Laryngeal realism revisited

Voicelessness in Breton

This talk presents the near-final version of my analysis of Breton laryngeal phonology (largely superseding my Toronto presentation and to a certain extent my talk from the 6th CLC). The detailed version of the analysis is in the thesis. I argue that in Breton voiceless obstruents are the marked members of the laryngeal opposition. If this is true, ‘laryngeal realism’ is incorrect in assuming that languages which mark fortis obstruents with a feature will always realize that feature as aspiration. I argue that the tight connection between phonological contrast and phonetic representation proposed by laryngeal realism isn’t correct in any case, so this mismatch is not a major problem for the analysis.

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Deconstructing mutation in Breton →