could point to a cline in which (1) vowel reduction processes initially affect vowel quality, (2) the reduced vowel quality becomes phonologized, and (3) the reductive tendencies in the language continue to affect the sound that has already been reduced, eventually leading to its deletion.<fnref n="2" /> Such a hypothetical path of reduction may then be responsible for the pattern by which high vowels are commonly affected by vowel reduction in the Simple, Moderately Complex, and Complex categories but not the Highly Complex category: processes may have by that stage already affected the quality of high vowels in environments of reduction. Although only speculation here, these possibilities will be explored in greater detail in Chapter 8.

### 6.4.2 Implications for development of syllable structure complexity

We now turn to a discussion of how the results of the study might have implications for the development of syllable structure complexity more generally. A concrete finding from the current study which may bear on this issue pertains to common conditioning environments for vowel reduction. Word position is a highly relevant conditioning environment in languages with simpler syllable structures, while word stress is the strongest conditioning environment in languages with more complex syllable structure. However, an additional important observation is that a robust minority of vowel reduction processes in the sample are not conditioned by stress at all: these include 66 vowel reduction processes (37% of the total) in 43 languages from all syllable structure complexity categories. Furthermore, the outcomes of such processes may have an effect on syllable structure: seven result in syllabic consonants and 15 result in vowel deletion, some of which create non-canonical syllable patterns (cf. the Sumi Naga example in 16b). Interestingly, in one such process in Paiwan, vowel deletion occurs in both stressed and unstressed syllables in fast speech. In (21), this process is shown occurring in a stressed syllable and resulting in stress shift and the resyllabification of the adjacent nasal as a canonical coda. A further reduction reduces the stressed vowel and coda to a syllabic consonant.

(21) Paiwan (Austronesian; Taiwan)

/tsə'mədas/

[tsʰə'mədas] ~ [tsʰəmdas] ~ [tsʰmdas]

'a name for male' (Chang 2006: 42)

<footnote n="2">²Indeed, this does seem to be the process occurring in American English with respect to /ə/ deletion.</footnote>
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

In Itelmen, a similar process of reduction and deletion of /ə/ is reported: e.g. /kəmmanəkit/ > [kəmmanəkrt] ~ [kummanəkrt] ~ [kmanəkrt] ‘I-CAUS’ (Georg & Volodin 1999: 13). Although stress is not marked in that example, Itelmen is reported to have fixed initial stress (Bobaljik 2006: 6). Thus this is potentially another case in which reduction and deletion processes target vowels regardless of their stress status, resulting in increased phonotactic complexity.

Including Paiwan and Itelmen, there are 11 languages in the sample from all syllable complexity categories which have both stress and vowel reduction processes, but no vowel reduction processes conditioned by word stress. As discussed in §5.5.2, an important consideration in interpreting findings in the speech rhythm literature is the fact that stress systems and syllable patterns may change independently of one another. The presence of the set of vowel reduction patterns discussed above suggests that non-stress-conditioned vowel reduction is an important, if secondary, source by which syllable patterns may be altered over time.

Though a large majority (18/24) of the languages in the Simple category have word stress, this category is set apart from the rest in that stress is much less likely to condition vowel reduction in these languages. As mentioned in Chapter 5, this observation has also been made in the speech rhythm literature: syllable-timed languages do not necessarily lack stress, but stress does not have strong segmental effects in those languages (Auer 1993). In the current study it was additionally found that the number of distinct processes conditioned by stress within languages that have stress increases with syllable structure complexity. This finding clarifies one of the more puzzling results from Chapter 5, where it was found that the percentage of languages with stress-conditioned vowel reduction did not substantially increase across the Moderately Complex, Complex, and Highly Complex categories. In light of the results in this chapter, we can say that while the number of languages with unstressed vowel reduction does not increase across these categories, the effects of stress within those languages does increase. In that sense, at least, there is now stronger evidence for the hypothesis in Chapter 5 regarding the segmental effects of stress, which did not have strong support in the analyses in that chapter: stress conditions a higher number of distinct vowel reduction patterns as syllable structure increases.

This raises the question of how word stress, specifically, and vowel reduction, more generally, differ in languages with Simple syllable structure. With respect to stress, recall from Chapter 5 that besides segmental effects, there were few properties of stress which set the Simple category apart from the others. Languages in that category were more likely than the others to have pitch as a phonetic correlate of stress and less likely than the others to have intensity as a cor-
relate. However, it is unclear how either of those properties would correspond to lower rates of unstressed vowel reduction in those languages. Turning to the more general question of how vowel reduction differs in languages with Simple syllable structure, one possibility is the presence and effects of tone. In §5.3 it was found that over half of the languages in the Simple category had tonal contrasts, a proportion that was higher than in the other three categories. Tonal contrasts signal changes in lexical or grammatical meaning, and are typically carried by vowels. It is worth investigating whether the presence of tone makes vowel reduction less likely to occur: in such a scenario, the greater functional load carried by vowels in those languages might make them less susceptible to reduction processes.

Though a higher proportion of languages with tone do not have vowel re-
duction processes (14/37, as compared to 15/63 non-tonal languages), this trend
is not statistically significant in a chi-square test. A similar analysis of vowel
deletion patterns with respect to the presence or absence of tone also yields a
non-significant result. Thus it does not seem likely that the relatively higher fre-
quency of tonal systems is a strong motivation for the much lower rates of vowel
reduction observed in the Simple category.<fnref n="3" />

The properties most strongly associated with vowel reduction in the languages
of the Simple category are those having to do with outcomes: a higher rate of de-
voicing outcomes and a lower rate of reduced quality outcomes set this category
apart from the others. The devoicing outcome bears a relationship to the con-
ditioning environments associated with vowel reduction in the Simple category.
Throughout the four syllable structure complexity categories, devoicing is most
often conditioned by the word or phrase/utterance environment (22/31 devoicing
processes). The higher rate of devoicing in the Simple category is clearly related
to the higher rate of domain-conditioned processes in this category: 6/8 of such
processes are conditioned by word or phrase/utterance environments, and five
of these specify domain-final environments. However, the general motivations
behind the higher rate of domain-conditioned processes in the Simple category
are not entirely clear.<fnref n="4" /> It could be that in languages in which all domains are
necessarily vowel-final, as in the Simple category, domain-final devoicing will

<footnote n="3">³The analysis of tone presented in §5.3 does not consider complexity of tonal systems in number of tone contrasts, nor does it distinguish between “prototypical” and restricted tonal systems. It is possible that there could be a relationship between the presence of tone and absence of vowel reduction when such patterns are considered.</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴Incidentally, the prominence of vowel devoicing processes in the Simple category is consis-
tent with the findings in §4.3.3 that phonation contrasts in vowels most often occur in these
languages (in a sample of just seven languages).</footnote>
## 6 Vowel reduction and syllable structure complexity

emerge as a more prominent pattern than it would in languages that frequently have consonants in domain-final position.

Because most of the vowel reduction processes reported in the sources are not accompanied by instrumental data, it is difficult to comment on the relative extremity of different forms of reduction, such as devoicing or reduction in quality, in comparison to vowel deletion. In an Articulatory Phonology model, processes such as vowel reduction come about through an increase in overlap or decrease in magnitude of articulatory gestures (Browman & Goldstein 1992b). A similar proposal posits that phonetically-conditioned sound change originates in temporal or substantive reduction of gestures (Mowrey & Pagliuca 1995). Both models predict that the cline to vowel deletion would necessarily include reduced vowel length, as a result of overlap of surrounding consonantal gestures into the vowel articulation, a temporal reduction of the vocalic gesture itself, or both. The acoustic findings reported by Chitoran & Babaliyeva (2007) for Lezgian support this: they show that the vowel reduction patterns in that language involve devoicing and decreased vowel duration before eventual deletion. They also show evidence for gestural overlap in that vocalic properties are retained as secondary palatalization or labialization on the preceding vowel.

The findings of the current study indicate that decreased vowel duration occurs as an outcome of vowel reduction in a roughly equal proportion of processes in each syllable structure complexity category. However, the qualitative analysis of the process types in §6.3.6 shows that there are important differences between the categories: while shortening of long vowels occurs in all four categories, shortening of all vowels in specific consonantal or unstressed contexts occurs as a strong pattern only in languages with Complex and Highly Complex syllable structure. Since such processes would have a more detrimental effect on short vowels than long vowels from an articulatory point of view, an argument could be made that these are further examples of relatively extreme vowel reduction in languages with more complex syllable structure.

While there are still unanswered questions regarding particulars of the distribution of vowel reduction properties in the sample, the results of this chapter show that vowel reduction remains relevant, and indeed becomes even more prevalent, as syllable structure complexity increases. Furthermore, the results indicate that though rates of vowel reduction as an effect of stress increase with syllable structure complexity, other sources of vowel reduction are relevant in both the language sample as a whole and in the languages of the Highly Complex category. This suggests that vowel reductive tendencies in general increase with syllable structure complexity. This point will be revisited in Chapter 8, after presenting a brief study of consonant allophony in Chapter 7.
# 7 Consonant allophony

## 7.1 Introduction and hypotheses

In this chapter, I explore ongoing patterns of consonant allophony in the language sample which may shed light on some of the associations between syllable structure complexity and segmental and suprasegmental properties observed in preceding chapters. While the purpose of the study of vowel reduction in Chapter 6 was in part to observe directly the processes which cause syllable patterns to become more complex, the study in this chapter approaches the issue of the development of syllable structure complexity more obliquely.

Recall that in Chapter 4, several segmental correlates of highly complex syllable structure were established. Specifically, palato-alveolar, uvular, ejective, and affricate articulations were found to be most frequent in languages in the Highly Complex category. As discussed in §4.5.4, these articulations are often observed to come about through processes of assimilation (especially of consonants to vowels) and fortition. By contrast, the articulations associated with the Simple category (prenasalization and flaps/taps) are often observed to come about through processes of lenition and sonorization. This observation brings up the question of whether the segmental properties associated with the Highly Complex category, and the sound change processes they imply, precede, follow, or accompany the development of complex syllable patterns in those languages, which are themselves directly caused by vowel reduction.

In §5.4.3, it was found that for languages with word stress, the percentage of languages with unstressed vowel reduction increased with syllable structure complexity, particularly when languages in the Simple category are compared against those of the other three categories. By comparison, the trends in stress-conditioned consonant allophony showed erratic (in the case of unstressed syllables) or level (in the case of stressed syllables) trends with respect to syllable structure complexity. These trends, first shown in Figure 5.2, are reproduced below (Figure 7.1).

As discussed in Chapter 5, the findings with respect to stress-conditioned consonant processes were unexpected, in that it follows from the speech rhythm
## 7 Consonant allophony

<figure><img src="image_47.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.1: Percentage of languages with word stress in each category of syllable structure complexity exhibiting stress-conditioned vowel reduction or consonant processes.</figcaption></figure>

literature and related work (Bybee et al. 1998; Schiering 2007) that segmental effects of stress in general will *increase* with syllable structure complexity. While that was the case with unstressed vowel reduction (see also §6.3.4), it was not so for consonant allophony in stressed or unstressed syllables.

While it proved to be an unexpected result in Chapter 5, the patterns of stress-conditioned consonant allophony may provide valuable information for formulating hypotheses regarding when the segmental properties associated with the Highly Complex category develop in relation to the development of the syllable patterns themselves. If the syllable structure complexity scale represents a diachronic line, then the patterns in Figure 7.1 suggest that in languages with word stress, consonant allophony may be equally as prevalent as vowel reduction in early stages of syllable structure change. This suggests that we might expect to find allophonic processes resulting in the articulations associated with the Highly Complex category more often in languages with simpler syllable structure. As these processes become more prevalent and regular over the history of a language, they may phonologize and become part of the segment inventory of the language, ceasing to be productive. If accompanied or followed by vowel reduction, this diachronic scenario could result in languages with complex syllable structure being more likely to have those specific consonant articulations as contrastive phonemes.

The scenario above is speculative and, moreover, based solely on the findings for stress-conditioned segmental processes discussed in Chapter 5. However, it motivates a hypothesis which is testable in the language sample (1).

(1) As syllable structure complexity decreases, allophonic processes resulting in palato-alveolars, uvulars, ejectives, and affricates will become more prevalent.
This hypothesis predicts that allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with Highly Complex syllable structure will be most prevalent in languages of the Simple category.

As discussed in Chapter 4, the articulations associated with the Highly Complex category typically come about through processes of assimilation of consonants to vowels and fortition. Along the same lines of reasoning that motivate the hypothesis in (1), we might predict assimilatory and strengthening processes in general to be more prevalent in languages with simpler syllable structure. This motivates a second hypothesis (2).

(2) As syllable structure complexity decreases, allophonic processes of assimilation of consonants to vowels and fortition will become more prevalent.

Even if these hypotheses are borne out in the data, they may not support the diachronic scenario described above. After all, the trend in Figure 7.1 shows the percentage of languages with stress-conditioned consonant allophony in general decreasing with syllable structure complexity. The patterns predicted by (1–2), if borne out, must be disambiguated in some way from other patterns of consonant allophony in order to be taken as support for any diachronic path. Therefore I predict that allophonic processes resulting in the articulations associated with the Simple category – prenasalization and flaps/taps – will show a different trend with respect to syllable structure complexity, perhaps remaining level or increasing with syllable structure complexity. Similarly, I predict that allophonic processes resulting in lenition or sonorization more generally will follow a similar pattern, either remaining level or increasing in prominence with increasing syllable structure complexity. Since my predictions for the processes associated with the Simple category are not specific, I do not formulate hypotheses for them here. However, these patterns will be considered in the analyses that follow.

