UCL
Working Papers in Linguistics 14 (2002)
Word-final
onsets
JOHN HARRIS
& EDMUND GUSSMANN
A word-final consonant is standardly
assumed to occupy a syllable coda. An alternative is to treat it as the onset
of a syllable containing a phonetically unexpressed nucleus. The final-onset
analysis is shown to out-perform the final-coda analysis on a range of
phonological phenomena, including syllable typology, stress, vowel length, and
consonant phonotactics. A constraint-based implementation of the final-onset
analysis provides a straightforward treatment of the typological facts.
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