Revista Linguística (Oct 2022)
Coronal codas and phonotactics in Tupi-Guarani languages
Abstract
This paper discusses the phonotactic organization of conservative Tupi-Guarani languages, and of Proto-Tupi-Guarani, by focusing on the analysis of the word-final/pre-pausal coronal approximant [j]. After illustrating how confusion prevails in currently accepted analyses of this segment, which is often considered both a consonant and a member of a diphthong, I argue that the analysis of [j] as a consonant is preferable. This claim, coupled with the auxiliary hypothesis that Proto-Tupi-Guarani phonotactics was subject to a version of the Syllable Contact Constraint, helps explain two otherwise disparate facts about Tupi-Guarani phonotactics: The impossibility of having complex -jC final codas, and the limitation of medial codas to -j.
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