Rachel Walker (UCSC) will give a virtual t alk (Zoom information below).
Title : Temporally Complex Segments and Weight-by-Position
Abstract: The assignment of moraic weight to coda consonants is traditionally calculated over root nodes for consonants in th e rhyme (Hayes 1989). In this talk I argue that weight-by-position is inste ad calculated over sequenced subsegmental elements\, represented phonologic ally as gestures (Browman & Goldstein 1986\, 1989). Evidence comes from a c ase study of phonotactics in General American English\, examining moraic li mits on syllable size and its interaction with neutralization of vowel cont rasts\, especially in the context of coda liquids. Coda liquids in North Am erican English are temporally complex\, involving a controlled sequence of constrictions (e.g. Sproat & Fujimora 1993\, Browman & Goldstein 1995\, Gic k 1999\, Campbell et al. 2010). In conjunction with a real-time MRI study o f speech articulation in liquid-final rhymes\, the phonotactic patterns stu died here support phonological representations that include structured over lap and sequencing of gestures in a liquid consonant and preceding vowel. T he assignment of weight in the rhyme is sensitive to these configurations\, and accordingly\, a revised version of the Weight-by-Position constraint i s proposed that operates over gestural sequencing. By contrast\, the phonot actics of rhymes with coda liquids are problematic for a theory in which se quencing and weight is based on root nodes. Extensions of this approach to “sesquisyllables” such as ‘fear’ and ‘file’ are discussed\, for which speak ers are prone to have syllable count judgments of greater than one syllable (Tilsen & Cohn 2016\, Popescu & Chitoran 2022).
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