Chapter 3. Intrusion Vs. Epenthesis

CHAPTER 3. INTRUSION VS. EPENTHESIS In the previous chapters, I have argued for the existence of non-segmental “intrusive vowels”: copy vowels (or schwas) heard in RC or CR clusters, which are not independent segments but rather the edges of adjacent vowel gestures, heard during an interconsonantal release. This chapter concentrates on the distinction between vowel intrusion and copy vowel epenthesis. While an intrusive vowel is a vocalic interval that is not segmental or syllabic, an epenthetic vowel is segmental and syllabic, but not underlying. In the literature, both are often labeled ‘epenthesis’, but they have quite different representations, as evidenced by the differences in their conditioning environment and behavior. A VCV sequence with an intrusive vowel involves only one vowel segment and gesture, while copy vowel epenthesis involves insertion of both a segment and a gesture, as shown below. (103) Intrusion Epenthesis Input: /VCC/ /VCC/ ↓ ↓ V C (V) C V C V C Output: Because copy vowel epenthesis does not require a vowel gesture to surround a consonant, it is not restricted by *C IN V constraints. I.e., copying does not happen more often over certain consonants than others. I have found only one class of historically epenthetic vowels that show restrictions on the consonants they copy over: vowels epenthesized into loanwords. These vowels likely began as intrusive vowels, and still display one characteristic of vowel intrusion, a tendency to copy over sonorants. However, synchronically these vowels appear to have been reanalyzed as underlying. 3.1. Copy vowel epenthesis True epenthetic copy vowels are fundamentally different from intrusive vowels. While intrusive vowels are a non-segmental percept, and have a ‘copied’ quality only because they are part of the gesture of another vowel, epenthetic vowels are segments, and I will argue that their copied quality does not result from gestural overlap. As argued in chapter 1, a fixed hierarchy of *C IN V constraints restricts vowels from fully overlapping different types of consonants. Therefore, a restriction on intervening copy type can be considered a diagnostic of gestural vowel “copy”. Epenthetic copy vowels do not meet this diagnostic. This suggests that the copying 74 operates by an entirely different mechanism. I will adopt that proposed by Kitto & de Lacy 2001. Briefly, Kitto & de Lacy propose that copied quality in epenthetic segments is enforced in the same way as the copying that occurs in reduplication, which McCarthy & Prince 1995 analyze with correspondence constraints. A correspondence relation can hold between an epenthetic segment and another output segment (the “base”), and the constraint BE-IDENT-F demands that the two segments have the same feature settings. The choice of which vowel to use as the base is determined by competition among other constraints. (104) BE-IDENT-F Kitto & de Lacy 2000:3 An epenthetic segment E and its base have identical values for feature F. In a purely gestural theory, this constraint can be reformulated to demand identity between the gestures of an epenthetic vowel and its base. Under this view, the copying that happens in epenthesis has nothing to do with gestural overlap: the two segments have identical but separate gestures. Epenthetic copy vowels are not predicted to show the restrictions ascribed to effects of gestural overlap, such as copying only over sonorants. Lest it seem undesirable to have two separate mechanisms leading to copying (gestural overlap and segment-to-segment correspondence), it is important to recognize that correspondence between output segments, or some similar mechanism, is independently necessary to explain the non-local vowel copying that happens in reduplication and language games. In the English game Urupu, for example, every vowel is preceded by [r©p] and a copy of that vowel (Moira Yip, p.c.). In the examples below, spaces are inserted for ease of reading; they do not indicate pauses. (105) Urupu game sigh rì → r`q©oì.rìq©oì pen oDm → oDq©oDm sit rHs → rHq©oHs soon rtm → rTq©otv m seen rhm → rHq©ohim cute jits → jiTq©otv s In this kind of copying, the two vowels cannot possibly share a continuous gesture, since a different vowel gesture occurs in the intervening syllable [r©p]. Another indication of gestural independence is that the quality of a tense vowel is not copied perfectly; the unstressed copy is laxed. The copy vowel can undego regular contextual variation in quality because it has a separate gesture. Similarly, in a language that reduplicates multiple syllables ([paku- pakutu]), the correspondence between, for example, the [a] in the reduplicant and the [a] in the base cannot be a result of a single gesture extending from one to the other, since there is an intervening [u]. Since a mechanism not involving gestural spreading is necessary to 75 analyze long distance copying, there is no reason that this