Hannahs, S. J., “Welsh svarabhakti: sonority sequencing and foot structure”, Journal of Celtic Linguistics 13 (2009): 21–44.
- journal article
It has long been observed that certain final consonant clusters in Welsh may provoke vowel epenthesis (svarabhakti), deletion of one member of the cluster, or metathesis. These clusters consist of a consonant followed by [r], [l] or [n]; other sorts of final clusters are permitted. The occurrence of epenthesis, deletion or metathesis, moreover, depends not only on the type of cluster involved, but also on the prosodic size of the input form. I argue in this paper that these three processes – epenthesis, deletion and metathesis – are all directly connected. All arise in order to avoid a sonority sequencing violation: an obstruent followed by a sonorant in a final cluster represents illicit rising sonority in a coda. To account for the data at hand, the analysis will rely on the interaction between several constraints, including a constraint militating against epenthesis, a constraint militating against deletion, and a constraint working against metathesis. The interaction of these constraints serves to capture the effects of epenthesis, deletion and metathesis in avoiding a violation of the undominated 'sonority sequencing' constraint. In addition, prosodic structure will be shown to play a role in deciding between epenthesis (which occurs in the case of a monosyllabic input form), and deletion or metathesis (which occurs when the input form is bisyllabic). Finally, account will also be given for the fact that the epenthetic vowel is a copy of the stem vowel (rather than simply a 'default' vowel such as schwa) by means of a correspondence relation between the epenthetic vowel and the underlying stem vowel.
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