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Voicing contrast in consonant clusters: evidence against sonorant transparency to voice assimilation in Russian*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2014

Vladimir Kulikov
Vladimir Kulikov*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Abstract

Obstruents in Russian have been claimed to assimilate in voicing in clusters when a sonorant consonant intervenes, e.g. ot mgly [dmg] ‘from the haze’. This phenomenon (‘sonorant transparency to voice assimilation’) is controversial: it is claimed to be a phonological rule of fast speech by some linguists, while its existence is denied by others. Previous studies have shown that voicing in presonorant obstruents (C1) in Russian is consistent with that of prevocalic obstruents in slow speech; however, no research has examined whether voicing in presonorant obstruents changes either as a function of the voicing of the rightmost (C2) obstruent in a cluster or in faster speech. This paper presents experimental results supporting the claim that the voicing of C2 obstruents does not affect voicing in presonorant C1 obstruents in slow or fast speech. The results suggest that obstruents do not assimilate through a sonorant in obstruent–sonorant–obstruent clusters in Russian.

Type
Research Article
Information
Phonology , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , December 2013 , pp. 423 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Catherine Ringen, Jill Beckman and Bob McMurray, as well as three anonymous reviewers and an associate editor, for their insightful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are mine. I am also grateful to the speakers for their participation in the study and to Oleg Polyakov, Vera Romanova, Anna Daen and Olga Davydenkova for their help in recruiting subjects and other assistance. The paper has benefited from comments from the audience at the 5th Annual Meeting of the Slavic Linguistic Society at the University of Chicago, where an earlier version was presented. The research was made possible by a T. Anne Cleary fellowship and a Ballard Seashore fellowship from the University of Iowa.

References

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