Epenthesis and beyond: Recent approaches to insertion in phonology and its interfaces

Abstract

Synopsis:

The study of epenthesis, or the insertion of a non-etymological segment, has been at the core of phonological theory from the start, and recent approaches extend beyond phonology to include phonetic considerations, as well as morphological, morphosyntactic, and lexical interactions. This volume includes 12 of the many papers presented at the workshop “Epenthesis and Beyond” held at Stony Brook University in 2021, whose goal was to provide a forum for scholars who approach epenthesis and other types of insertion from new perspectives. The articles selected for this volume represent the exciting new approaches to epenthesis that linguists are engaged in. They cover a wide range of research questions, including how different types of insertion within the same language can use different epenthetic segments, and how across languages the same phonetic material can have different phonological interpretations. Topics like feature epenthesis, insertion vs. deletion, vowel predictability, nucleus-less syllables, and epenthetic segment quality, are also explored. Some of the new tools employed by the authors include ultrasound, Information Theory, and textsetting (the study of the way poets map their text onto a metrical grid). The breadth of languages investigated is noteworthy as well: Kru languages (spoken in Western Africa), Anindilyakwa (spoken in Australia), Yuman languages (spoken in the border area between Mexico, California, Arizona), Motu (Oceanic language spoken in Papua New Guinea), Kaqchikel (Mayan language spoken in Guatemala), Arabic, Turkish, Korean, and many others.