Note that although the hypotheses here are motivated by patterns observed in Chapter 5 for stress-conditioned consonant allophony, the analyses here consider all relevant processes of consonant allophony and not just those conditioned by the stress environment.

# 7.2 Methodology

## 7.2.1 Patterns considered

As with the study of vowel reduction in Chapter 6, only phonetically or phonologically conditioned processes affecting consonants are considered here. I proceed
## 7 Consonant allophony

here with the same disclaimers regarding author biases and judgments about the details and directionality of the processes reported in language references.

In order to test the first hypothesis, allophonic processes resulting in the consonant articulations found to be positively associated with the Highly Complex category were considered. These include *palato-alveolar*, *uvular*, *ejective*, and *affricate* outcomes. The *uvular* category includes articulations described as post-velar or back velar. I did not consider processes producing the articulations found to be associated with the Highly Complex category on the basis of fewer than ten data points; that is, processes resulting in *lateral fricatives*, *lateral affricates*, and *pharyngeals* were not considered. However, there were almost no examples of such processes in the language sample. Alphonic processes resulting in ejectives were also not found in the language sample. Some examples of alphonic processes resulting in articulations associated with Highly Complex syllable structure can be found in (3–5).

(3) Chipaya (*Uru-Chipaya*; Bolivia)

Dental fricative /=~/ is realized as [ʃ] when occurring between high vowels.

/=~i=~/
[=~iʃ~]

‘leather’ (Cerrón-Palomino 2006: 48–49)

(4) Bashkir (*Turkic*; Russia)

Voiceless velar fricative /x/ is optionally realized as post-velar [χ] in
words with only back vowels.

/xafa/
[χafa]

‘worry’ (Poppe 1964: 11)

(5) Semai (*Austroasiatic*; Malaysia)

Voiceless palatal stop /c/ is slightly affricated [c~ç] in syllable onsets.

/maccɔ:t/
[maccɔ̃:t]

‘small’ (Philips 2007: 5)

In order to test the second hypothesis, alphonic processes resulting in consonant assimilation to an adjacent vowel were considered. Only processes conditioned by adjacent vowels which have the effect of causing the consonant to
become more like the vowel in articulatory terms (as denoted by articulatory de-
scriptions or IPA transcriptions) were considered here: e.g. a velar consonant pro-
duced with labialization adjacent to rounded vowels. I limited the processes ex-
amined here to those involving *palatalization*, *labialization*, or *velarization*. The
term *palatalization* here includes any process resulting in a consonant moving
closer to the palatal region, except for those resulting in palato-alveolars, which
are considered in the group of processes described above. This category includes
processes resulting in fronting of velars or uvulars, secondary palatalization, and
the production of palatal consonants. See (6–8) for examples.

(6) Lepcha (*Sino-Tibetan*; Bhutan, India, Nepal)
Velar stops /k g/ are slightly palatalized [k^l g^l] before front vowels /i e/.
/kit/
[k^lit]
'snatch' (Plaisier 2007: 21)

(7) Karok (*isolate*; USA)
Voiceless velar fricative /x/ is labialized [xʷ] after a back (rounded) vowel.
/θuxxaθ/
[θuxʷxʷaθ]
'mother's sister' (Bright 1957: 8)

(8) Lezgian (*Nakh-Daghestanian*; Azerbaijan, Russia)
Lateral approximant /l/ is velarized [l] syllable-finally following a back vowel.
/pʰtul/
[pʰtuł]
'grandchild' (Haspelmath 1993: 35, 37)

Additionally, processes of fortition were considered in addressing the hypoth-
esis in (2). In defining fortition, I follow Bybee (2015b) and Bybee & Easterday
(2019) in considering fortition to be an increase in the magnitude of a gesture.
Here, I apply that definition only to changes in manner of articulation, and in-
clude processes which result in a consonant being produced with greater con-
striction relative to its original articulation (again as denoted by an explicit articu-
latory description or the change in articulation implied by the IPA transcriptions
used). Though gemination and consonant lengthening are commonly described
as fortition and involve an increase in the duration of gestures, I have excluded
them from the present analysis because the segmental analyses in Chapter 4 did
## 7 Consonant allophony

not consider consonant length. The processes here fall into two categories: *glide strengthening*, in which a glide becomes more constricted in its articulation, and other *increased constriction*, in which any other kind of consonant becomes more constricted in its articulation. While I did not include processes involving the total assimilation of a consonant to an adjacent consonant, other kinds of increases in constriction which involved consonantal conditioning were included. However, this was a minor conditioning environment in comparison to vocalic and domain environments. See (9–11) for examples.

(9) Cocama-Cocamilla (*Tupian*; Peru)
Palatal approximant /j/ is optionally realized as voiced alveolar fricative [z] intervocalically.
/xa/ /pijaki/
[pizaki]
‘toucan’ (Vallejos Yopán 2010: 99–100)

(10) East Kewa (*Nuclear Trans New Guinea*; Papua New Guinea)
Velar and labial fricatives /x/ /f/ occur as affricates utterance-initially.
/xaa/ [kxa]
‘smell’ (Franklin & Franklin 1978: 24)

(11) Albanian (*Indo-European*; Albania, Serbia, Montenegro)
Fricatives /f/ /v/ /θ/ /ð/ have occasional stop allophones word-finally and before consonants.
/kaffon/ [kapʃon]
‘it bites’ (Newmark 1957: 16)

The processes resulting in the consonant articulations strongly associated with the Simple category which are considered here include *prenasalization* and *flap/-tap consonants*. See (12–13) for examples of the processes collected.

(12) Darai (*Indo-European*; Nepal)
Intervocalically, voiced bilabial stop /b/ may be realized as [mb].
/kabo/ [kambo]
‘house post’ (Kotapish & Kotapish 1973: 27)
(13) Kadiwéu (Guaicuruan; Brazil)

The voiced alveolar stop /d/ is realized as a tap [r] intervocalically in
rapid speech.

/dʒitʃiditike/
[dʒitʃiritike]

‘I swing it’ (Sandalo 1997: 16)

Finally, I considered several specific types of lenition in this study. I take leni-
tion to be an articulatory weakening; that is, a decrease in the magnitude or dura-
tion of a gesture (Browman & Goldstein 1992b; Mowrey & Pagliuca 1995; Bybee
& Easterday 2019). The processes considered here are prototypical types of leni-
tion or sonorization, processes in which a consonant becomes more vowel-like
in its articulation: *obstruent voicing, spirantization of stops/affricates, debuccaliza-
tion*, and *consonants becoming glides or vowels*. Spirantization is defined here as
any process which involves a stop or affricate becoming a fricative. Debuccaliza-
tion involves the loss of the oral constriction of a consonant. Examples of such
processes are given in (14–17).

(14) Mohawk (Iroquoian; Canada, USA)

Alveolar fricative /s/ is voiced word-initially preceding a vowel and intervocalically.

/onisela/
[onizela]

‘shelf’ (Bonvillain 1973: 30–31)

(15) Pech (Chibchan; Honduras)

Voiced bilabial stop /b/ is realized as fricative [β] intervocalically.

/tibiebiska/
[tiβieβiska]

‘type of grass’ (Holt 1999: 16)

(16) Towa (Kiowa-Tanoan; USA)

A voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ is realized as a glottal [h]
syllable-initially in a syllable carrying low tone, especially among
younger speakers.

/sõ/
[hõ]

pronominal prefix (Yumitani 1998: 13)
## 7 Consonant allophony

### (17) Gaam (Eastern Jebel; Sudan)

Voiced stops /b j/ are weakened to approximants intervocalically.

/kajan/

[kajan]

'bring-3.SG.NOMCONT.P' (Stirtz 2011: 24–25)

As with the vowel reduction study in Chapter 6, patterns of consonant allophony were considered to be one process if a sound or group of sounds was affected in the same way in the same conditioning environment. Patterns which were similar but differed along any of those parameters were coded as separate processes.

### 7.2.2 Coding

The types of consonant allophony examined here are to varying extents defined by what sounds are affected and how. For this reason, the conditioning environment is the only aspect of the processes coded in detail. Conditioning environments were coded for the presence of four factors: segmental environment, stress environment, domain (word/phrase/utterance) environment, and free variation.

## 7.3 Results

### 7.3.1 Distribution of processes in the language sample

In total, 288 allophonic processes fitting the descriptions of the process types given in §7.2 were collected and analyzed. Table 7.1 shows how these processes are distributed in the language sample.

<table><caption>Table 7.1: Distribution of allophonic consonant processes considered in the current study among categories of syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>24 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>26 lgs.</th><th>C<br>25 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>25 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><i>N</i> languages with process types considered here</td><td>18</td><td>22</td><td>22</td><td>24</td></tr><tr><td><i>N</i> processes collected</td><td>69</td><td>77</td><td>84</td><td>58</td></tr><tr><td>ratio processes/lg</td><td>3.8</td><td>3.5</td><td>3.8</td><td>2.4</td></tr></tbody></table>
Most of the languages in the sample (86/100) had at least one of the process types examined here. The proportion of languages reported to have these specific processes increases with syllable structure complexity, contrary to the pattern established for stress-conditioned consonant allophony in Chapter 5 and shown in Figure 7.1. However, we can also see from the table that languages in the Simple, Moderately Complex, and Complex categories have more processes per language than those in the Highly Complex category. Below I present several analyses in order to directly address the hypotheses in (1) and (2) regarding the rates of allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with the Highly Complex category, and assimilation and fortition more generally.

As a first test of these hypotheses, in Figure 7.2 I show the percentage of languages in each category of syllable structure complexity which have allophonic processes resulting in (i) articulations associated with the Highly Complex category (palato-alveolar, uvular/back velar, ejective, affricate), (ii) other assimilation of consonants to vowels (palatalization/fronting, labialization, and velarization), and (iii) fortition (glide strengthening or increased constriction).

<figure><img src="image_48.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.2: Percentage of languages in each category which have allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with the Highly Complex category, fortition, or other assimilation of consonants to vowels.</figcaption></figure>

The pattern in the figure shows support for the hypothesis in (1): as syllable structure complexity increases, the percentage of languages with allophonic processes resulting in the articulations associated with Highly Complex syllable structure moderately decreases. There is only mixed support for the hypothesis in (2). While the percentage of languages with allophonic fortition processes slightly decreases with increasing syllable structure complexity, the trend in assimilation processes is level.

As discussed above, additional support for the hypotheses may be found if allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with the Simple category
gory, and processes of lenition or sonorization more generally, exhibit a different pattern altogether with respect to syllable structure complexity. In Figure 7.3, I show the percentage of languages in each category of syllable structure complexity which have consonant allophony resulting in (i) articulations associated with the Simple category (prenasalization and flapping), and (ii) lenition or sonorization (obstruent voicing, spirantization, debuccalization, and consonants becoming glides or vowels).

<figure><img src="image_49.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.3: Percentage of languages in each category which have allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with the Simple category or lenition/sonorization.</figcaption></figure>

Although the lenition/sonorization pattern shows an overall increase, neither of the trends in Figure 7.3 shows a linear trend with respect to syllable structure complexity. But since the patterns differ markedly from the trend for Highly Complex-associated articulations in Figure 7.2, they can be taken as lending some tentative support to the hypotheses.

The analyses thus far have only considered the presence of processes within languages, and not the individual processes themselves. In the following figures, I show how the process types pattern in terms of the percentage of the total number of allophonic processes they represent in each syllable structure complexity category.

The analysis in Figure 7.4 shows that allophonic processes yielding articulations associated with Highly Complex syllable structure are more prevalent in languages with Simple syllable structure than the others. The trends with respect to fortition and assimilation, however, show little variation with respect to syllable structure complexity (note that the figure is scaled from 0–50%).

Examining the processes resulting in articulations associated with the Simple category (Figure 7.5), we find that these are infrequent in all four syllable structure complexity categories. Processes of lenition or sonorization are more
<figure><img src="image_50.png" /></figure>

Figure 7.4: Percentage of processes in each category which result in articulations associated with the Highly Complex category, fortition, or other assimilation of consonants to vowels.

<figure><img src="image_51.png" /></figure>

Figure 7.5: Percentage of processes in each category which result in articulations associated with the Simple category or lenition/sonorization.

frequent in general, and also increase in frequency with syllable structure complexity.

In sum, the analyses in this section show that allophonic processes producing articulations associated with the segmental inventories of languages with Highly Complex syllable structure are most frequent in languages from the Simple category. Fortition shows a similar but less robust pattern, particularly when the presence or absence of processes is considered. Processes of lenition or sonorization are most frequent in the Complex and Highly Complex categories. Finally, assimilation of consonants to vowels and processes producing articulations associated with the segmental inventories of languages in the Simple categories do not show robust trends with respect to syllable structure complexity.

While the results in this section provide some direct support for the first hypothesis (1) and some mixed support for the second hypothesis (2), they are based on very abstract, general analyses of process types. In the following sections, each process type will be examined in more fine-grained detail.
7.3.2 Processes resulting in articulations associated with the Highly Complex category

In this section, I examine allophonic processes in the language sample which result in the articulations most strongly associated with the Highly Complex category: palato-alveolar, uvular, and affricate. Recall that no allophonic processes resulting in ejective articulations were found in the language sample.

In Figure 7.6, I plot the percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity category which have processes resulting in palato-alveolar, uvular, or affricate articulations.

<figure><img src="image_52.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.6: Percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity category with allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with the Highly Complex category.</figcaption></figure>

We find that the percentage of languages with processes resulting in affricates is much higher for languages in the Simple category than the other three, although this trend is not linear. The trend in processes resulting in palato-alveolar articulations shows a moderate but steady decrease with syllable structure complexity. Processes producing uvulars are generally infrequent, occurring in only seven languages in the sample, and this trend is different from the others, peaking in the Complex category. Thus it would seem that the processes producing palato-alveolars and affricates drive the trend by which this group of processes is found more frequently in languages with simpler syllable structure.

In Table 7.2, I examine the conditioning environments for the processes resulting in palato-alveolars, uvulars, and affricates. In order to simplify the presentation, I do not break the processes down by syllable structure complexity.

We see that segmental factors are by far the strongest conditioning environment for this group of processes. An examination of the specific segmental conditioning environments reveals they are almost always vocalic, suggesting a high
<table><caption>Table 7.2: Conditioning environments for allophonic processes producing palato-alveolars, uvulars, and affricates. A process may have more than one conditioning environment. The total figures for the entire group reflect the fact that several processes have palato-alveolar affricate outcomes.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Conditioning environment</th><th colspan="4">Allophonic processes yielding:</th></tr><tr><th>Palato-alveolar 32 lgs.</th><th>Uvular 9 lgs.</th><th>Affricate 36 lgs.</th><th>Total for group 57 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Segmental</td><td>26 (81%)</td><td>9 (100%)</td><td>17 (47%)</td><td>46 (81%)</td></tr><tr><td>Domain</td><td>4 (13%)</td><td>-</td><td>6 (17%)</td><td>7 (12%)</td></tr><tr><td>Stress</td><td>2 (6%)</td><td>-</td><td>6 (17%)</td><td>6 (11%)</td></tr><tr><td>Free variation</td><td>3 (9%)</td><td>-</td><td>11 (31%)</td><td>13 (23%)</td></tr></tbody></table>

degree of assimilation of consonants to vowels. In particular, processes resulting in palato-alveolar and affricate outcomes are typically conditioned by high and/or front vowels, while those with uvular outcomes are typically conditioned by low and/or back vowels. What additionally sets the processes producing palato-alveolar and affricate articulations apart from those producing uvular articulations is a greater variety of conditioning environments in the former two groups. In the group of processes which produce affricates, the effect of the segmental environment is somewhat weaker, while stress and free variation play a stronger role.

### 7.3.3 Other processes resulting in assimilation of consonants to vowels

Here, I examine more closely the allophonic processes resulting in palatalization, labialization, and velarization in the sample. In Figure 7.7, I show the percentage of languages in each category which have such processes.

Recall that in the analyses shown in Figures 7.2 and 7.4, the assimilation processes did not show the expected trend with respect to syllable structure complexity; that is, these processes were not more prevalent in languages with simpler syllable structure. Here we find that labialization and velarization, besides being relatively infrequent in the language sample, do not show any strong patterns with respect to syllable structure complexity. On the other hand, the palatalization trend in Figure 7.7 is similar to the one in Figure 7.6 for palato-alveolars. This is unsurprising, given that these are very similar process types.
## 7 Consonant allophony

<figure><img src="image_53.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.7: Percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity category with allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with assimilation of consonants to vowels.</figcaption></figure>

In Table 7.3, I show the conditioning patterns for these process types. Again, in order to simplify the presentation, I do not break down the processes by syllable structure complexity.

<table><caption>Table 7.3: Conditioning environments for allophonic processes resulting in palatalization, labialization, and velarization. A process may have more than one conditioning environment.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="3">Conditioning environment</th><th colspan="4">Allophonic processes yielding:</th></tr><tr><th>Palatalization</th><th>Labialization</th><th>Velarization</th><th>Total for group</th></tr><tr><th>25 lgs.</th><th>11 lgs.</th><th>3 lgs.</th><th>39 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Segmental</td><td>25 (100%)</td><td>11 (100%)</td><td>3 (100%)</td><td>39 (100%)</td></tr><tr><td>Domain</td><td>2 (8%)</td><td>1 (9%)</td><td>1 (33%)</td><td>4 (10%)</td></tr><tr><td>Stress</td><td>3 (12%)</td><td>1 (9%)</td><td>-</td><td>4 (10%)</td></tr><tr><td>Free variation</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody></table>

Because of how these processes have been defined (as particular types of assimilation of consonants to vowels), all have segmental conditioning. Unsurprisingly, palatalization is typically conditioned by high and/or front vowels, labialization by rounded vowels, and velarization by back vowels. Additionally, the domain and stress environments play very minor roles in conditioning these processes (the latter being stronger in palatalization processes).
### 7.3.4 Other processes resulting in fortition

Here, I examine processes resulting in glide strengthening and other increased constriction. The percentage of languages having these process types in each syllable structure category is given in Figure 7.8.

<figure><img src="image_54.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.8: Percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity category with allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with strengthening.</figcaption></figure>

Recall from the trends in Figures 7.2 and 7.4 that the prevalence of fortition processes in general was found to slightly decrease with syllable structure complexity. Judging from the pattern in Figure 7.8, it would appear that the trend was driven by the other increased constriction processes rather than by glide strengthening.

In Table 7.4, I show how the fortition processes pattern with respect to conditioning environments.

<table><caption>Table 7.4: Conditioning environments for allophonic processes resulting in glide strengthening and other increased constriction. A process may have more than one conditioning environment.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Conditioning environment</th><th colspan="3">Allophonic processes yielding</th></tr><tr><th>Glide strengthening 30 lgs.</th><th>Other increased constriction 34 lgs.</th><th>Total for group 63 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Segmental</td><td>17 (57%)</td><td>20 (59%)</td><td>37 (59%)</td></tr><tr><td>Domain</td><td>13 (43%)</td><td>12 (35%)</td><td>25 (40%)</td></tr><tr><td>Stress</td><td>6 (20%)</td><td>-</td><td>6 (10%)</td></tr><tr><td>Free variation</td><td>3 (10%)</td><td>7 (21%)</td><td>10 (16%)</td></tr></tbody></table>
## 7 Consonant allophony

We find a very different pattern in this group of processes than in the previous groups examined. While the segmental environment, and particularly a high and/or front vowel, is still the strongest conditioning factor for both process types, the domain environment is involved in conditioning 40% of the processes. Examining the specific environments, this is most often word-initial or syllable-initial position. Stress is only a conditioning factor for glide strengthening processes.

### 7.3.5 Processes resulting in articulations associated with the Simple category

The percentage of languages in each category which have allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with the Simple category – flaps/taps or pre-nasalization – can be found in Figure 7.9.

<figure><img src="image_55.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.9: Percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity category with allophonic processes resulting in articulations associated with lower syllable complexity.</figcaption></figure>

Recall from the analysis in Figure 7.5 that this group of processes showed an erratic pattern with respect to syllable structure complexity. The pattern here which most closely resembles the one for the group of processes as a whole is the flap/tap process type. There were only two languages with processes resulting in prenasalization in the entire sample.

In Table 7.5, I show how these processes pattern with respect to conditioning environments.

The segmental environment is the strongest conditioning factor in this group of processes. In particular, the intervocalic environment conditions most of the processes producing flaps/taps (14/18 processes with segmental conditioning). There is also a secondary effect of domain environment for both types. In these
<table><caption>Table 7.5: Conditioning environments for allophonic processes resulting in prenasalization and flaps/taps. A process may have more than one conditioning environment.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="3">Conditioning environment</th><th colspan="3">Allophonic processes yielding</th></tr><tr><th>Flap/tap</th><th>Prenasalization</th><th>Total for group</th></tr><tr><th>2 lgs.</th><th>25 lgs.</th><th>27 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Segmental</td><td>18 (72%)</td><td>2 (100%)</td><td>20 (74%)</td></tr><tr><td>Domain</td><td>5 (20%)</td><td>1 (50%)</td><td>6 (22%)</td></tr><tr><td>Stress</td><td>2 (8%)</td><td>-</td><td>2 (7%)</td></tr><tr><td>Free variation</td><td>3 (12%)</td><td>-</td><td>3 (11%)</td></tr></tbody></table>

cases, the environment is nearly always word-medial or word-final. Additionally, the two flap/tap processes conditioned by stress occur specifically in unstressed environments.

### 7.3.6 Other processes resulting in lenition or sonorization

Other processes resulting in lenition or sonorization, specifically those with outcomes of obstruent voicing, spirantization, debuccalization, or consonants becoming glides or vowels, are examined here. See Figure 7.10 for the percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity category which have such processes.

<figure><img src="image_56.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.10: Percentage of languages in each syllable structure complexity category with allophonic processes resulting in lenition or sonorization.</figcaption></figure>
## 7 Consonant allophony

Recall that lenition/sonorization processes as a group did not show a coherent trend with respect to syllable structure complexity in Figures 7.3 and 7.5. In the analysis here, we find that both obstruent voicing and spirantization processes show generally rising, although not linear, trends. These two patterns are strikingly similar to one another. Interestingly, in the sample there is very little overlap in the processes themselves (i.e. processes which have outcomes of both spirantization and obstruent voicing), and only a third of the languages with either of these processes have both of them.

Processes by which a consonant becomes a glide or vowel do not show a strong trend with respect to syllable structure complexity. Debuccalization is relatively rare in the sample and also does not have a strong pattern with respect to syllable structure complexity.

The conditioning environments for the various lenition and sonorization processes can be found in Table 7.6.

<table><caption>Table 7.6: Conditioning environments for allophonic processes resulting in spirantization, debuccalization, and consonants becoming glides or vowels.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Conditioning environment</th><th colspan="5">Allophonic processes yielding</th></tr><tr><th>Obstruent voicing 42 lgs.</th><th>Spirantization 39 lgs.</th><th>Debuccalization 8 lgs.</th><th>C > glide, V 23 lgs.</th><th>Total for group 111 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Segmental</td><td>33 (79%)</td><td>25 (64%)</td><td>2 (25%)</td><td>18 (78%)</td><td>77 (69%)</td></tr><tr><td>Domain</td><td>7 (17%)</td><td>6 (15%)</td><td>3 (38%)</td><td>5 (22%)</td><td>21 (19%)</td></tr><tr><td>Stress</td><td>6 (14%)</td><td>1 (3%)</td><td>1 (13%)</td><td>—</td><td>8 (7%)</td></tr><tr><td>Free variation</td><td>2 (5%)</td><td>9 (23%)</td><td>2 (25%)</td><td>1 (4%)</td><td>14 (13%)</td></tr></tbody></table>

The segmental environment is the strongest conditioning factor for obstruent voicing, spirantization, and consonants becoming glides or vowels. The intervo- calic environment is particularly strong for spirantization, where it conditions 17/25 processes with segmental conditioning. As was also the case for the processes in §7.3.5, domain environments, typically syllable- or word-final position, are relatively prominent conditioning environments for this group of processes. In fact, for debuccalization processes, the domain environment is the most common conditioning factor.

In the following section I summarize the trends found for individual process types as they relate to syllable structure complexity.
7.3.7 Summary of results

The analyses in §7.3.2–7.3.6 indicate that there are some associations between the allophonic processes examined here and syllable structure complexity. I list these associations, and prominent conditioning environments that were identified, in Table 7.7 below. I exclude processes resulting in uvulars, velarization, prenasalization, and debuccalization, as these occurred infrequently in the sample (in ten or fewer languages). Recall that for most process types, the segmental environment was the most important conditioning factor. If a process type has another prominent factor conditioning 20% of processes or more, I list that environment in the third column of the table.

There are four process types which become more prevalent in the languages of the sample as syllable structure complexity decreases. Two of these process types have outcomes which result in articulations associated with the segmental inventories of languages in the Highly Complex category: *palato-alveolars* and *af- fricates*. The other two process types – those resulting in *palatalization* and *other increased constriction* – are forms of assimilation of consonants to vowels and fortition, respectively. These kinds of sound changes are known to be common sources of the Highly Complex-associated articulations, as discussed in §4.5.4. Thus we find that all of the frequent process types examined here which are more prevalent in languages with simpler syllable structure have outcomes which are associated in some way with segmental properties of highly complex syllable structure. This finding is in line with the hypotheses of this chapter. However, within those three larger groups of processes, there are also two frequent process types which do not show a trend with respect to syllable structure complexity: *labialization* and *glide strengthening*. Thus the pattern is not universal.

There are two frequent process types which show increasing trends with syl-
lable structure complexity: *obstruent voicing* and *spirantization*. Neither of these
process types, strictly speaking, produces articulations associated with segmen-
tal inventories of the Simple category. However, they are both forms of lenition
or sonorization, a family of sound changes relevant to the development of flap-
s/taps and prenasalized consonants.<fnref n="1" /> The only frequent process type producing
Simple-associated articulations, *flaps/taps*, does not show a trend with respect
to syllable structure complexity, nor do processes by which consonants become
*glides or vowels*. These results lend some further support to the hypothesis, as
they show that there are different distributions of allophonic outcomes associ-

<footnote n="1">¹As noted in §4.5.3.1, the relatively rare process of prenasalization may itself sometimes be a strategy for maintaining voicing in obstruent consonants.</footnote>
<table><caption>Table 7.7: Associations between allophonic processes, syllable structure complexity, and prominent non-segmental conditioning environments.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Outcome of process</th><th>Frequency with respect to syllable structure complexity</th><th>Prominent non-segmental conditioning environments</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>HC-associated articulations</td><td>Palato-alveolar<br>Affricate</td><td>decreasing<br>decreasing</td><td>–<br>free variation</td></tr><tr><td>Assimilation of C to V</td><td>Palatalization<br>Labialization</td><td>decreasing<br>(none)</td><td>–<br>–</td></tr><tr><td>Fortition</td><td>Glide strengthening<br>Other increased<br>constriction</td><td>(none)<br>decreasing</td><td>domain-initial, stress<br>domain-initial, free<br>variation</td></tr><tr><td>S-associated articulations</td><td>Flap/tap</td><td>(none)</td><td>domain-medial or -final</td></tr><tr><td>Lenition and sonorization</td><td>Obstruent voicing<br>Spirantization<br>Consonant &gt; vowel or glide</td><td>increasing<br>increasing<br>(none)</td><td>–<br>free variation<br>domain-final</td></tr></tbody></table>
ated with segmental properties of the Highly Complex category on the one hand and the Simple category on the other.

There are also some associations in the data between process types and sec-
ondary conditioning environments. As shown in the previous sections, most of
the process types are primarily conditioned by segmental environments. How-
ever, there are some interesting patterns with respect to the secondary con-
ditioning factors. For processes producing Highly Complex-associated articula-
tions, assimilation of consonants to vowels, and fortition, other prevalent con-
ditioning environments include domain-initial position (for *glide strengthening* and *other increased constriction*), free variation (for *affrication* and *other increased constriction*), and stress (for *glide strengthening*). For processes producing Simple-
associated articulations and lenition or sonorization, other prevalent condition-
ing factors include domain-medial or -final position (for *flap/tap* and *consonants becoming glides or vowels*) and free variation (for *spirantization*).

The major divide in process types is accompanied by differences in condition-
ing factors. However, these non-segmental conditioning factors are frequent for
only three of the process types that show a strong trend with respect to sylla-
ble structure complexity: other increased constriction, affrication, and spiranti-
zation, and for the latter two the prevalent secondary conditioning factor is free
variation. Thus, it is difficult to relate these conditioning results directly to sylla-
ble structure complexity.

As the previous analyses show, stress is not a strong conditioning factor for
the allophonic processes examined here. In fact, it is prevalent for only one pro-
cess type, glide strengthening. This is very different from the results obtained in
Chapter 6 for vowel reduction. To illustrate, in Figure 7.11, I show the percentage
of allophonic consonant processes in each syllable structure complexity category
which are conditioned by stress.

<figure><img src="image_57.png" /><figcaption>Figure 7.11: Percentage of languages with consonant allophony process
types examined here conditioned by word stress.</figcaption></figure>
## 7 Consonant allophony

Note that the pattern in Figure 7.11 is subtler than the analogous one in Figure 7.1 (also that the scale has been reduced to 0–40% for Figure 7.11). That is because the pattern in Figure 7.1 includes languages with *any* reported processes of stress-conditioned consonant allophony in the sample, including the very common processes of aspiration and consonant lengthening. The consonant processes considered here are limited to those relevant to the hypotheses, and stress is evidently not a strong conditioning environment for them.

In Table 7.8, I show the number of processes conditioned by stress in each category, and the number of languages with stress-conditioned processes. In the bottom row I give the ratio of processes to languages.

<table><caption>Table 7.8: Ratio of number of stress-conditioned vowel reduction processes to the number of languages with unstressed vowel reduction in each category of syllable structure complexity.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2"></th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S</th><th>MC</th><th>C</th><th>HC</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td><i>N</i> allophonic C processes conditioned by stress</td><td>10</td><td>4</td><td>9</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td><i>N</i> lgs. with allophonic C processes conditioned by stress ratio</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>6</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>2.5</td><td>2</td><td>1.5</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>

Within the small set of languages with stress-conditioned consonant processes of the types examined here, the average number of such processes per language decreases with syllable structure complexity. That is, stress conditions more consonant processes in languages with simpler syllable structure. This result is essentially a reversal of the pattern found in §6.3.4 for stress-conditioned vowel reduction. In that analysis, it was found that in languages with unstressed vowel reduction, the average number of such processes increased with syllable structure complexity.

In Table 7.9, I show the distribution of stress-conditioned processes by process type and syllable structure complexity. Note that processes producing uvulars, velarization, prenasalization, and glides or vowels from consonants were not reported to be conditioned by stress in the sample.

Besides having more stress-conditioned consonant processes per language, the Simple category is also associated with the greatest diversity in outcomes from such processes. For example, in Pinotepa Mixtec stress-conditioned consonant
allophony results in palato-alveolar affricates, glide strengthening, and obstruent voicing.

<table><caption>Table 7.9: Processes of consonant allophony conditioned by stress. Some processes have several outcomes (e.g. palato-alveolar and affricate).</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Process type</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>10 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>4 lgs.</th><th>C<br>9 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>1 lg.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Affrication</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Palato-alveolar</td><td>2</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Palatalization</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Labialization</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Glide strengthening</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>3</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Other increased constriction</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Voiced obstruent</td><td>2</td><td>-</td><td>3</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Flap/tap</td><td>-</td><td>1</td><td>1</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Spirantization</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Debuccalization</td><td>1</td><td>-</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 7.4 Discussion

In §7.1, two hypotheses were formulated regarding expected patterns of consonant allophony in the sample. Following from observations of stress-conditioned consonant allophony in Chapter 5, it was thought that the articulations found to be associated with the segmental inventories of languages in the Highly Complex category in Chapter 4 might have their origin in allophonic processes at some earlier stage in the languages, perhaps even before the complex syllable patterns developed. It was therefore hypothesized that allophonic processes resulting in these articulations, or associated sound changes such as assimilation of consonants to vowels and fortition, would be most prevalent in languages with simpler syllable structures. By contrast, it was expected that allophonic processes producing articulations established in Chapter 4 to be associated with Simple syllable structure, and other kinds of lenition or sonorization, would show a different trend, perhaps increasing in prevalence with syllable structure complexity or remaining constant across the categories.
The results here point to some support for the hypotheses, but also a more
complex situation than what was predicted. Four of the nine process types ex-
amined here which have outcomes of Highly Complex-associated articulations,
general assimilation of consonants to vowels, or fortition were found to have
the predicted pattern. Two had trends with no apparent relationship to syllable
structure complexity, and three were either very infrequent or unattested in the
language sample. Of the six process types with outcomes of Simple-associated
articulations, lenition, or sonorization, two had increasing trends with syllable
structure complexity, two had trends with no apparent relationship to syllable
structure complexity, and two were infrequent in the language sample.

Loose associations between conditioning environments and the patterns ob-
served lend further support to the hypotheses by indicating that these patterns
may not be random, but instead have coherent motivations. High and/or front
vowels, domain-initial environments, and in one case stress, are relevant con-
ditioning factors for processes resulting in Highly Complex-associated articula-
tions and related sound changes. Intervocalic, domain-medial, and domain-final
environments are important in conditioning processes resulting in Simple-asso-
ciated articulations and related sound changes.

I discuss some possible diachronic implications of these patterns in the follow-
ing section.

7.4.1 Consonant allophony and the development of syllable structure complexity

In §7.1, it was stated that if the hypotheses regarding consonant allophony were
borne out in the data, this might illuminate elements of the diachronic path by
which highly complex syllable structure develops. Specifically, it was thought
that comparing these patterns against the vowel reduction patterns established in
Chapter 6 might reveal information about the relative order of certain processes
of change in the development of this language type.

The results reveal a greater prevalence of some process types associated with
the segmental properties of the Highly Complex category as syllable structure
complexity decreases. Palato-alveolars, affricates, palatalization, and increased
constriction are most commonly outcomes of allophonic processes in languages
of the Simple category. If we liberally assume that all of these allophonic pro-
cesses are heading towards phonemicization and that all of these languages are
heading towards higher syllable complexity, that would indicate that some of
the articulations associated with the Highly Complex category may start to de-
velop quite some time before complex syllable patterns develop out of vowel dele-
tion. An additional scenario is suggested by the opposing patterns with respect
to prevalence of stress-conditioned consonant allophony and stress-conditioned vowel reduction. Stress conditions more consonant processes in languages with simpler syllable structure and more vowel reduction processes in languages with complex syllable structure. If syllable structure complexity is a diachroniccline, the stress-conditioned patterns could indicate that in early processes of sylla- ble structure change, stress has stronger effects on consonants than on vowels. Additionally, both of these scenarios could suggest that the processes affecting consonants develop concurrently with the initial stages of vowel reduction in languages. In this scenario, we might expect a large amount of overlap between languages with the relevant consonant allophony and languages with phonetic vowel reduction.

I tested this scenario in the current language sample. Table 7.10 shows the lan- guages in the Simple category reported to have vowel reduction cross-tabulated against those reported to have consonant processes producing the relevant ar- ticulations (that is, those found here to bear a relationship to syllable structure complexity: palato-alveolars, affricates, palatalization, and other increased con- striction). Table 7.11 shows the same analysis for stress-conditioned processes only.

<table><caption>Table 7.10: Languages of Simple category, distributed according to presence or absence of vowel reduction processes and consonant allophony resulting in palato-alveolars, affricates, palatalization, or increased con- striction.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">V reduction processes</th><th colspan="2">Relevant C allophony</th></tr><tr><th>Present</th><th>Absent</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Present</th><td>12</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><th>Absent</th><td>5</td><td>4</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>Table 7.11: Languages of Simple category with word stress, distributed according to presence or absence of stress-conditioned vowel reduc- tion processes and consonant allophony resulting in palato-alveolars, affricates, palatalization, or increased constriction.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Stress-conditioned V reduction processes</th><th colspan="2">Stress-conditioned relevant C allophony</th></tr><tr><th>Present</th><th>Absent</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Present</th><td>2</td><td>5</td></tr><tr><th>Absent</th><td>1</td><td>10</td></tr></tbody></table>
Of the two analyses, the pattern in Table 7.10 comes closer to approximating the relationship we would expect if syllable structure-changing vowel reduction develops concurrently with consonant allophony producing Highly Complex-associated articulations. Though the presence of vowel reduction tends to imply the presence of the relevant consonant processes (12/15 languages with vowel reduction) and vice versa (12/17 languages with consonant allophony), the pattern in the small data set in Table 7.10 is not statistically significant in Fisher's exact test. Because the number of languages with stress-conditioned processes is so small in the Simple category (occurring in only 8/18 languages with word stress), it is difficult to determine whether stress has stronger effects on consonants or vowels. However, the pattern in Table 7.11 shows that for the processes targeted here, stress is more likely to condition vowel reduction than consonant allophony. Thus there is not strong evidence for a scenario by which stress-conditioned vowel reduction is preceded by stress-conditioned consonant allophony in the early stages of syllable structure change.

Of course, the above scenario is grossly overgeneralized. We should not expect all processes resulting in specific kinds of consonant allophony to be part of a larger process of syllable structure change in a language, least of all processes of palatalization and affrication, which are extremely prevalent crosslinguistically (Bhat 1978; Bateman 2007). Furthermore, the analyses above indicate that stress is a much less relevant conditioning factor for the consonant processes under examination here than it is for vowel reduction (and recall from the discussion in §6.4.2 that the role of stress in vowel reduction is not universal). Nevertheless, the tendencies in the data with respect to these processes, and the differences between their distributions and distributions of prototypical lenition and sonorization processes, make it tempting to draw connections between consonant allophony and syllable structure complexity. Even if the relationship is entirely coincidental, it is very interesting that the group of processes which are more prevalent at the simpler end of the syllable structure complexity scale tend to result in some of the segmental articulations associated with more complex syllable structure.

Two of the frequent process types resulting in Simple-associated articulations and lenition/sonorization show a rising trend with respect to syllable structure complexity, while two others show no clear trend. An interesting question is why the outcomes of such processes – in particular, prenasalization and flapping – correspond to segmental contrasts more often in languages with simpler syllable structure. One clue to this could be in the conditioning environments. Intervocalic conditioning environments were found almost exclusively in processes of these types. Again, in an oversimplified scenario, this may indicate that such patterns, though prevalent in all categories, are more likely to phonologize
in languages in which intervocalic environments are more consistently present,
as they would be in languages with simpler syllable structure.

While the analyses in this chapter do not contribute any definitive results di-
rectly linking consonant allophony to the development of highly complex syl-
lable structure, they perhaps provide a few helpful clues. These results will be
revisited in the next chapter, in which the results of the studies in Chapters 3-7
are summarized and given a diachronic interpretation.
<figure><img src="image_58.png" /></figure>
# 8 Highly complex syllable structure: Characteristics, development, and stability

## 8.1 Introduction

In this chapter, I consider the findings from the studies in preceding chapters and discuss how they address the broad research questions of the book. In §8.3 I revisit the first research question, summarizing the evidence for establishing highly complex syllable structure as a linguistic type and discussing how it relates to other holistic language types proposed in the literature. In §8.4, I return to the second research question and discuss how the various findings inform our understanding of the directionality, tendencies, and mechanisms behind the development of highly complex syllable structure, specifically, and syllable complexity, more generally. In §8.5 I discuss patterns which suggest that highly complex syllable structure may have long-term stability within languages and language families. Finally, in §8.6 I suggest some areas for further research.

Before I move on to those discussions, I present one more brief analysis of the data. A few of the previous analyses dealt with the issue of morphology and syllable complexity. In §3.3.6, the morphological composition of maximal cluster shapes and syllabic consonants was analyzed. It was found that as syllable structure complexity increases, so does the likelihood that the maximal onset and coda patterns of a language display heteromorphemic patterns. Similarly, within most of the syllable structure complexity categories, as syllable structure complexity increases, so does the likelihood that syllabic consonants can be found in grammatical morphemes. While the scope of the book does not allow for a detailed investigation of morphological issues, I present one further analysis in §8.2 to contribute to our understanding of the role of morphology in the development of highly complex syllable structure and its definition as a language type.
8.2 Syllable structure complexity and morphology

In §1.4.2, several holistic typologies of language were discussed in which syl-
lable structure complexity is proposed to co-occur with specific morphological
properties. Two of the language types proposed by Skalička (1979), agglutina-
tion and introflection, are supposed to have complex consonant clusters. In the
case of one of these, agglutination, it is proposed that languages will have a high
amount of verbal inflection and more than one inflectional affix per word. How-
ever, Skalička's typology is largely impressionistic and, besides the latter speci-
fication, does not provide a method for quantifying the degree of agglutination.
Shosted (2006) considers correlations between the potential number of distinct
syllable types in a language and inflectional synthesis of the verb. The latter prop-
erty is defined, following Bickel & Nichols (2005), as the number of grammatical
categories marked on the maximally inflected verb form. Though Shosted's re-
sults were statistically insignificant, the relationship between the two properties
was found to be slightly positive among the 32 languages of his sample. These
results, along with Skalička's proposal and the findings in §3.3.6 regarding mor-
phological patterns of clusters and syllabic consonants, prompt me to investigate
the relationship between syllable structure complexity and the degree of synthe-
sis in the language sample.

In morphological typology, synthesis refers to the relative number of mor-
phemes per word in a language. In the morphological typology proposed by
Sapir (1921), the term synthetic refers to languages with a few morphemes per
word, setting this type apart from analytic and polysynthetic languages, which
have one morpheme per word and many morphemes per word, respectively. Not-
ing the impressionistic nature of these definitions, Greenberg (1954) proposed a
quantitative method by which to measure synthesis. This index of synthesis is
the average number of morphemes per word in running text. The index does not
consider fusion, in which a single morpheme expresses a combination of gram-
matical meanings (e.g. English 3rd Person Singular Present -s). It also does not
address some forms of non-concatenative morphology, such as vowel or conso-
nant gradation or subtractive morphology. However, it does capture the relative
degree to which affixation and compounding (conflated here) occur in language
use. For that reason it is appropriate for the current study. Recall that a predic-
tion made in previous chapters was that large word-marginal consonant clusters
may come about when reduction processes affect vowels in unstressed affixes. I
expect that this source of large consonant clusters will be reflected in uniformly
higher morpheme/word ratios in the Highly Complex category.
## 8.2 Syllable structure complexity and morphology

I conducted an analysis to establish the morpheme/word ratios of the languages in the sample. Texts with interlinear glossing were not readily available for all languages, so ultimately this analysis included only 63 of the languages in the sample. The macro-area of Africa is severely underrepresented in this analysis, as texts with interlinear glosses were more difficult to come by for these languages. Only six languages represent Africa, while the other macro-areas are represented by 9–13 languages each.

It is important to recognize that defining what constitutes a word, either morphosyntactic or phonological, and distinguishing it from a morpheme is not a trivial matter, and that the criteria for doing so may be inconsistent among researchers and traditions (Haspelmath 2011; Schiering et al. 2010). However, the scope of the current study does not allow for a close examination of these issues. In conducting the morpheme counts, the interlinear glossing in the source was taken at face value. Thus the data may represent a variety of analytical strategies for word and morpheme segmentation.

The texts analyzed here represent a variety of genres. Where third-person narratives or traditional stories were available, these were given preference for analysis; however, the texts also include some first-person narratives, dialogues, and formal written prose. Zero morphemes were not counted. On average, the section of text analyzed for each language was about 300 words in length. However, this figure ranges widely from 69 words (for Pech) to 573 words (for Ngarinyin). When fewer than 200 words were analyzed for a language, this typically indicates that no further texts were available. References for the texts used, as well as raw word and morpheme counts for each language, can be found in Appendix B.

The means and ranges for morpheme/word ratios for each syllable structure complexity category can be found below.

<table><caption>Table 8.1: Mean and range values for morpheme/word ratios in running text in languages of sample.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Morphemes per word in text</th><th colspan="4">Syllable structure complexity</th></tr><tr><th>S<br>15 lgs.</th><th>MC<br>15 lgs.</th><th>C<br>17 lgs.</th><th>HC<br>16 lgs.</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><th>Mean</th><td>1.7</td><td>1.6</td><td>1.7</td><td>2.0</td></tr><tr><th>Range</th><td>1.0-2.3</td><td>1.1-2.4</td><td>1.0-2.8</td><td>1.1-2.6</td></tr></tbody></table>
The mean morpheme/word value for the entire sample is 1.8. As expected, languages in the Highly Complex category have the highest average number of morphemes per word. Though the range of values observed in this category is similar to the others, the mean shows that more of the languages are distributed towards the high end of the range, indicating a tendency towards, if not a uniformity of, higher morpheme/word ratios in this group. In the 63 languages examined here, there is a statistically significant positive correlation between the morpheme/word ratio and syllable structure complexity. That is, the degree of synthesis generally increases with syllable structure complexity in the sample. This correlation is moderate and statistically significant when syllable structure complexity is measured categorically ($r(63) = 0.301, p = 0.02$) and weaker when it is measured as a sum of maximal syllable margins ($r(63) = 0.261, p = 0.04$).

Though this analysis is very general and glosses over many important issues of morphological analysis, it adds further evidence to the idea that morphology plays an important role in the development of syllable structure complexity. In a sense, this is intuitively understood: many languages with highly complex syllable patterns, including Itelmen, Georgian, Kabardian, Cocopa, and the Salishan languages, have been described as polysynthetic in various descriptions. However, the analysis here establishes a quantitative basis for the relationship and suggests that the presence of a relatively high degree of synthesis is often a prerequisite for the development of highly complex syllable structure. Incidentally, the language in the Highly Complex category with the lowest morpheme/word ratio – Wutung, with a ratio of 1.1 – is a language in which Highly Complex syllable patterns are extremely non-prototypical for that group, being restricted to a single tautomorphemic onset with several sonorants, /hmbl/.

Having further established a role for morphology in patterns of syllable complexity, we now turn to a summary of the evidence for highly complex syllable structure as a linguistic type.

## 8.3 Highly complex syllable structure as a linguistic type

Here I evaluate the results of the various studies in this book as they relate to the first central research question (1).

(1) Do languages with highly complex syllable structure share other phonetic and phonological characteristics such that this group can be classified as a linguistic type?

In Chapters 3–7, I presented analyses of the patterns of syllable structure, segmental inventories, suprasegmental properties, vowel reduction, and consonant
allophony in a diverse crosslinguistic sample carefully constructed to be equally representative of different degrees of syllable complexity. More often than not, the analyses revealed associations between these features and syllable structure complexity. Below, I summarize the strongest patterns which were found to set the Highly Complex category apart from the others in the language sample. Trends found to be statistically significant are marked with an asterisk (*).

**Syllable patterns characteristic of the Highly Complex group (Chapter 3)**

* A large maximal cluster at one syllable margin tends to imply a large cluster at the other margin. (§3.3.2)

* Obligatory syllable margins (usually onset) frequent in this group.* (§3.3.3)

* Syllabic consonants most likely to be present in this group.* (§3.3.5)

* Heteromorphemic patterns in maximal syllable margins most likely in this group.* (§3.3.6)

* Syllabic consonants more likely to be found in grammatical morphemes in this group. (§3.3.6)

* Consonant clusters characterized by perceptually salient release, aspiration, variable transitional or intrusive vocalic elements. (§3.4.3)

**Segmental patterns characteristic of the Highly Complex group (Chapter 4)**

* Largest consonant phoneme inventories (average 26 Cs).* (§4.4.1)

* Highest average number of articulatory elaborations in consonant phoneme inventories.* (§6.3.4)

* Absence of prenasalized consonants* and flap/tap* articulations most likely in this group. (§4.4.5)

* Presence of palato-alveolar, uvular, affricate, and ejective* articulations most likely in this group. (§4.4.4, §4.4.5)

**Suprasegmental patterns characteristic of the Highly Complex group (Chapter 5)**

* Combination of presence of word stress and absence of tone most likely in this group. (§5.4.1)

* Stress-conditioned processes affecting consonants least likely to be present in this group. (§6.3.4)

* Vowel duration most likely to be phonetic correlate of stress in this group. (§5.4.5)
**Vowel reduction patterns characteristic of the Highly Complex group (Chapter 6)**

• Vowel reduction most prominent in this group (most likely to be present and most likely to involve two or more distinct processes).* (§6.3.1, §6.3.2)

• Vowel reduction processes least likely to affect high vowels in this group. (§6.3.3)

• Vowel reduction processes affecting /ə/ occur almost exclusively in this group.* (§6.3.4)

• In languages with word stress, word stress conditions the highest average number of vowel reduction processes in this group.* (§6.3.4)

• Vowel reduction processes conditioned by word position least common in this group.* (§6.3.4)

• Vowel deletion most likely to produce tautosyllabic clusters in this group. (§6.3.4)

**Consonant allophony patterns characteristic of the Highly Complex group (Ch. 7)**

• Languages in this group least likely to have allophonic processes resulting in fortition or articulations associated with the Highly Complex category. (§7.3.1)

• Allophonic processes resulting in palatalization or palato-alveolar articulations least frequent in this group. (§7.3.2, §7.3.3)

**Other morphological patterns characteristic of the Highly Complex group (Ch. 8)**

• Highest degree of synthesis (average morpheme/word ratio) in this group.* (§8.2)

The evidence does indicate that languages on the extreme end of syllable complexity scale share a number of other phonetic and phonological properties in common besides canonical syllable patterns. Most often, these characteristic properties are strong or weak tendencies which set this group apart from languages with simpler syllable structure. However, in a few cases, the properties are near categorical; for instance, vowel reduction patterns affecting only /ə/ were found almost exclusively in the Highly Complex portion of the sample. Moreover, it is often clear from the data that the bundle of features listed above is not a random assortment of phonological properties that just happen to align in this group of languages. In some cases, properties were found to show a gradual linear trend with syllable complexity: e.g. the positive trend with respect to
## 8.3 Highly complex syllable structure as a linguistic type

the presence of uvular articulations (§4.4.5), or the negative trend with respect to word position in vowel reduction conditioning (§6.3.4). In many cases, the trends serve to set the Simple category apart from the three more complex categories: e.g. the absence of phonological asymmetries between stressed and unstressed syllables, or the presence of stress-conditioned consonant allophony. The effect of these interacting patterns is that there are two more or less coherent bundles of phonological tendencies which strongly characterize the languages at either end of the syllable complexity scale. Languages with intermediate syllable patterns (Moderately Complex or Complex) pattern with one or the other of these extremes in many properties, but rarely show different trends altogether, at least not in such a way as to form their own coherent pattern. Additionally, selective statistical testing showed that many of the trends listed above were found to be significant.

Other evidence pointing to highly complex syllable structure as a linguistic type is in the fact that languages in which these syllable patterns are strong tend to have more of the accompanying phonological features listed above. In §3.4.2, I identified two groups of languages in the Highly Complex category based on the size, distribution, combinatorial restrictions, and relative frequency of their Highly Complex syllable patterns. A group of eight genealogically and geographically diverse languages – Cocopa, Georgian, Itelmen, Polish, Tashlhiyt, Thompson, Tohono O'odham, and Yakima Sahaptin – were found to have Highly Complex structures as a prevalent pattern in these respects. Another group of six genealogically but less geographically diverse languages – Alamblak, Bench, Doyayo, Kunjen, Menya, and Wutung – were found to have Highly Complex structures as a minor pattern according to these criteria. In observing the distribution of other phonological correlates of Highly Complex syllable structure in Chapters 4–6, it was found that these were more strongly associated with languages having Highly Complex structure as a prevalent pattern than those having it as a minor pattern. Languages in which Highly Complex patterns were intermediate tended to behave more like the prevalent group in this respect (see §4.5.1, §5.5.1, §6.4.1 for more details).

As a linguistic type, highly complex syllable structure has properties which are reminiscent of several other language types proposed in holistic (phonological) typologies. The co-occurrence of syllable structure complexity and vowel reduction, especially unstressed vowel reduction, aligns this group of languages with the stress-timed type often discussed in the speech rhythm literature (Dauer 1983; Auer 1993; Schiering 2007). Yet these language types do not completely overlap: in particular, the virtual lack of stress-conditioned consonant allophony and unexpectedly high percentage of fixed stress systems sets languages with highly
complex syllable structure apart from prototypical stress-timed languages. Sim-
ilarly, highly complex syllable structure shares some characteristics in common
with the agglutination type proposed by Skalička (1979), in that syllable complex-
ity co-occurs with a high amount of synthesis (which I liberally take as a proxy
for inflection here) and rich consonant systems. Here too, the types do not over-
lap completely, in part because Skalička narrowly defined agglutination so as to
approximate an ideal language type. This typology does specify that agglutina-
tion is characterized by looser fusion between gramemes and the stem, which
would not be reflective of the patterns in the current data, in which large hetero-
morphemic tautosyllabic consonant clusters often occur. Finally, highly complex
syllable structure is particularly aligned with aspects of the consonantal type in
the typology proposed by Isačenko (1939), and with more casual uses of the term
in phonological descriptions of languages. Specifically, the co-occurrence of syl-
lable complexity, rich consonant systems, the presence of specific contrasts such
as secondary palatalization, and fixed *or* lexically-determined stress in languages
with highly complex syllable structure make this type reminiscent of consonan-
tal languages. One major point of departure from this typology is that languages
with highly complex syllable structure were found in the current study to be
more likely to have syllabic consonants, a feature proposed by Isačenko to co-
occur with vocalic languages.

In sum, the patterns in the data here suggest that highly complex syllable struc-
ture is a linguistic type characterized by phonetic, phonological, and morpho-
logical patterns which are sometimes categorical but are most often tendencies.
Highly complex syllable structure is a holistic language type that shares some
features in common with stress-timed languages, agglutination, and consonan-
tal languages, but is also defined by a set of features which are not characteristic
of any of those types. In the following section I discuss how the properties of
highly complex syllable structure and the other patterns established in this book
can be used to address the second research question regarding the historical de-
velopment of this type.

8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

In this section, I discuss how the findings of the book address the second research
question, reproduced in (2).

