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Left margin in Polish2.2. /m/ as a potential governee53Bearing in mind that the same sequence of consonants can have twodifferent phonological representations, we shall now make an attempt toexplain the peculiarity of two sonorant sequences occurring at the leftmargin in Polish. Consider the data in (10) below.(10)[mn]o¿yæ[m­]ie[mr]ugaæ[mr]oziæ‘multiply’‘me’‘wink’‘freeze’[ml]eko[ml]askaæ[mw]ody[mw]óciæ‘milk’‘smack one’s lips’‘young’‘thresh’At first sight it may seem reasonable to represent such clusters as twoonsets separated by the properly governed empty nucleus in spite of thefact that the nucleus never shows up phonetically. On the other hand,there is good reason to believe that such clusters in fact contract the IGrelation (cf. Scheer 2004, Cyran 2003). Firstly, if we assumed thattwo sonorants could not contract a governing relation, then we wouldautomatically predict that the order of the sonorants in (10) could beswitched around as we witnessed in some forms in (1a, b) above. This isbecause PG does not exert any influence on the elemental make-up ofconsonants flanking the empty nucleus, and hence predicts any sequenceof consonants in a cluster. This is not the case in (10) as words startingwith *[nm], *[lm], *[rm] or *[wm] are simply not attested in Polish. 7 Secondly,if these sequences do not involve governing relations and hencethe nucleus separating them is properly governed, the prefix-final vowelshould appear on the surface. Recall that stems beginning with a consonantcluster separated by the properly governed nucleus trigger vocalisationof the prefixal vowel in Polish. Finally and most importantly, theinternal structure of sonorants advocated in this book predicts communicationbetween both sonorants (11). 87Admittedly, the theory still predicts such sequences to be possible in Polish due tothe existence of PG and the inactive character of the initial CV unit. Thus, their lack inthe language must be explained as a pure accident.8A similar line of reasoning was put forward in Cyran and Gussmann (1999)where the bilabial nasal /m/ is placed on the strength hierarchy together with obstruentsand is claimed to be able to contract a rightward Interonset relation with the followingsonorant.