Phonetics and Phonology Commons^™

Analytic Or Channel Bias: Explaining Variation In Scottish Gaelic Preaspiration, Ian D. Clayton

Ian D. Clayton

Through factorial typology, Optimality Theory predicts a range of theoretically possible grammars. However, factorial typology can result in overgeneration, e.g. by predicting unattested epenthetic repairs to *NC̥ (Pater 1999). To solve this overgeneration problem, extensions to OT have been proposed, such as targeted constraints (Wilson 2001) and the P-map (Steriade 2002). However, others scholars assert that such typological gaps result diachronically from phonetic factors; thus, attributing them to UG is redundant (Ohala 2005, Barnes 2002, Myers 2002). This paper supports the second view, drawing evidence from asymmetries in the typology of Scottish Gaelic (SG) preaspirated voiceless stops. First, the paper …