The structural motivation of palatalization

This paper is about the structural motivation of the palatalization of coronal stops in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and cross-linguistically. It aims to explain why (a) coronal stop consonants are the typical targets of the process, (b) coronal stops are the only targets of the process in BP, (c) the...

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Main Authors: Elisa Battisti, Ben Hermans
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-graduação em Linguística 2020-06-01
Series:Fórum Linguístico
Online Access:https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/72865
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author Elisa Battisti
Ben Hermans
author_facet Elisa Battisti
Ben Hermans
author_sort Elisa Battisti
collection DOAJ
description This paper is about the structural motivation of the palatalization of coronal stops in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and cross-linguistically. It aims to explain why (a) coronal stop consonants are the typical targets of the process, (b) coronal stops are the only targets of the process in BP, (c) the typical trigger of palatalization crosslinguistically is the coronal high vowel, (d) the only trigger of the process in BP is the coronal high vowel. We propose an internal structure of segments with abstract elements C and V (VAN DER HULST, 2005, 2011) and show that the consonantality of high front vocoids is the motivation of palatalization. The process tends to affect consonants which are similar to the trigger in structural terms. The proposal allows us to distinguish secondary and full palatalization (BATEMAN, 2007) structurally. It also explains the selection of trigger and targets of palatalization in BP, which results of full palatalization, a kind of palatalization which demands maximally identical trigger and targets.  
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1984-8412
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spelling doaj-art-78ac800db1114e308b01f7996553d47c2025-08-20T02:08:56ZengUniversidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Programa de Pós-graduação em LinguísticaFórum Linguístico1415-86981984-84122020-06-0117Núm. Esp.10.5007/1984-8412.2020v17nespp459634203The structural motivation of palatalizationElisa Battisti0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6701-4218Ben Hermans1Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, CNPqMeertens Instituut; Vrije Universiteit-Amsterdam This paper is about the structural motivation of the palatalization of coronal stops in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and cross-linguistically. It aims to explain why (a) coronal stop consonants are the typical targets of the process, (b) coronal stops are the only targets of the process in BP, (c) the typical trigger of palatalization crosslinguistically is the coronal high vowel, (d) the only trigger of the process in BP is the coronal high vowel. We propose an internal structure of segments with abstract elements C and V (VAN DER HULST, 2005, 2011) and show that the consonantality of high front vocoids is the motivation of palatalization. The process tends to affect consonants which are similar to the trigger in structural terms. The proposal allows us to distinguish secondary and full palatalization (BATEMAN, 2007) structurally. It also explains the selection of trigger and targets of palatalization in BP, which results of full palatalization, a kind of palatalization which demands maximally identical trigger and targets.   https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/72865
spellingShingle Elisa Battisti
Ben Hermans
The structural motivation of palatalization
Fórum Linguístico
title The structural motivation of palatalization
title_full The structural motivation of palatalization
title_fullStr The structural motivation of palatalization
title_full_unstemmed The structural motivation of palatalization
title_short The structural motivation of palatalization
title_sort structural motivation of palatalization
url https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/forum/article/view/72865
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