Abstract
Yuman languages allow an unusually large number of instances of non-systematic metathesis affecting a wide variety of consonant types. When we seek an explanation for such apparently random facts, various structural features of Yuman languages (both phonological and morpho-syntactic) are found to produce surface variations which look like metathesis in paradigmatically related forms. This situation, it is claimed, is the catalyst which allows other types of metathesis to establish themselves. The classes of segments involved in the process, as well as the direction in which it proceeds, are matched against some proposed universals; some of these gain additional support from the Yuman data, while others do not fare as well.*
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