Phonotactics and Articulatory Coordination Interact in Phonology: Evidence from Nonnative Production

A core area of phonology is the study of phonotactics, or how sounds are linearly combined. Recent cross-linguistic analyses have shown that the phonology determines not only phonotactics but also the articulatory coordination or timing of adjacent sounds. In this article, I explore how the relation between coordination and phonotactics affects speakers producing nonnative sequences. Recent experimental results (Davidson 2005, 2006) have shown that English speakers often repair unattested word-initial sequences (e.g., /zg/, /vz/) by producing the consonants with a less overlapping coordination. A theoretical account of the experimental results employs Gafos's (2002) constraint-based grammar of coordination. In addition to Gafos's ALIGNMENT constraints establishing temporal relations between consonants, a family of RELEASE constraints is proposed to encode phonotactic restrictions. The interaction of ALIGNMENT and RELEASE constraints accounts for why speakers produce nonnativ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: COGSCI
• Authors: Lisa Davidson
• Keywords: COGSCI 2006, Nonnative Sequences, Phonotactic, Unattested Word-initial Sequences