Segmental Faithfulness to Semantic Heads in Novel Spanish Blends
Abstract
In an experiment testing segmental faithfulness using novel blends in Spanish, we find that segments from a blend’s semantic head are preserved at the expense of segments from the nonhead. These results replicate and extend previous results from English, confirming that the semantic head can function as a phonologically strong position. More broadly, these findings contribute to evidence that factors beyond phonetic salience are able to motivate phonological privilege.
Keywords
blend phonology, emergent effects, positional faithfulness, semantic head, experimental phonologyReferences
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