The contrastive hierarchy in phonology 2009 Dresher.pdf - CUNY ...

the sonorant l). The rule that changes k to g changes one phoneme to another,
and so it must be a morphophonemic rule (4.14a). This result is forced in any
phonemic theory that observes the constraint that allophones of different
phonemes may not overlap: in this case, [k] may not be an allophone of both /k/
and /g/. But the very same process produces [Ze@dZ bˆ] ‘were one to burn’,
where dZ is the voiced counterpart of tS (compare [Ze@tS lJi] ‘should one burn?’,
with voiceless tS before lJ). Because [dZ] is not a phoneme in its own right, but
exists only as an allophone of /tS/, this application of voicing is an allophonic
rule, and must be assigned to the component that maps phonemic forms into
phonetic forms (4.14b). 11
Since the alternations between [k] ~ [g] and [tS] ~ [dZ] occur under the
exact same conditions, the analysis in (4.14) must state the same generalization
twice. By giving up the condition on non-overlapping, and hence giving up a
level of taxonomic phonemes that observes this and other such conditions, the
rule of RVA can be stated once for both types of cases.
The unpaired phonemes /ts, tS, x/ function as regular obstruents not only
as targets of regressive voicing assimilation: when they are in a position to
trigger the rule (when they are final in an obstruent cluster), they function as
ordinary voiceless consonants, not as consonants with no specification for
11 The surface vowel in [bˆ] is the result of a rule backing /i/ following a ‘hard’ (non-palatalized)
consonant. This rule is discussed further in §8.3.
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