How common is r-Epenthesis?
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T. A. Hall
Recent work on consonant epenthesis has argued that the insertion of [r] as a hiatus breaker is phonologically natural (De Lacy 2006, Uffmann 2007). This claim is argued to derive support from the high cross-linguistic frequency of (intervocalic) r-Epenthesis. The goal of the present article is to investigate the original sources for the languages which are assumed to have a regular synchronic r-Epenthesis rule. It is concluded - on the basis of these sources - that there is very little solid crosslinguistic support for that process. If correct, this finding means that r-Epenthesis in many varieties of English cannot be argued to be phonologically natural on the basis of non-related languages with that process.
© 2013 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- A questionnaire study of two-verb clusters in West Central German
- Completives as markers of non-volitionality
- How common is r-Epenthesis?
- On the many faces of incompleteness: Hide-and-seek with the Finnish partitive object
- Causative morphemes as a de-transitivizing device: what do non-canonical instances reveal about causation and causativization?
- There are existential constructions and existential constructions: Presumption-invoking existentials in English
- When the indefinite article implies uniqueness: A case study from Old Italian
- Idiomatic proclivity and literality of meaning in body-part nouns: Corpus studies of English, German, Swedish, Russian and Finnish
- The expression of first-person-singular subjects in spoken Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese: Semantic roles and formulaic sequences
- BOOK REVIEWS
- MISCELLANEA: Report on the 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (Stockholm, Sweden, 29 August–1 September 2012)
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- A questionnaire study of two-verb clusters in West Central German
- Completives as markers of non-volitionality
- How common is r-Epenthesis?
- On the many faces of incompleteness: Hide-and-seek with the Finnish partitive object
- Causative morphemes as a de-transitivizing device: what do non-canonical instances reveal about causation and causativization?
- There are existential constructions and existential constructions: Presumption-invoking existentials in English
- When the indefinite article implies uniqueness: A case study from Old Italian
- Idiomatic proclivity and literality of meaning in body-part nouns: Corpus studies of English, German, Swedish, Russian and Finnish
- The expression of first-person-singular subjects in spoken Peninsular Spanish and European Portuguese: Semantic roles and formulaic sequences
- BOOK REVIEWS
- MISCELLANEA: Report on the 45th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (Stockholm, Sweden, 29 August–1 September 2012)
