasaliza-tion, an additional IDENTITY constraint is required in the relevant area in the constraint hierarchy, as shown in (19).

(19)

a. input: /tan/ IDENT-IO (PRN/VCDPLS)

IDENT-IO ([VCE])

PRN/VCD STOPS

NOMOD

/ [tan]

� [dan] *! *

[ndan] *! *

b. input: /dan/ IDENT-IO (PRN/VCDPLS)

IDENT-IO ([VCE])

PRN/VCD STOPS

NOMOD

[tan] *!

/ [dan] *

[ndan] *! *

c. input: /ndan/ IDENT-IO (PRN/VCDPLS)

IDENT-IO ([VCE])

PRN/VCD STOPS

NOMOD

� [tan] *!

� [dan] *! *

/ [ndan] *


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The introduction of an IDENTITY constraint relativized for natural class and the appropriate ordering of this faithfulness constraint relative to the faithfulness constraint protecting the necessary lexical marks, the relevant MOD constraint, and the markedness constraint (NOMOD) results in the contrastive MOD sys-tem.

Let us finally return to redundant MOD systems. It can easily be seen that the general IDENT constraint that we used in tableau (11) for an imaginary sys-tem with redundant ejectivity in voiceless stops can be replaced by the natu-ral-class specific IDENT constraint that is appropriate in (19), as shown in (11’):

(11’) redundant system

a. input: /t'an/ EJE/VCLSTOPS IDENT-IO([CG]/VSt) NOMOD

[tan] *! *

/ [t'an] *

b. input: /tan/ EJE/VCLSTOPS IDENT-IO([CG]/VSt) NOMOD

[tan] *!

/ [t'an] * *

c. input: /s'an/ EJE/VCLSTOPS IDENT-IO([CG]/VSt) NOMOD

/� [san]

� [s'an] *! *

In ((14’) we illustrate the general constraint schema for redundant systems like Luvale, discussed with respect to (12) and (14) above, where plain voiceless stops and redundantly prenasalized voiced stops contrast:


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(14’)

a. input: /tan/ IDENT-IO ([VCE])

PRN/VCDSTOPS IDENT-IO([PRN/ VCDSTOPS])

NOMOD

/ [tan]

� [dan] *! *

[ndan] *! *

b. input: /dan/ IDENT-IO ([VCE])


NOMOD

[tan] *!

[dan] *!

/ [ndan] *!

c. input: /ndan/ IDENT-IO ([VCE])


NOMOD

� [tan] *! *

� [dan] *! *

/ [ndan] *

Now consider a potential language in which the constraints PRN/VCDSTOPS and IDENT-IO([PRN/VCDSTOPS]) are reversed, retaining the constraint IDENT-IO(Vce). This will result in the description of a contrastive system, as shown in tableau (20):


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(20)

a. input: /tan/ IDENT-IO (VCE)

IDENT-IO([PRN/ VCDSTOPS])

PRN/VCD STOPS

NOMOD

/ [tan]

� [dan] *! *

[ndan] *! * *

b. input: /dan/ IDENT-IO (VCE)


PRN/VCD STOPS

NOMOD

[tan] *!

/ [dan] *

[ndan] *! *

c. input: /ndan/ IDENT-IO (VCE)


PRN/VCD STOPS

NOMOD

� [tan] *! *

� [dan] *! *

/ [ndan] *

This entails that the two MOD types, contrastive and redundant, can be de-scribed as constraint hierarchies that differ only in the relative ordering of the (natural-class specific) markedness constraint and the (natural-class specific) faithfulness constraint:

(21) redundant MOD:

Mod/NaturalClass >> IDENT-IO([Mod]/NaturalClass) >> NOMOD

contrastive MOD:

IDENT-IO([Mod]/NaturalClass) >> Mod/NaturalClass >> NOMOD


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This finding raises the question whether segment-specific markedness and faithfulness constraints might not be formalized relative to a natural class in more cases than the ones we have explored here, a topic we leave for further research.

5. Conclusion

With respect to segmental modification in consonant inventories, we find that statistically, there are significant differences in the degree to which laryngeal, oral and nasal MOD types are distributed among the four positions on the con-trastive-redundant continuum. Independent of these three categories, numeri-cally there are two predominant MOD types: fully contrastive and fully redun-dant. To express the difference formally, we investigated an Optimality ap-proach in which inputs are free, and output segments are determined by con-straint interaction. To make such an approach work, it appeared to be necessary to relativize faithfulness constraints for natural class.6 Further work could fo-cus on the cases where MOD is contrastive but not perfectly so (the ‘majority’ or ‘minority’ cases) as well as on the question to which extent the different po-sitions on the contrastive-redundant continuum comply with the hypothesis that MOD occurs on natural classes.

Notes

* We are grateful to the participants in LP2002 for discussion and questions.

1 We are aware of the fact that this set might also have been different, i.e. by excluding one of the types, or by adding yet others, such as perhaps affrication. We do not expect that our re-sults would have been different if we had constructed our data set slightly differently.

2 Note that Maddieson codes glottalized sounds as laryngealized (see Maddieson 1984: 99-101). Hence glottalization is not recognized as a separate category.

3 Nootka is the name of the language that Maddieson gives for the Native American language Nuu-cha-nulth. The number 730 refers to the number of this language in Maddieson’s survey.


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It is a Southern Wakashan language spoken on the western coast of Vancouver Island in the Pacific Northwest. The name Nootka is disliked by the Native people, although it may have been used when the data on this language were first collected by Sapir & Swadesh. We checked the data against the original and several other sources, including Stonham (1999).

4 The 283 cases of MOD presented in Table 1 include two instances that had been overlooked in HW (2003).

5 It is possible that the specific constraint IDENT([CG]/VCLSTOP) we propose here is ranked relative to a general IDENT([CG]) constraint in a “universal subhierarchy”, as developed in recent work by Jaye Padgett (2002). We leave this for further research.

6 Perhaps some instances of MOD can be analysed with reference to prosodic constituents rather than particular segment classes, as proposed by Kehrein (2002). Maddieson (1984) does not pro-vide prosodic information, so on the basis of that survey this proposal cannot be assessed.


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