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<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Dear colleagues,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I am looking for input (data) on tautosyllabic
consonant clusters. Suppose that a syllable begins with two adjacent consonants,
followed by a vowel: CCV. Technically this is called an
initial demisyllable. I am aware of two competing claims/proposals about
what kinds of consonants are cross-linguistically unmarked or preferred in
this type of situation, both based on the notion of relative sonority. For the
sake of simplicity, let us assume a common five-way sonority scale:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>V (vowel)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>G (glide)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>L (liquid)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>N (nasal)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>O (obstruent)</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>(1) One approach posits that specific languages can place
a minimum sonority distance requirement on onset clusters, such that Spanish,
for example, allows OL but not *ON or *NL, since obstruents differ from liquids
by two steps on the sonority scale, whereas obstruents plus nasals or nasals
plus liquids differ by only one sonority rank. One implication of this is that
there could or should exist languages in which the only permissible onset
clusters consist of an obstruent followed by a glide, such as /py/, /kw/, etc.,
whereas OL onsets, such as /pl/ or /tr/, are not attested. Works such as
Steriade (1982) and Selkirk (1984) are examples of this
general theory.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>(2) A different approach is the Sonority Dispersion
Principle proposed by Clements (1990). In this theory the three segments in an
initial CCV demisyllable prefer to be evenly spaced apart in terms of relative
sonority. This leads to the claim that OL (obstruent + liquid) syllable-initial
clusters are universally preferred over OG (obstruent + glide). One implication
of this is that there could or should exist languages in which the only
permissible onset clusters consist of an obstruent followed by a liquid, such as
/pl/ or /tr/, whereas *OG onsets, such as /py/, /kw/, etc., systematically do
not occur.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>I am preparing to carry out a major cross-linguistic study
in which I test the claims of these two competing approaches on a robust sample
of languages, preferably a set of languages which is genetically and
geographically balanced. Evidence for or against these two theories could
potentially come from different areas of the phonology:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>(1) inventory of attested syllable patterns</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>(2) relative frequency of different types of syllable
patterns</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>(3) child language acquisition data</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>(4) dynamic morphophonemic alternations</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The latter, for example, would consist hypothetically of
an underlying combination of morphemes which might otherwise be expected to
surface as OL (obstruent + liquid), but which instead is realized phonetically
as OG (obstruent + glide), or vice-versa. To illustrate, /pla/ > [pwa] or
/kwa/ > [kra], etc.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>The general research question which I am trying to tease
apart is, which type of initial cluster, OL or OG, is truly unmarked in the
languages of the world? My general impression at this point is that the answer
to this issue is mixed, with some languages showing a preference for OL, and
others indicating that OG is default. I think there are also other languages in
which these two types of clusters are more or less evenly
preferred.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>What I am looking for is hard empirical and statistical
evidence from individual languages, or even better yet from many languages, in
response to this dilemma. I would especially like to know if any published
surveys or typological databases already exist which address this issue, or
which would allow me to perform searches to answer these questions? In addition,
I would be happy to hear about electronic dictionaries and/or text corpora in
relevant languages which would lend themselves to easily counting unique words
(types) or tokens of forms containing such clusters (OL and/or OG).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Thank you very much,</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Steve Parker</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial>Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics and SIL
International</FONT></DIV>
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