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Phonotactics as Phonology: Knowledge of a Complex Restriction in Dutch
Phonology (2012)
  • René Kager, Utrecht University
  • Joe Pater
Abstract
The Dutch lexicon contains very few sequences of a long vowel followed by a consonant cluster, where the second member of the cluster is a non-coronal. We provide experimental evidence that Dutch speakers have implicit knowledge of this gap, which cannot be reduced to the probability of segmental sequences or to word-likeness as measured by neighborhood density. The experiment also suggests that the ill-formedness of this sequence is mediated by syllable structure: it has a weaker effect on judgments when the last consonant begins a new syllable. We provide an account in terms of Hayes and Wilson's Maximum Entropy model of phonotactics, using constraints that go beyond the complexity permitted by their model of constraint induction.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2012
Citation Information
René Kager and Joe Pater. "Phonotactics as Phonology: Knowledge of a Complex Restriction in Dutch" Phonology Vol. 29 (2012) p. 81 - 111
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/joe_pater/14/