• DOI:10.1017/S0952675717000252
• Corpus ID: 27178915

Moro voicelessness dissimilation and binary [voice] *

@article{Bennett2017MoroVD,
  title={Moro voicelessness dissimilation and binary [voice] *},
  author={Wm. G. Bennett and Sharon Rose},
  journal={Phonology},
  year={2017},
  volume={34},
  pages={473 - 505}
}

• Wm. G. Bennett, Sharon Rose
• Published 1 December 2017
• Linguistics
• Phonology

This paper reports on a pattern of voicelessness dissimilation in the Kordofanian language Moro. Voiceless stops and affricates become voiced before a voiceless obstruent in a transvocalic configuration. The dissimilation is robust, and productive across morphological contexts. Phonetically, voicing in Moro is realised as a difference between prevoicing and short-lag voice onset time. This makes [voice] the most realistic featural characterisation; using another feature like [spread glottis] in lieu of [–voice] doesn't explain the contrast. Consequently, dissimilation of voicelessness in Moro is strong evidence that [voice] is a binary feature, and that […voice] may be phonologically active despite being ‘unmarked’. We show that when [–voice] is admitted, the Moro pattern is straightforwardly analysed on a par with other cases of dissimilation. Our analysis uses the theory of surface correspondence, which carries no crucial assumptions about markedness; other theories of dissimilation are considered in an online supplement.