Revisiting phonotactic repairs in Cantonese loanword phonology: it’s all about sC

Abstract

Different factors have been claimed to affect the choice of repair on English words with ill-formed Cantonese phonotactics in Cantonese loanword phonology. The first half of this paper presents experimental evidence showing that variation is observed only when repairing different onset cluster types: there is vowel epenthesis for s + consonant (sC) clusters but deletion of the second consonant for other (OR) clusters. I propose that the Syllable Mapping Grammar (SMG), the syllable structure mapping component of the perception grammar, drives such variation: Cantonese speakers assign different phonological representations based on cluster well-formedness. When they perceive words with an sC cluster, their SMG assigns [s] as syllabic. A full OT grammar is also provided. I present evidence for the knowledge of cluster well-formedness from speakers of languages like Cantonese where complex onsets are absent. Potential sources of such knowledge and other alternatives to my proposal are also discussed.