CORONALS AND THE PHONOTACTICS OF NONADJACENT CONSONANTS IN ENGLISH

Abstract

This chapter discusses coronals and the phonotactics of nonadjacent consonants in English and presents a distinction between morpheme structure constraints (MSCs) and syllable structure constraints (SSCs). Hooper argued against the existence of MSCs altogether. Hooper contended that all MSCs are expressible as, and so reducible to, syllable structure constraints. Hooper's argument for replacing MSCs with SSCs comes largely from Spanish data. A way of determining whether a constraint is an MSC rather than an SSC is by examining polysyllabic monomorphemic words. For example, if a constraint is posited between two segments based on monosyllabic monomorphemic words and that constraint is also relevant for the same segments in polysyllabic monomorphemic words, then that constraint is an MSC rather than an SSC.