Systemic Contrast and Catalan Rhotics*
Systemic Contrast and Catalan Rhotics* Jaye Padgett - University of California, Santa Cruz (January 2003) 1. Introduction Catalan, a Romance language spoken primarily in the northeast of Spain, has two contrasting rhotics: a tap [r] and a trill [r]. The two sounds contrast only between vowels with the distribution otherwise being predictable. The facts closely parallel the better known facts of Spanish, and the problems they raise are similar. In this paper I take a new look at Catalan rhotics, arguing that we can achieve a better account of them if we explicitly acknowledge the role of contrast in their behavior. Specifically, the explanation calls on constraints requiring that contrast be maintained, on the one hand, and on constraints requiring that contrasts be perceptually distinct, on the other. The account is cast within Dispersion Theory (Flemming 1995, to appear), which is designed to express such notions. In approaching the Catalan facts in this way I follow Bradley (2001), who applies Dispersion Theory to Spanish rhotics. Some of the main conclusions we reach differ, all the same. A good deal of recent work argues that both neutralization avoidance and perceptual distinctiveness play important roles in shaping phonologies. (Besides the above, see Ní Chiosáin and Padgett 2001, Sanders 2002, Padgett to appear-a,b, and Sanders in progress.) The theoretical framework of these works, Dispersion Theory, remains rather new, and this paper offers another case study. The appeal to contrast leads to a simpler and more explanatory account of Catalan (and Spanish) rhotics compared to previous ones. The analysis also illustrates how it is possible to incorporate more systematic phonetic detail into phonology, increasing our descriptive coverage, without predicting the overgeneration of contrast.
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