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Fronting And Palatalization In Two Dialects Of Shoshoni, Dirk Elzinga

Faculty Publications

In Western Shoshoni, a Uto- Aztecan language spoken in northern Nevada, coronal obstruents are found in distributional patterns which depend on the presence or absence of a preceding front vowel ([i] or [e]). In the pattern I refer to as FRONTING, alveolar stops alternate with dental stops - dental stops occur following front vowels (la), while alveolar stops occur elsewhere (lb); this pattern is common to all dialects: