On the interaction of velar fronting and labial harmony

Abstract

This article documents the typological occurrence and interactions of two seemingly independent error patterns, namely Velar Fronting and Labial Harmony, in a cross-sectional investigation of the sound systems of 235 children with phonological delays (ages 3;0 to 7;9). The results revealed that the occurrence of Labial Harmony depends on the occurrence of Velar Fronting, and that, when these processes co-occurred, all three predicted types of interactions were attested. A constrained version of Optimality Theory is put forward that offers a unified explanation for the implicational relationship between these error patterns and their observed interactions. The findings are compared with the results from other studies and are considered for their theoretical and clinical implications.

• typology
• implicationally related error patterns
• Optimality Theory
• phonological delay

Notes

1. It should be noted that Faith abbreviates a series of individual faithfulness constraints that are fixed universally in their ranking and that assign more serious violations to labial unfaithfulness than to coronal unfaithfulness (e.g. Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). Consequently, a candidate such as [dɛd] for input /bɛd/, which changes a labial to a coronal, would be eliminated in favour of the alternative unfaithful, but attested, winner [bɛb], which changes a coronal to a labial.