Corresponding author: Patrycja StrycharczukWord-final consonants in Spanish are commonly assumed to undergo resyllabification across a word boundary before a following vowel, e.g., /los#otros/ 'the others' is realised as [lo.so.tros]. However, in many dialects of Spanish, word-final pre-vocalic consonants ('derived onsets') pattern phonologically with canonical codas and distinctly from canonical onsets. This property of derived onsets has been the subject of much interest in the phonological literature, and has led some linguists to question whether resyllabification indeed applies in all Spanish dialects. In this paper, we evaluate evidence for resyllabification based on acoustic data from 11 speakers of Peninsular Spanish. The results show that word-final pre-vocalic /s/ has increased duration compared to coda /s/, but at the same time, it is shorter compared to word-initial or word-medial pre-vocalic /s/. This result challenges an analysis where derived onsets become phonologically indistinguishable from canonical onsets. We consider an alternative in the form of partial resyllabification, and we further discuss the role of the syllable as a relevant unit in explaining /s/-sandhi in Spanish.

Deverbal nominalizations are often said to occupy an intermediate position between nouns and verbs. Here I describe the morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties of three deverbal nominalization strategies in Shiwiar, a Chicham language of Ecuador and Peru. Although nouns and verbs in Shiwiar are clearly distinguished in the grammar, deverbal nominalizations display a combination of both nominal and verbal traits. Furthermore, the three nominalizations types discussed here each have different proportions of noun-like and verb-like characteristics, thereby forming a gradient cline between the two major word classes.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract