Re: OT sonority in Russian, was Re: syllables

Amanda Babcock sikyal:

> On Thu, Jun 12, 2003 at 01:15:16PM -0700, JS Bangs wrote:
>
> > This obviously combines several of the possible distinctions above. The
> > notion of sonority class also interacts with the idea of "minimum sonority
> > distance", which specifies how far apart segments at the beginning of a
> > syllable must be. In English, the minimum sonority distance is 2.
> > Therefore, [pl], [kr], and [tw] are valid ways to begin an English
> > syllable, but [pm] and [nl] are not since the sonority of those segments
> > is too close together.
>
> Ok, this has me curious.  Does Russian follow this system at all?  I'd
> be tempted to say either "no" or "yes, but the minimum sonority distance
> is 0" (based on initial stop clusters and the like).  Any Russian experts
> who could weigh in on this?
Russian does indeed follow this system, but it has some quirks:

The general sonority goes obstruents, nasals, liquids, approximants,
vowels. Minimum sonority distance is 1. Thus, /dmitrij/, /mladSij/, etc.
do not violate sonority.

Russian /v/ acts like it was /w/--i.e. it is more sonorouss than /r/ or
/l/. Thus the sonority distance between the initial consonants of /tvoj/
"yours" is 3, not 0. I can't think of any words that begin with /rv/ right
off, but they wouldn't violate sonority either.

You can add one extra segment to the beginning of a word that violates
sonority.  You can also add /s/ to the beginning of any sequence that
doesn't violate sonority (but not to the beginning of a sequence that
*does* violate sonority--see below). Adding /s/ in this way isn't
considered a sonority violation.  You might say that /s/ forms a sonority
class of its own that is *less* sonorous than anything else.

If you try to add more segments after one that violates sonority, then you
get epenthetic schwas. This explains the alternations in the proclitic
prepositions: /mnoj/ violates sonority, but it is allowed by the "one
extra segment" rule. But now you can't add anything else, so you get
/somnoj/ rather than /*smnoj/ for "with me".

Because of the exceptions regarding /s/ + valid sonority sequence, you can
also get things like /vstretimsja/--/str/ isn't considered a sonority
violation, so you can add the /v/ w/o schwas by the "one extra segment"
rule.

I think this covers it. Caveat emptor--I am not an expert, nor am I fluent
in Russian. This is the analysis I came up with studying Russian, though.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

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And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
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