Seminar Series: Abstract

3.30
March 27 2009
Seminar Room C

The origins of consonant mutation in Kainantu-Gorokan (PNG)
Bevan Barrett (Linguistics, RSPAS)

Most of the approximately 25 languages of the Kainantu-Gorokan group, spoken in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, exhibit a process whereby the initial consonant of a morpheme will vary depending on the nature of the preceding morpheme in the same phonological phrasal unit. Language descriptions have variously analysed the phenomenon as simple allomorphy in suffixes to a fully-fledged morphophonological process whereby all nominal lexemes belong to one of two, three or (in the case of one language) five sub-classes depending on the type of consonant mutation triggered on following morphemes. This seminar will investigate the origins of this phenomenon in Kainantu-Gorokan through a comparison of shared regularities and irregularities in the mutated consonants across languages.