mechanism should not be available for local copying as well. 3.2. Diagnostics of non-gestural copying 3.2.1. Welsh: true epenthesis The representational difference between epenthetic and intrusive vowels predicts differences in behavior, under the theory proposed here. These differences will be demonstrated through the example of copy vowel epenthesis in Welsh (Awbery 1984). I believe that the highlighted characteristics of Welsh are common to most or all epenthetic copy vowels. Welsh epenthesizes copy vowels to break up marked coda clusters in inputs like /gwadn/, which surfaces as [gwadan]. Several characteristics of these vowels suggest that they do not involve gestural overlap, and are true segments. First, I have argued that gestural overlap is governed by a universal hierarchy of *C IN V constraints, which prohibit vowels from fully surrounding certain classes of consonants. If gestural overlap is not involved in copy vowel epenthesis, there should be no restrictions on the type of consonants that can be copied over. This holds true for Welsh, which inserts an epenthetic copy vowel into any underlying final cluster that consist of an obstruent followed by a sonorant, and also into certain sonorant-sonorant clusters. Any consonant may be copied over, including [d, v, X, l, m] as in the examples below. Alternations are given to show the epenthetic nature of the copy vowel. 76 (106) Welsh copy vowel epenthesis Awbery 1987:88-9 a. .fv `cm/ → fv `cm ‘sole’ .fv `cm + d/ → fv `cmd ‘soles’ b. .jdum/ → jdudm ‘back’ .jdum + d/ → jDumd ‘backs’ c. .otcq/ → otctq ‘rotten’ .otcq + h. → o©cqh ‘to rot’ d. .nXq. → »n˘Xnq ‘side’ .nXq+ h/ → »åXqh ‘to side’ e. .gdkl/ → »gd˘kdl ‘cornstack’ .gdkl + h/ → »gDklh ‘cornstacks’ f. .`lk. → »`l`k ‘often’ .`lk+ `X. → »`lk`X ‘more often’ A second prediction is that, since the epenthetic vowel is a true segment and its presence involves unfaithfulness to the underlying segmental string, it should only appear when a markedness constraint forces its presence. Epenthesis should always remove a structure that shows the characteristics of markedness, such as being typologically rare, acquired late by children, and actively avoided through other means besides epenthesis. As shown in chapter 1, this is not true of intrusive vowels; they actually tend to occur in rather unmarked clusters. In the case of Welsh, epenthesis clearly functions to satisfy independently motivated syllable structure constraints. It removes codas of rising sonority, which are cross-linguistically more marked than those of even or falling sonority. Less-marked codas, of falling sonority, are left alone as in the words below (note that several of these words would be prime candidates for vowel intrusion.) (107) Welsh coda clusters Awbery 1984:87 a. o`rj ‘Easter’ b. fv `¬s ‘hair’ c. c`qm ‘piece’ d. eDql ‘farm’ e. oHlo ‘five’ f. aåqc ‘table’ g. a`kX ‘proud’ 77 A restriction against CR codas is familiar from numerous languages, and they are actively avoided through other processes in Welsh. In words of two syllables, final CR clusters are repaired by deletion of one of the consonants: (108) Welsh cluster resolution by deletion Awbery 1984:89 a. /edmdrsq. → edmdrs ‘window’ /edmdrsq+ h/ → eDmDrsqh ‘windows’ b. /`m`ck/ → `m`k ‘breath’ /`m`ck+ h/ → `m`ckh ‘to breathe’ Some dialects also sporadically metathesize final CR, or change [v]R clusters to [w]R (Awbery 1984:90). In short, epenthesis is part of a ‘conspiracy’ of processes that remove the same clusters. This is in striking contrast to vowel intrusion, which happens in clusters that are not particularly marked cross-linguistically, and are not in general avoided within the language (see, for example, the discussion of Dutch truncation in chapter 2). A third prediction is that, for an epenthetic vowel to repair a marked structure, it must be phonologically “present”: it is a new segment that creates a new syllable, and should act syllabic for other diagnostics. Luckily, Welsh provides one. According to Awbery 1984:69, a long vowel does not occur before a consonant cluster, presumably because it would be in a closed syllable. If the copy vowels that appear in /CVCR/ words were intrusive, then the segmental representation would still be C-V-C-R and the word would be monosyllabic. In that case, these words should be able to contain only short vowels. If, on the other hand, the CR cluster is phonologically broken up by the epenthetic vowel, then the preceding vowel can be long (in fact, before certain consonants it must be long). As shown in (1 06), epenthesis into a CR cluster does allow the preceding vowel to be long. (109) Welsh CVCVR a. .fv `cm. → fv `cm ‘sole’ b. .jdum. → jdudm ‘back’ c. .otcq. → otctq ‘rotten’ d. .nXq. → »n˘Xnq ‘side’ This is the pattern we expect to see if the epenthetic vowel is creating a new syllable: it causes the preceding vowel to behave as if it is in an open syllable.

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