The Historical Phonology of Intrusive Stops: A Non-Linear Description

Abstract

Intrusive stops are traditionally understood as sounds emerging at the phonetic surface as the result of specific coarticulation effects, generally involving the manner of articulation features “nasal”, “continuant” and “lateral” as in French chambre (< Lat. cam(e)ra), etre (< Lat. ess(e)re) and OF moldre (< Lat. mol(e)re). In this paper I will discuss some recent proposals concerning the formal description of this phenomenon. In doing so, I will show that two types of intrusive-stop formations have to be distinguished: one type involves the appearance of an epenthetic consonant inside liquidfinal clusters; the second type concerns intrusive stops which originate inside sequences of consonants which do not have liquids as their second member. More specifically, it will be argued that these two types correlate systematically with a difference in segmental status of the intrusive stop involved: the former type requires the insertion of a consonant, whereas the intrusive element which appears in the latter type does not acquire segmental status.