Sonority, Difference and the Schwarzenegger Star Body

The Sonority Hierarchy in Hungarian

Of course, if (2) holds, (1) and (3) are equivalent – but there might well be languages where (2) turns out to be false, but the other two statements are true. In fact, every language where consonant clusters are disallowed as codas but permitted as onsets is a counterexample to (2), and the same holds for those languages that allow complex codas but do not allow complex onsets. Before turning ...

Reconstructing the Sonority Hierarchy

Combinations of segments in a language are subject to co-occurrence restrictions. This paper focuses on phonotactic constraints that govern the formation of word-initial consonant clusters in German. A description of the inventory of clusters results in scales of phonotactic preferability and a novel approach to a ranking of onset clusters. A set of structural preferences for clusters can be es...

Slippin’ and Slidin’ on the Sonority Scale

In this paper we will consider a widely attested process: LIQUID-GLIDE ALTERNATION, a phenomenon that can be observed in many areas of phonological research, such as studies of disordered language, historical sound changes and nonpathological speech errors and also in child language. You can see examples of this process in first language acquisition data from different languages in (1). Liquids...

The relationship between sonority and glottal vibration

Sonority-Driven Reduction

0. Combinations of Sonority and Stress In their analysis of Imdlawn Tashlhiyt Berber syllabification, Prince and Smolensky (1993) postulate that different types of prominence, such as sonority and syllabicity, should align—a phenomenon they term prominence alignment. This concept is implemented by Prince and Smolensky using families of inherently-ranked constraints that are derived from combini...