Metathesis and syllabification in West Greenlandic Eskimo

• Main Author: Brunson, Barbara
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto 1987
• Subjects: Metathesis; Inuktitut; Eskimo; Greenlandic; non-linear phonology; eskimo*; greenlandic; inuktitut
• Online Access: https://twpl.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/twpl/article/view/6402

Consonant metathesis in West Greenlandic Eskimo (WGE) has attracted considerable attention in the literature (Pyle, 1970; Underhill, 1971; Sadock, 1972). In this paper I readdress this issue using the tools of non-linear phonology. Within the non-linear framework, the WGE metathesis process need not be stipulated as a rule, but is instead a result of a repair strategy. The constraints imposed on this repair strategy yield interesting insights into the nature of autosegmental attachment and syllable parsing, and also indicate an analogy to syntactic structural 'movement' that might ultimately prove relevant to attempts to characterize and formalize general structural conditions on movement rules throughout the grammar.