Features in Phonology and Phonetics by Annie Rialland Rachid Ridouane and Harry van der Hulst

Author:Annie Rialland, Rachid Ridouane and Harry van der Hulst
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2015-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

7 Conclusion

We briefly summarize the main results of this study. An exhaustive search of Turner’s Comparative and Etymological Dictionary of the Nepali Language has brought to light the following generalizations, holding over morphemes in the core vocabulary:

– aspirated stops are absent in affixes

– some roots contain Th…h sequences (Th = any voiceless aspirated stop)

– otherwise, roots and affixes contain at most one aspirate

These descriptive statements follow from the constraint system in (30).

A comparison of Nepali with other languages, including Sanskrit and Gojri, shows that Nepali is consistent with an implicational pattern discovered in a variety of languages by MacEachern (1999). This shows that the Nepali system, though apparently rare, is not atypical among languages. This paper takes a first step toward extending MacEachern’s typology. It remains to be seen how our understanding of it can be improved by the study of further languages with restrictions on laryngeal features.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.