Glide strengthening in Atayal: sonority dispersion and similarity avoidance

Abstract

This paper documents and analyzes the alternations between glides and fricatives in Atayal, an endangered Austronesian language spoken in northern Taiwan. Distributional gaps and morphophonological alternations suggest that onset glides in the Jianshi variety of Squliq Atayal do not appear before a schwa or a homorganic vowel. The paper argues that the restrictions on onset glides are motivated by the needs to achieve an optimal sonority profile within a syllable and to avoid homorganic glide-vowel sequences. In the proposed OT account, sonority dispersion and similarity avoidance are formalized as separate constraints, which is supported by the attested typology across Atayal dialects. The strengthening data justify the placement of schwa lower in the sonority hierarchy than high vowels, and the adopted conjoined constraints further suggest that sonority-based co-occurrence restrictions are not necessarily restricted to syllable margins (cf. Steriade in Language 64:118–129, 1988a). The paper also shows that (1) the behavior of j and w is asymmetrical in some dialects, with w combining more freely with the following nucleus vowel than j does; and (2) Atayal phonemic /w/ primarily alternates with velar [ɣ], which is peculiar among Formosan languages. The fact that Atayal consonantal w strengthens to velar [ɣ] instead of a labial falsifies the feature theories in which /w/ is characterized only by the [Labial] articulator (Halle et al. in Linguist Inq 31:387–444, 2000; Halle in Linguist Inq 36: 23–41, 2005; Levi in The representation of underlying glides: a cross-linguistic study, 2004; Lingua 118:1956–1978, 2008).