(2) How does highly complex syllable structure develop over time?
I approach the issue of the development of highly complex syllable structure
from several different angles. First, in §8.4.1 I discuss the issue of assumptions
about directionality in syllable structure change, presenting patterns from the
current sample which seem to indicate that change more often tends to be in
the direction of increased complexity. In §8.4.2, I discuss how the crosslinguis-
tic patterns established in the preceding chapters might suggest paths of lan-
guage change associated with the development of this type. In §8.4.3, I compare
the phonological and morphological properties of pairs of related languages dif-
fering in their syllable structure complexity in order to determine whether the
crosslinguistically established patterns are present at the local level. In §8.4.4, I
discuss a historically attested case of syllable structure change and how it relates
to the findings in this book. In §8.4.5, I discuss issues of language contact and
the transfer of prosodic properties from one language to another as one poten-
tial source for the development of highly complex syllable structure. Finally, in
§8.4.6 I present some ideas for how such processes might get started in a lan-
guage.

8.4.1 Directionality of syllable structure change

Up until this point, it has been assumed when discussing the phonetic and phono-
logical correlates of syllable structure complexity that the findings might point to
how highly complex syllable structure develops out of simpler syllable patterns.
In many cases I have referred to the four-category syllable structure complexity
scale used in this study as corresponding to a diachronic cline. This assumption
is, in part, supported by documented evidence of such a cline: for example, we
can be certain from historical records that the present complex syllable patterns
of Lezgian, which have been mentioned several times previously, arose out of
simpler patterns. However, since the focus has been on processes which create
syllable complexity, the opposite scenario, in which the phonetic and phonologi-
cal correlates might be interpreted to reflect instead how simple syllable structure
develops out of more complex patterns, has been largely neglected.

There is ample evidence within the language sample for syllable structure
change going in the direction of increased complexity. The analysis of outcomes
of vowel deletion in §6.3.5 provides many such examples. Eight languages were
found to have vowel deletion resulting in non-canonical simple codas: in Sumi
Naga, Tukang Besi, Lunda, and Camsá, such processes create codas in languages
that otherwise do not have them; and in Saaroa, Atong, Cocama-Cocamilla, and
Lakota, the processes add new consonants to the inventory of simple codas in
the language. In a similar case, while word-internal codas already occur in Kam-
baata, a process of vowel devoicing and deletion has started to produce these
codas word-finally. This has not changed the canonical syllable patterns of the
language, but it is having an effect on the phonological shape of words, which pre-
viously ended only in vowels. Additionally, eight languages have vowel deletion
processes resulting in non-canonical tautosyllabic clusters. In Southern Grebo,
Sumi Naga, Choctaw, and Karok, these processes create clusters in syllable mar-
gins which are otherwise simple. In Eastern Khanty and Nuu-chah-nulth, these
processes create larger clusters than what the language canonically has. In Alba-
nian and Qawasqar, these processes create clusters which are the same size as
canonical clusters but of non-canonical shapes.

Apart from the cases above involving synchronic vowel deletion, there are
at least eight additional languages in the sample for which historical, compar-
ative, and other evidence points to syllable structure recently having become
more complex. Several of these were mentioned in §3.2.3 in the discussion of
languages whose patterns fell near the edges of the syllable structure complexity
categories as defined in this study. For instance, Cavineña and Ute are classified
as having Simple syllable structure, but both have canonical simple codas which
have recently arisen as a result of vowel deletion. In some languages, speech style
and sociolinguistic variation suggest that syllable structure has recently become
more complex. In Pech, onset clusters /pr, tr, kr, br/ appear to be a recent develop-
ment as a result of syncope of historical or underlying vowels, as the vowels may
“reappear” in slow speech (Holt 1999: 20). Similarly, in Oksapmin, biconsonantal
onset clusters are realized with an intervening schwa for some older speakers,
but are produced as clusters by most younger speakers (Loughnane 2009: 65–67).
Bruce notes that close transition in consonant clusters in Alamblak corresponds
to /i/ in related language Sumariup (1984: 69–70). He takes this as likely evidence
of recent vowel deletion in Alamblak, since the remaining occurrences of /i/ in
the language are weak with respect to stress placement and susceptible to elision.
Writing conventions can also point to the directionality of the change. As men-
tioned in §3.4.3, changing writing conventions in Menya may suggest that the
clusters in that language are a product of recent vowel reduction and deletion
(Whitehead 2004: 9, 226). The process of high vowel syncope in Lezgian, which
has recently made syllable patterns more complex, is well-documented by ortho-
graphic evidence (Haspelmath 1993: 36–38). Finally, in Tzeltal, syllable patterns
have recently become more complex as a result of loanwords becoming nativized.
The largest native onsets in the language are of the form /s ∫ h/ + C₂, with the
initial consonant corresponding to a prefix. (Kaufman 1971: 14) reports that these
prefixes may now be attached to Spanish loanwords with initial consonant clusters, resulting in triconsonantal onsets.

It is far rarer to find clear cases of ongoing simplification of native canonical syllable structure patterns in the language sample. Variable processes of cluster-simplifying vowel epenthesis and consonant deletion were not systematically collected for all languages of the sample; however, they were noted wherever observed.<fnref n="1" /> There are four languages in the sample for which the canonical syllable structure seems to be unambiguously undergoing simplification. The case of Towa was discussed in §3.2.3. In this language, which has canonical simple codas, processes of coda deletion operate in all environments except for utterance-finally (Yumitani 1998: 22–24). The resulting extremely low frequency of phonetic codas is what justified the inclusion of this language in the Simple category. In Passamaquoddy-Maliseet, apostrophes are now used in the practical orthography to represent consonants which were once pronounced but are now absent from clusters (e.g. ‘tomaké yu is the modern spelling of what was once ktomaké yu ‘s/he is poor,’ Leavitt 1996: 16). It is known from historical transcriptions and the pronunciation of older speakers that these were originally clusters and have recently undergone simplification. In Chipaya, historical records indicate that triconsonantal onsets used to occur as a result of the affixation of personal prefix x-. At present, such forms are reported to be obsolete and completely unproductive, though speakers do passively accept them (Cerrón-Palomino 2006: 66). In Atong, some non-initial syllables vary between C+/ər/ and C+/r/ shapes, the latter being the only complex onsets attested in the language. Van Breugel (2008: 30–32) analyzes this as a process of vowel reduction, but comparative evidence from the family suggests that the C+/r/ clusters are original, with some having been historically resolved through consonant deletion while others are variably resolved synchronically through schwa insertion.

There are also several ambiguous cases of active syllable structure simplification in the language sample. In the Vietnam dialect of Kim Mun, (Clark 2008: 127) observes central vowel insertion between the consonants in one of the biconsonantal onset patterns, /kl/. However, this report is based on one token in the speech of one informant, and it is not clear whether this may be a frequent variant of the cluster. In Qawasqar, triconsonantal onsets, including /qsq/ and /qst/, are reported to be unstable in rapid speech: e.g. *qsqar* > *sqar*, ‘urine’ (Clairis 1985: 393). However, in this language rapid speech may also produce clusters through

<footnote n="1">¹Note that cases of (morpho)phonological epenthesis are not considered in this discussion. Recall from the discussion of methods in §3.2.1 that processes of vowel epenthesis which were reported to be invariant were considered to be part of the canonical syllable pattern of the language.</footnote>
vowel deletion – e.g. *seqwe* > *sqwe* 'future marker' – so it is unclear whether syllable structure complexity is changing significantly in either direction in this language. Finally, as discussed in §3.2.3, Yine also presents an ambiguous case of syllable structure change. Matteson (1965: 24) states that the very low frequency of triconsonantal onsets had decreased in comparison to a count made a decade previously. However, Hanson (2010: 27), writing nearly half a century later, writes that "words beginning with three consonants in a sequence are very common".

Taking all of the above patterns into account, there are 24 languages in the sample in which synchronic, historical, or comparative evidence suggests that canonical syllable structure has become or is becoming more complex. By comparison, there are four languages in which similar evidence strongly suggests that canonical syllable patterns have become or are becoming simpler. For one language (Vietnam Kim Mun), a very weak case could be made for simplification. Finally, Qawasqar and Yine present ambiguous cases in which canonical syllable structure change does not show a preference for directionality, or there are conflicting reports regarding this phenomenon.

Interestingly, one of the strong cases for ongoing syllable structure simplification is from an obsolescing language, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet. This outcome is consistent with observations by Romaine (2010) and Cook (1989) regarding the effect of obsolescence on phonological structure. However, it should be noted that several obsolescing languages, including Cocama-Cocamilla, Choctaw, and Karok, have processes of vowel reduction which make syllable patterns more complex.

There are many historically documented cases of syllable structure simplification. Historical and modern varieties of English provide a number of such examples: e.g. simplification of /kn/ and /gn/ onsets in Middle English (Minkova 2003), coda deletion and simplification in African American Vernacular English (Rickford 1999), and coda simplification and debuccalization in Singapore English (Deterding 2007). Invariant (morpho)phonological vowel epenthesis having the effect of preserving canonical syllable patterns is commonly reported in the language sample examined here; perhaps some of these are the result of historical phonetic processes which have become phonologized. However, as a gradient, phonetically motivated process, simplification of syllable structure seems to be reported more rarely than an increase in syllable structure complexity as a result of vowel reduction. That is, the reported phonetic patterns in the language sample suggest that syllable structure change is more often in the direction of increased complexity. This is a puzzling result when the crosslinguistic distribution of syllable complexity is considered. If reported phonetic processes are indicative
of a uniform trend towards complex syllable structure, we would perhaps expect
the global proportions of languages with Complex and Highly Complex syllable
patterns to be much higher than they are. I do not discount that the distribution
of phonetic processes discussed above could reflect common biases in phonolog-
ical analysis, or perhaps even more rapid phonologization of vowel epenthesis
and consonant deletion patterns as compared to vowel reduction and deletion
patterns, for whatever reason. Perhaps ongoing research on listener/researcher
bias in identifying syllable patterns (e.g. Kwon et al. 2017) could shed some light
on this paradox.

8.4.2 Clues from the crosslinguistic patterns

We know from historically documented processes of syllable structure change
in specific languages that unstressed vowel deletion is a common source of the
consonant clusters associated with highly complex syllable structure. Snapshots
of “before” and “after” states of syllable patterns in a language are useful because
they illustrate the direct and dramatic effect of unstressed vowel deletion on syl-
lable structure. However, such reports might overlook the relationship between
these processes and other parts of the phonology and grammar. If the reductive
patterns which eventually manifest as vowel deletion have a long history in a lan-
guage, effects that they have long before vowel deletion becomes prevalent may
not be recognized as directly related to the process of syllable structure change.
Examination of the crosslinguistic trends may reveal these subtle patterns and
allow us to “fill in” other crosslinguistically common steps in the process which
might not otherwise be apparent when looking at specific case studies. Trends
in syllable patterns, segmental inventories, suprasegmental properties, and pro-
cesses of vowel reduction and consonant allophony established in the prior chap-
ters suggest some potential links in the chain of developments leading to the
emergence of highly complex syllable structure.

An interesting finding in the analysis of syllable structure in §3.3.2 was that
large maximal clusters in one syllable margin tend to imply similarly large max-
imal clusters in the other syllable margin. As mentioned in that analysis, this is
not an expected distribution if we consider onsets and codas to be independent
structures. From a diachronic point of view, this suggests that complex onset and
coda patterns may not be independent in terms of their development, especially
in situations of extreme vowel reduction and loss. This relates to the findings
regarding the morphological complexity of highly complex clusters (§3.3.6) and
the higher degrees of synthesis observed in these languages (§8.2). Assuming
morphologically or lexically conditioned stress, in a language with a high degree
of synthesis and both prefixation and suffixation, we would expect processes of unstressed vowel deletion to create large heteromorphemic consonant clusters at both word edges. Also related to these issues are the findings that syllabic consonants are more frequently found in the Highly Complex portion of the sample, and that these are most frequently found to belong or correspond to grammatical morphemes in that group. Such patterns may reflect similar sources of unstressed vowel reduction in affixes, though perhaps with different temporal effects on articulation.

The analysis of segmental patterns in Chapter 4 similarly revealed that languages in the Highly Complex category are more likely to have specific consonant articulations than other languages in the sample. In particular, palatoalveolar, uvular, ejective, and affricate articulations were strongly associated with this category. A survey of historical and synchronic processes known to produce these articulations revealed that these tend to come about through processes of assimilation and fortition, which often correspond to the temporal overlap of consonant and vowel (or glottal) articulations, or strengthening of gestures in certain domain or vocalic environments. The tendency of languages in the Highly Complex category to have such sounds suggests that these processes were once prevalent enough in the languages' histories to phonologize into segmental patterns. Further, the presence of such segments in a language becomes more likely with increasing syllable structure complexity, which suggests that these processes may be interconnected in some way with the development of complex syllable patterns.

The analysis of suprasegmental patterns in Chapter 5 yielded some unexpected results, in that the Highly Complex category was not found to be strongly associated with lexically- or morphologically-conditioned word stress. Additionally, languages with Highly Complex syllable structure were not found to be substantially more likely to have unstressed vowel reduction than languages in the Moderately Complex or Complex categories. The latter result was elucidated in the study of vowel reduction in Chapter 6. There it was found that in languages with unstressed vowel reduction, the average number of distinct processes of that kind increased with syllable complexity. This suggests a sort of “snowball effect” in which vowel reduction patterns conditioned by stress may gradually become more prevalent in a language even as syllable patterns are affected in their wake. What causes this increasing reductive tendency is not entirely clear. It was expected that such extreme effects of stress would be more likely in languages with lexically- or morphologically-conditioned (unpredictable) stress, as previously found in the literature (Bybee et al. 1998; Schiering 2007). However, most of the stress systems in the Highly Complex group are not unpredictable.
8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

Of those languages which do have unpredictable stress, most have an average number of vowel reduction processes for that group (2 processes). Meanwhile, some languages with fixed or weight-dependent stress have a higher than average number of vowel reduction patterns (Tohono O'odham with 7, Kabardian with 4, Yine with 3; among others).

