Towards a typology of stop assibilation

Abstract

In this article we propose that there are two universal properties for phonological stop assibilations, namely (i) assibilations cannot be triggered by /i/ unless they are also triggered by /j/, and (ii) voiced stops cannot undergo assibilations unless voiceless ones do. The article presents typological evidence from assibilations in over 30 languages supporting both (i) and (ii). It is argued that assibilations are to be captured in the Optimality Theoretic framework by ranking markedness constraints grounded in perception that penalize sequences like [ti] ahead of a faithfulness constraint that militates against the change from /t/ to some sibilant sound. The occurring language types predicted by (i) and (ii) will be shown to involve permutations of the rankings between several different markedness constraints and the one faithfulness constraint. The article demonstrates that there exist several logically possible assibilation types that are ruled out because they would involve illicit rankings.

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