Uh-oh: Glottal Stops and Syllable Organization in Sulawesi 1

Abstract

Glottal stops pattern differently than other consonants in a number of languages spoken on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. In the Makassar languages of South Sulawesi, glottal stop alternates with [k]; in the Kaili-Pomona language Uma of Central Sulawesi, stem-final glottal stop is mobile, apparently metathesizing with material suffixed to the stem; and in the Central Sulawesi Saluan language Balantak, glottal stop is invisible with respect to a particular affix which is normally suffixed to vowel-final stems but infixed to consonant-final stems. I will argue that the various anomalies of the glottal stop result from the fact that glottal stops lack oral place specification; this lack of oral place allows consonants to coalesce with neighboring vowels without loss of place information, and makes glottal stops undesirable onsets in languages (like these) which prefer to locate place contrasts in syllable onsets. 1. Glottal Stop Alternation: Makassar languages The Makassar languages of South Sulawesi include Standard Makassarese (Lakiung), Selayarese, Konjo, Bantaeng, and Turatea. These languages are mutually intelligible but differ in some vocabulary and exhibit some systematic differences in structure. Our focus here is on Makassarese, Selayarese, and Konjo. All three share a restricted syllable structure, allowing only [] and [] in syllable coda, and all three exhibit an alternation between [ ] and [k]. In Makassarese, these two segments are in complementary distribution, [] appearing in coda and [k] in onset position: (1) Makassarese baji ‘good’ bajik-a ‘better’ bajik-a ‘I am good’