One diachronic account for this unexpected mismatch between the vowel reduction patterns and the stress patterns could be that languages with Highly Complex syllable structure are likely to have had unpredictable stress systems at an earlier point in their histories. In such a scenario, a language with relatively simple syllable structure and lexically- or morphologically-determined stress patterns and a high degree of synthesis develops a pattern of unstressed vowel reduction. As vowels are reduced and deleted, stress shifts accordingly with respect to word edges. For example, in such a scenario, a language might have stem-initial stress and phonologically short, unstressed grammatical prefixes. If vowel reduction deleted all vowels in prefixes in such a language, it could eventually have the effect of causing the stress system to become a fixed initial system rather than an unpredictable system. Such processes, if crosslinguistically common, could account for the unexpectedly high rate of fixed stress systems in the Highly Complex group.

There are a few other crosslinguistic findings that may relate to the diachronic development of syllable structure complexity. In Chapter 6 it was found that deletion of schwa (/ə/) was a common process type in the Highly Complex category. In fact, though phonemic /ə/ could be found in languages from all categories of syllable structure complexity, this sound was specifically targeted for further reduction almost exclusively in languages in the Highly Complex category. Since [ə] is often the outcome of vowel reduction, processes reducing or deleting /ə/ may be indicative of a long history of vowel reduction in a language.

Finally, the analyses in Chapter 7 sought in part to determine the distribution of allophonic processes producing articulations associated with the Highly Complex category, as well as other specific processes of consonant assimilation to vowels and fortition. It was found that processes producing palato-alveolars, affricates, palatalization, and increased constriction, specifically, were more prevalent in languages with Simple syllable structure. Further, stress conditions more such processes in languages of the Simple category than in others. When this trend is plotted against the trend for stress-conditioned vowel reduction, the resulting pattern indicates that as syllable structure complexity increases, stress decreasingly affects consonants and increasingly affects vowels. If the syllable structure complexity scale is taken to be a diachroniccline, what this suggests is
that, during the development of syllable structure complexity, stress affects con-
sonants first and vowels later. Though the results in Chapter 7 did not paint so
straightforward a picture, what this suggests in terms of syllable complexity and
segmental inventories is that consonant articulations associated with the Highly
Complex group may develop before the syllable patterns associated with these
languages.

As mentioned in previous chapters, there is always the risk when conducting
typological studies that strong crosslinguistic trends may be an epiphenomenon
emerging from several distinct smaller-scale patterns. Many of the analyses in
this book have shown that is not the case, as the patterns can be found in diverse
groups of languages. However, it is important to see if the diachronic paths which
have been inferred from the crosslinguistic trends are plausible at a local level
before positing them to be common paths of syllable structure change. In the
following section I conduct such a study.

8.4.3 Comparisons of related pairs of languages in sample

Recall in §2.1.3 that the language sample was constructed so as to include pairs
of related languages with differing degrees of syllable structure complexity. Here
we compare these pairs to see if the crosslinguistic associations between syllable
structure complexity and phonological and morphological patterns hold at the
local level, in which case the diachronic paths discussed above may be more
plausible. Where relevant, I also mention historical and comparative evidence
that may further shed light on the mechanisms behind the divergent patterns.

8.4.3.1 Uto-Aztecan: Ute and Tohono O'odham

Ute and Tohono O'odham both belong to the Uto-Aztecan family of languages, a family with large geographic spread in the western region of the USA and Mexico. Ute is a member of the Numic branch of the Northern division of the family, which also includes Shoshone, Northern Paiute, and Chemehuevi. At the time of contact with Spanish and Anglo settlers, it was indigenous to the mountains of western Colorado and eastern Utah (Givón 2011). Tohono O'odham is a member of the Tepiman branch of the Southern division. This branch includes its close relative Pima as well as the Tepehuan languages of northern Mexico. It is spoken in southern Arizona and northern Sonora (Zepeda 1983).

Ute has been classified in the Simple category in the current language sample,
though its syllable patterns are technically Moderately Complex (see discussion
in §3.2.3). Tohono O'odham has Highly Complex syllable structure as a prevalent
pattern. A summary of the phonological properties of these languages as they
relate to the findings of the previous chapters can be found in Table 8.2.

The segmental patterns of this pair of Uto-Aztecan languages largely con-
form to the crosslinguistic patterns established in previous chapters for Simple
and Highly Complex syllable structure. Tohono O'odham has syllabic obstruents,
while Ute has no syllabic consonants at all. The consonant phoneme inventory
of Tohono O'odham is larger than Ute's by seven consonants. However, both lan-
guages have consonant articulations which are associated with both the Simple
and Highly Complex categories: both have flap/tap, palato-alveolar, and affricate
articulations.

The suprasegmental and allophonic patterns of Ute and Tohono O'odham are
also somewhat in line with the predictions. Both languages have word stress
and vowel reduction, but the number of distinct reductive patterns in Tohono
O'odham is much greater. While both languages have both domain- and stress-
conditioned vowel reduction, the number and extremity in outcomes is greater
for Tohono O'odham, and processes also target short and high vowels in this
language. Ute has a wide variety of allophonic processes affecting consonants.
These include assimilation of consonants to vowels – including a process that pro-
duces uvulars, a Highly Complex-associated articulation – as well as processes
of lenition and sonorization. Of the synchronic processes considered here, To-
hono O'odham only has glide strengthening. Interestingly, glide strengthening
has been proposed as a historical source for the voiced stop series in Tepiman
languages. In fact, this typologically rare sound change is one of the phonolog-
ical features which sets Tepiman apart from the other branches of Uto-Aztecan
(Shaul & Hill 1998: 379).

Finally, the morphological patterns of the two languages show mixed results.
Ute has a much higher morpheme/word ratio than Tohono O'odham: 2.3 as com-
pared to 1.4. This does not follow the general crosslinguistic pattern. However,
more in line with predictions, in Tohono O'odham all of the maximal syllable
onset and coda patterns are heteromorphemic, and syllabic obstruents always
correspond to grammatical particles (determiners and conjunctives, specifically).

Of the two languages examined here, Ute has syllable patterns which are more
typical of general Uto-Aztecan patterns. Of the seven Uto-Aztecan languages
included in the survey by Maddieson (2013b), four languages have Moderately
Complex syllable structure, two Complex, and the remaining language is To-
hono O'odham. This suggests that the Tohono O'odham syllable patterns are
a novel and perhaps relatively recent development in the family. Indeed, vari-
able and invariable processes of final vowel deletion are noted in most Tepiman
languages, suggesting a long history of vowel reduction affecting phonotactics
<table><caption>Table 8.2: Comparison of phonological properties of Ute and Tohono O'odham.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Ute</th><th>Tohono O'odham</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Syllable patterns</td><td>Simple</td><td>Highly Complex (prevalent)</td></tr><tr><td>Maximal syllable margins</td><td>Onset: 1; Coda: 1</td><td>Onset: 4; Coda: 4</td></tr><tr><td>Syllabic consonants</td><td>-</td><td>obstruents</td></tr><tr><td>C phoneme inventory</td><td>/p t k ? tʃ β s γ m n r w j/</td><td>/p b t d d k g ? tʃ dʒ s s h m n j ŋ l β, j/</td></tr><tr><td>N C phonemes</td><td>13</td><td>20</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Simple category</td><td>Flap/tap</td><td>Flap/tap</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Highly Complex category</td><td>Palato-alveolar Affricate</td><td>Palato-alveolar Affricate</td></tr><tr><td>Word stress present?</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stress placement</td><td>Fixed</td><td>Fixed</td></tr><tr><td>N V reduction processes</td><td>3</td><td>7</td></tr><tr><td>Vs affected by reduction</td><td>all</td><td>all, high, short</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction environments</td><td>Consonant, Stress, Word</td><td>Consonant, Stress, Word, Phrase</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction outcomes</td><td>Devoicing</td><td>Devoicing, Quality, Deletion</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in S articulations, lenition/sonorization</td><td>Flapping Obstruent voicing Spirantization</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in HC articulations, C-to-V assimilation, fortition</td><td>Uvular Labialization Palatalization</td><td>Glide strengthening</td></tr></tbody></table>
in this branch of the family (Shaul & Hill 1998: 384–385). However, even among
the Tepiman languages, the syllable structure of Tohono O’odham is unusually
complex (cf. canonical (C)V(C) patterns in Pima Bajo, Estrada Fernández 2014:
40). Comparing the consonant allophony processes of Ute against the consonant
phoneme inventory of Tohono O’odham, and the details of vowel reduction pro-
cesses in the former versus the latter, it does seem plausible that the phonological
patterns of Tohono O’odham evolved from a system that once looked more like
Ute.

Interestingly, the Tepiman branch of Uto-Aztecan has likely had a long history of contact with the Yuman language family, to which Cocopa (Highly Complex) belongs. Shaul & Hill (1998) argue that phonological evidence, grammatical convergence, and borrowings suggest heavy contact between Proto-Tepiman and Proto-River-Yuman which started sometime during the Hohokam period in the first millennium C.E.

8.4.3.2 Arawakan: Apurinã and Yine

Apurinã and Yine both belong to the Arawakan family of languages, a large lan-
guage family with wide geographical spread throughout Central America and
the northern half of South America. Apurinã and Yine both belong to the small
Purus branch of Arawakan, a subclassification within the larger Southern Maipu-
ran branch. Apurinã is said to be Yine's closest linguistic relative (Facundes 2002).
Apurinã is spoken along the tributaries of the Purús River in the southern part
of Amazonas state in Brazil, while Yine is spoken in the Madre de Dios region of
Peru (Aikhenvald 1999).

Apurinã has Simple syllable structure, while Yine has been classified as having Highly Complex syllable structure as an intermediate pattern (see discussion in §3.2.3 about complications for classifying syllable patterns in Yine). A summary of the phonological properties of these languages can be found in Table 8.3.

As mentioned in §3.3.5, there are conflicting reports as to whether Yine has
syllabic consonants. Matteson (1965) describes the syllable template as having
complex onsets, but also describes the consonants which do not directly precede
the nucleus as being syllabic allophones of the consonants. In Chapter 3, I took
the onset cluster analysis. In any case, it does not affect the analysis of the lan-
guage as having Highly Complex syllable structure.

The segmental patterns of Apurinã and Yine show mixed results with respect to the predicted patterns. The consonant phoneme inventory of Yine is larger than that of Apurinã by two consonants, as predicted. Both languages have two articulations associated with the Highly Complex category (palato-alveolar and
<table><caption>Table 8.3: Comparison of phonological properties of Apurinã and Yine.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Apurinã</th><th>Yine</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Syllable patterns</td><td>Simple</td><td>Highly Complex (intermediate)</td></tr><tr><td>Maximal syllable margins</td><td>Onset: 1; Coda: 0</td><td>Onset: 3; Coda: 0</td></tr><tr><td>Syllabic consonants</td><td>-</td><td>(conflicting reports)</td></tr><tr><td>C phoneme inventory</td><td>/p t k t̂s t̂ʃ s∫h m n r j w̥/</td><td>/p t c k t̂s t̂ʃ s∫c h m n l r w j/</td></tr><tr><td>N C phonemes</td><td>14</td><td>16</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Simple category</td><td>Flap/tap</td><td>Flap/tap</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Highly Complex category</td><td>Palato-alveolar Affricate</td><td>Palato-alveolar Affricate</td></tr><tr><td>Word stress present?</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stress placement</td><td>Weight-sensitive</td><td>Fixed</td></tr><tr><td>N V reduction processes</td><td>1</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>Vs affected by reduction</td><td>all</td><td>all, /a/</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction environments</td><td>Stress, Word</td><td>Stress, Word, Phrase/Utterance</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction outcomes</td><td>Devoicing</td><td>Devoicing, Quality</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in S articulations, lenition/sonorization</td><td>Obstruent voicing</td><td>Flapping Obstruent voicing</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in HC articulations, C-to-V assimilation, fortition</td><td>Palatalization</td><td>Affricate Increased constriction</td></tr></tbody></table>
## 8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

affricate) and one articulation associated with the Simple category (flap/tap). Comparing the inventories we see that Yine has one more obstruent in the general palatal region than Apurinã. This latter pattern is in line with the crosslinguistic pattern observed in §4.4.4.

In terms of suprasegmentals and allophonic patterns, we find that both languages have word stress and vowel reduction. Yine has more distinct vowel reduction patterns than Apurinã, as predicted. Yine also has reduction in quality outcomes as predicted. However, both languages have vowel reduction, and specifically devoicing, in stress and domain contexts. As for consonant allophony, the pattern is the opposite of what is predicted: Yine has more such processes, including those of the assimilation/fortition types.

The morpheme/word ratio is 2.1 for both Apurinã and Yine, which is unsurprising given how closely the languages are related. In Yine, maximal onset clusters are heteromorphemic, though biconsonantal onsets may show tautomorphemic or heteromorphemic patterns. If the syllabic consonant analysis is taken, syllabic consonants would occur in both grammatical and lexical morphemes.

Of the two languages compared here, the syllable patterns of Apurinã are more closely aligned with the general patterns of the Arawakan family. Of the six Arawakan languages included in the survey in Maddieson (2013b), five of them have Moderately Complex syllable structure, none have Complex syllable structure, and the other language is Apurinã. Since Yine and Apurinã are very closely related, this suggests that the highly complex patterns of Yine may have developed relatively recently in history. Comparing cognate forms in Apurinã and Yine given in Facundes (2002: 88–89), missing vowels in the Yine forms correspond to /i e i a o/ in the Apurinã forms, suggesting that the historical vowel deletion processes responsible for creating consonant clusters in Yine were quite general.

