Two grammars of A’ingae glottalization: A case for Cophonologies by Phase

Abstract

AbstractThis paper describes and analyzes phonological processes pertinent to the glottal stop in A’ingae (or Cofán, iso 639-3: ). The operations which the glottal stops undergo and trigger reveal an interaction of two morphophonological parameters: stratum and stress dominance. First, verbal suffixes are organized in two morphophonological domains, or strata. Within the inner domain, glottal stops affect stress placement, which I analyze as an interaction with foot structure. In the outer domain, glottal stops do not have any effects on stress. Second, some verbal suffixes delete stress (i. e. they are dominant). Dominance is unpredictable and independent of the suffix’s morphophonological domain, but dominance and the phonological domain interact in a non-trivial way: only inner dominant suffixes delete glottalization. To account for the A’ingae data, I adopt Cophonologies by Phase (Sande et al. 2020), which (i) models phonological stratification while (ii) allowing for morpheme-specific phonological idiosyncrasies, which (iii) interact with the phonological grammar of their stratum. Stress deletion triggered by the dominant suffixes is modeled with AntiFaithfulness (Alderete 1999, 2001). Antifaithfulness to a metrical foot entails antifaithfulness to its features (glottalization). This captures the fact that only the inner dominant suffixes delete glottal stops.