Linguistics Colloquium – Laura Spinu

Investigating a cross-linguistically rare contrast – the case of palatalized post-alveolars”
Dr. Laura Spinu, Concordia University

This talk focuses on a rare cross-linguistic contrast, that between plain and secondarily palatalized post-alveolar fricatives. The absence of this contrast from phonological inventories has been attributed to its low salience, which may be related to gestural timing (Zsiga 2000).

Interestingly, this typologically rare contrast is present in Romanian.

This contrast is not perceptually salient, as demonstrated by the results of two experiments with native speakers, who were unable to distinguish between the two forms (Spinu 2007, 2010). Furthermore, an acoustic study of the stimuli employed in the perception experiments showed that the distinction between plain and palatalized consonants is much less robust in post-alveolars as compared to other places of articulation (Spinu 2010). These findings are in conformity with previous typological descriptions reporting the rarity of the plain-palatalized contrast at this place of articulation.

Hayes and Steriade (2004) propose that cross-linguistically, perceptually fragile contrasts tend to undergo one of two changes: they are either enhanced, or neutralized. Related to this, the results of a 1961 questionnaire (Suteu 1961) regarding the pronunciation of Romanian words reveal that 94.4% of 309 speakers reported making a distinction between the pronunciation of words ending in a plain or palatalized post-alveolar fricative. Almost 50 years later, only 4 out of 31 subjects examined failed to produce any significant difference in the acoustic measures investigated between plain and palatalized post-alveolars. Despite the relatively low salience of the contrast at this place of articulation, it would appear that it continues to be ’alive’ in speakers’ production.

In light of these facts, the question arises as to what factors might be able to explain the persistence of the plain-palatalized contrast with post-alveolars. Contrary to expectations, this contrast does not appear to have either been neutralized or enhanced for the past 50 years. To account for this, I will discuss the notion of grammatical restructuring. Thus, a particular contrast might be maintained in a less favorable environment if the pressure from additional factors is sufficiently strong, especially with regard to productivity (Pierrehumbert 2001), and morpho-phonological transparency (Kochetov 2002). Specifically, in the case of Romanian, the functional load carried by the plain-palatalized distinction, combined with its lack of salience at this place of articulation, might conspire to cancel more general neutralization/enhancement effects.