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« Undergrad Linguistics Club | Main | The Opposite of 'If'»

Paul de Lacy Colloquium

Paul de Lacy
Rutgers University

The markednesses of [k]

Abstract

Evidence for phonological markedness has usually been sought in diverse sound-related phenomena, including synchronic alternations, loanword adaptation, diachronic change, typological frequency, and so on. However, many of these phenomena have different 'markedness' properties. For example, no synchronic neutralization has /t/->[k], but loanword adaptation involving source language [t]->target language [k] is attested, and so is diachronic change of *t->k; typologically, [t] is more frequent than [k].

I will argue that such markedness mismatches can be accounted for by separating out the different influences of the phonological module, other cognitive modules, and e-language effects. The approach will be contrasted with recent alternative theories of markedness, including Evolutionary Phonology.