proto-southwestern-tai revised: a new reconstruction - seals 22

Mulao Tone Neutralization 83
6 Conclusion
Mulao has laryngealized onsets that cause neutralization to high tone in the output. The
laryngealized onsets are aspirates, glottals, voiceless sonorants and fricatives. This high
tone neutralization is argued to be a phonological restriction by proposing that consonants
can form a dependency relationship with tone, and that a markedness constraint bans low
tone on these laryngealized onsets (*ELEVATOR-L).
Crucial to the analysis is that there are no faithfulness constraints that preserve the
dependency relationship between consonants and tone. Constraints for consonant-tone
interaction are output oriented markedness constraints.
The markedness constraint motivated by the Mulao data is *ELEVATOR-L, which
bans elevating consonants from being included in a low tone domain. The prediction borne
out by this constraint and other markedness constraints on consonant-tone interaction is
presented by examining the typology as in section 5.
Acknowledgement:
I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I also thank Marc
Brunelle, James Bruno, Susan M. Burt, Charles Chang, Jerry Edmondson, José Elías-
Ulloa, Brian D. McHugh and Jeremy Perkins for their suggestions and comments.
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