Open AccessGerman glide formation functionally viewed
Author(s) -
Silke Hamann
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.32.2003.189
Subject(s) - german , syllable , vowel , linguistics , optimality theory , phonology , stress (linguistics) , computer science , mathematics , philosophy
Glide formation, a process whereby an underlying high front vowel is realized as a palatal glide, is shown to occur only in unstressed prevocalic position in German, and to be blocked by specific surface restrictions such as *ji and *ʁj. Traditional descriptions of glide formation (including derivational as well as Optimality theoretic approaches) refer to the syllable in order to capture its conditions. The present study illustrates that glide formation (plus the distribution of long and short tense /i/) in German can better be captured in a Functional Phonology account (Boersma 1998) which makes reference to stress instead of the syllable and thus overcomes problems of former approaches.