### 8.4.3.3 Atlantic-Congo: Yoruba and Lunda

Yoruba and Lunda both belong to the Atlantic-Congo family of languages, a huge language family which is spread throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa. There are several taxonomic systems by which the languages in this family are classified and related to one another, some of them conflicting. In my discussion here, I follow the classification system proposed by Williamson (1989). In this classification, both Yoruba and Lunda belong to different genera within the Benue-Congo branch of the Volta-Congo subfamily. Yoruba, native to Nigeria and now a major language of West Africa, belongs to the Defoid genus. Lunda belongs to the large Bantoid genus, and is spoken in northwestern Zambia (Kawasha 2003).
Yoruba has Simple syllable structure and Lunda has Complex syllable structure. A summary of the phonological properties of these languages can be found in Table 8.4.

<table><caption>Table 8.4: Comparison of phonological properties of Yoruba and Lunda.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Yoruba</th><th>Lunda</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Syllable patterns</td><td>Simple</td><td>Complex</td></tr><tr><td>Maximal syllable margins</td><td>Onset: 1; Coda: 0</td><td>Onset: 3; Coda: 0</td></tr><tr><td>Syllabic consonants</td><td>nasals</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>C phoneme inventory</td><td>/b t d ʃ k g ʌp ʌb f s ∫ h m l r j w/</td><td>/p b t d k g ʃ∫ dʒ f v s z ∫ ʒ h m n ʃη l w j/</td></tr><tr><td>N C phonemes</td><td>17</td><td>22</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Simple category</td><td>Flap/tap</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Highly Complex category</td><td>Palato-alveolar</td><td>Affricate<br>Palato-alveolar</td></tr><tr><td>Word stress present?</td><td>No</td><td>(Not reported)</td></tr><tr><td>Stress placement</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>N V reduction processes</td><td>–</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Vs affected by reduction</td><td>–</td><td>/i/</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction environments</td><td>–</td><td>Consonant, Word</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction outcomes</td><td>–</td><td>Deletion</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in S articulations, lenition/sonorization</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in HC articulations, C-to-V assimilation, fortition</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr></tbody></table>
## 8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

The segmental patterns of Yoruba and Lunda largely follow the predictions. Lunda does have a consonant phoneme inventory which is larger than Yoruba's by five consonants. Both languages have palato-alveolar consonants (typically associated with the Highly Complex category), but Yoruba additionally has a flap and Lunda additionally has affricates, in line with the established crosslinguistic generalizations.

There is not much to compare in terms of the suprasegmental properties and allophonic patterns of the two languages. Yoruba does not have stress and it is not reported whether Lunda has stress in the reference consulted. Lunda has one vowel reduction process with an extreme outcome of vowel deletion. Neither language is reported to have any of the allophonic consonant processes considered here.

Morpheme/word ratios could not be calculated for Yoruba or Lunda due to lack of available texts. However, the other morphological patterns show mixed results. Triconsonantal onset clusters in Lunda are always morphologically complex, occurring when a class prefix is affixed to a noun, among other possibilities (Kawasha 2003: 23–24). While Lunda does not have any syllabic consonants, Yoruba has syllabic nasals which always correspond to grammatical morphemes.

Neither of the two languages have syllable patterns typical of Atlantic-Congo, the languages of which show a range of patterns but tend most often to be Moderately Complex (Maddieson 2013b). In Lunda, it is clear that the development of syllable complexity is at least partly due to the morphology of the language: the largest clusters in the language occur only in heteromorphemic contexts.

### 8.4.3.4 Indo-European: Darai and Albanian

Darai and Albanian both belong to the Indo-European family of languages, a large family which is spread throughout much of Eurasia. Darai is a member of the large Indo-Iranian genus of the family which is located in South Asia. It is spoken along the Narayani and Madi Rivers in Nepal (Dhakal 2012). Albanian constitutes its own branch within Indo-European. The Tosk dialect included in this study is spoken south of the Shkumbin River in Albania and northern Greece, and corresponds closely to the standard form of the language. The time depth of separation between these languages is estimated to be at least 4000 years (Garrett 2006: 146).

Darai has Moderately Complex syllable structure, while Albanian has Highly Complex syllable structure as an intermediate pattern in the language. A summary of the phonological properties of these languages can be found in Table 8.5.
<table><caption>Table 8.5: Comparison of phonological properties of Darai and Albanian.</caption><thead><tr><th>Syllable patterns</th><th>Darai<br>Moderately Complex</th><th>Albanian<br>Highly Complex<br>(intermediate)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Maximal syllable margins</td><td>Onset: 2; Coda: 1</td><td>Onset: 4; Coda: 3</td></tr><tr><td>Syllabic consonants</td><td>–</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>C phoneme inventory</td><td>/p b t d t d k g p h b h t h d h t h<br>d h k h g h t s d z t s h d z h s h m<br>n ŋ r l β, j/</td><td>/p b t d c j k g t s d z t s h d z h f<br>v θ ð s z f ʒ h m n p l ł r r j/</td></tr><tr><td>N C phonemes</td><td>29</td><td>29</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts<br>associated with Simple<br>category</td><td>–</td><td>Flap/tap</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts<br>associated with Highly<br>Complex category</td><td>Affricate</td><td>Palato-alveolar<br>Affricate</td></tr><tr><td>Word stress present?</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stress placement</td><td>Fixed</td><td>Morph.- or<br>lex.-determined</td></tr><tr><td>N V reduction processes</td><td>1</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>Vs affected by reduction</td><td>/u/</td><td>/ə/</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction<br>environments</td><td>Consonant</td><td>Consonant, Stress, Word</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction outcomes</td><td>Deletion</td><td>Deletion</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in S<br>articulations,<br>lenition/sonorization</td><td>Prenasalization<br>Spirantization<br>Debuccalization</td><td>–</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in<br>HC articulations,<br>C-to-V assimilation,<br>fortition</td><td>Palato-alveolar<br>Affricate<br>Palatalization<br>Increased constriction</td><td>Increased constriction</td></tr></tbody></table>
8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

In segmental terms, Darai and Albanian do not fit the predicted patterns very well. Their consonant phoneme inventories are the same size. Albanian has two articulations characteristic of the Highly Complex category (palato-alveolar and affricate), while Darai has one (affricate). Against predictions, Albanian also has a flap. The size and composition of the Darai inventory are consistent with areal features of languages of the Indian subcontinent, which typically include distinctions such as voiced aspirate and retroflex stop series.

The suprasegmental patterns and allophonic processes show more conformity to the crosslinguistic patterns. Both languages have word stress and vowel reduction. While both languages have vowel deletion, such processes are conditioned by stress only in Albanian. In terms of the allophonic consonant process types examined here, all of the assimilation and fortition processes in the comparison are found in Darai, in line with predictions. Additionally, processes of lenition/-sonorization are reported for Darai but not Albanian.

The morpheme/word ratio could only be calculated for Darai: it was 1.6. The morphological patterns of maximal onset and coda clusters in the languages fit with the trends of the overall language sample: biconsonantal onsets in Darai are always tautomorphemic, while Albanian shows both patterns (heteromorphemic maximal onsets but tautomorphemic maximal codas).

Of the two languages compared here, the syllable patterns of Albanian are perhaps more in line with typical Indo-European patterns. This language family is associated with high syllable complexity; to my knowledge there are no languages in the family with Simple syllable structure and very few with Moderately Complex syllable structure. While the patterns of Albanian may not be atypical within the European region, they are considerably more complex than probably most of the languages in the family, which are concentrated in the Indo-Iranian branch. The syllable patterns of Albanian are known to have developed long after the split between this branch and Indo-Iranian. In a reconstruction of Proto-Albanian, Orel posits that a stress shift prompted by contact with Latin in the late stages of the language conditioned processes of vowel reduction and deletion which created at least some of the unusual onset patterns of Albanian. Unstressed initial vowels were deleted preceding sonorants in a process which later spread to other consonantal contexts: Early Proto-Albanian *ambi > Albanian mbi ‘on, upon,’ Early Proto-Albanian *en-grāja: > Albanian ngroh ~ ngrof ‘to warm’ (Orel 2000: 22).
8.4.3.5 Austronesian: Maori and Lelepa

Maori and Lelepa both belong to the Austronesian family of languages, another huge language family which has a wide distribution in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Both languages belong to the Oceanic genus, the largest branch of Austronesian which has many subgroups. Lynch et al. (2002) propose that Polynesian, the subgroup which Maori belongs to, and the Vanuatu languages to which Lelepa belongs fall within the same linkage group in the Oceanic genus. Maori is the indigenous language of New Zealand. Lelepa is one of the many indigenous languages of Vanuatu and is spoken on the islands of Lelepa and Efate in central Vanuatu (Lacrampe 2014).

Maori has Simple syllable structure, while Lelepa has Complex syllable structure. A summary of the phonological properties of these languages can be found in Table 8.6.

The segmental patterns of Maori and Lelepa largely follow the predictions based on crosslinguistic observations. Though both languages have relatively small consonant phoneme inventories, Lelepa's is larger than Maori's by four consonants. Lelepa has syllabic nasals and liquids, while Maori has no syllabic consonants. Maori has one consonant articulation associated with the Simple category, while Lelepa has no articulations associated with the Simple or Highly Complex categories. It should be noted here, however, that the Polynesian subgroup is believed to have undergone a dramatic loss of consonants as compared to other branches of Oceanic as the language family dispersed (Trudgill 2004). Therefore the consonant phoneme inventory of Maori is unusually small for the Oceanic group in general.

The suprasegmental patterns and allophonic processes of Maori and Lelepa correspond quite well to the prototypical patterns for the Simple and Highly Complex categories, respectively. Both languages have word stress and vowel reduction, with Lelepa having six distinct patterns and Maori only one. Domain environment conditions vowel reduction in Maori, while stress and consonantal environment additionally condition vowel reduction in Lelepa. The outcomes of vowel reduction in Lelepa are more extreme, as is typical for languages with more complex syllable structure. As for consonant allophony, Maori has assimilation and fortition processes. Lenition/spirantization processes occur in Lelepa, as does an assimilation process producing uvulars.

Lelepa has a morpheme/word ratio of 1.4, but this index could not be calculated for Maori. In Lelepa, maximal onset and coda clusters are tautomorphemic, though biconsonantal onsets may show both patterns (see example 22 in §3.3.6). Syllabic liquids and nasals in Lelepa occur as positional variants in certain phono-
## 8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

<table><caption>Table 8.6: Comparison of phonological properties of Maori and Lelepa.</caption><thead><tr><th></th><th>Maori</th><th>Lelepa</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Syllable patterns</td><td>Simple</td><td>Complex</td></tr><tr><td>Maximal syllable margins</td><td>Onset: 1; Coda: 0</td><td>Onset: 3; Coda: 2</td></tr><tr><td>Syllabic consonants</td><td>-</td><td>liquids, nasals</td></tr><tr><td>C phoneme inventory</td><td>/p t k φ h m n ŋ r w/</td><td>/kpʷ p t k f s ŋ mʷ m n ŋ l r w j/</td></tr><tr><td>N C phonemes</td><td>10</td><td>14</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Simple category</td><td>Flap/tap</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Articulations/contrasts associated with Highly Complex category</td><td>-</td><td>-</td></tr><tr><td>Word stress present?</td><td>Yes</td><td>Yes</td></tr><tr><td>Stress placement</td><td>Morph.- or lex.-determined</td><td>Fixed</td></tr><tr><td>N V reduction processes</td><td>1</td><td>6</td></tr><tr><td>Vs affected by reduction</td><td>all</td><td>all</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction environments</td><td>Word, Utterance</td><td>Consonant, Stress, Word</td></tr><tr><td>V reduction outcomes</td><td>Devoicing</td><td>Quality, Devoicing, Deletion</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in S articulations, lenition/sonorization</td><td>-</td><td>Obstruent voicing Spirantization</td></tr><tr><td>C allophony resulting in HC articulations, C-to-V assimilation, fortition</td><td>Affricate Palatalization Glide strengthening</td><td>Uvular</td></tr></tbody></table>
logical environments. It is unclear whether these variants occur in grammatical
morphemes.

Of the two languages examined here, Maori has syllable patterns which are
more characteristic of typical Austronesian, and especially Oceanic, patterns.
Four of the six Austronesian languages included in the current study have Sim-
ple syllable structure. Lelepa has syllable patterns which are quite unusual for
the family. Languages of Vanuatu are generally well-known for having unusual
phonological features (cf. Maddieson 1989a on linguolabial consonants in Vanu-
atu). While the syllable patterns of Lelepa are not typical for languages of Van-
uatu, they are more typical in comparison to an immediately adjacent language.
In South Efate, Thieberger reports invariable complex onsets in forms such as
*nskau* ‘reef’ and *tkau* ‘hook’ (Thieberger 2004: 63, 74). In fast speech there is an
ongoing process of unstressed medial vowel deletion, the vowels of which can
still be recovered in careful speech: e.g. *tesa* > *tsa* ‘child’ (Ibid. 75). Thieberger
states that this pattern was noted as early as 1926, and may reflect a long process
of change that sets South Efate apart from its northern neighbors. Further south
in the archipelago, Erromangan has complex onsets and a rich system of intervo-
calic clusters: *nrvat* ‘four,’ *wemplan* ‘butterfly’ (Crowley 1998: 20–22). The author
suggests these came about through unstressed vowel reduction; there is also a
productive process of word-initial vowel reduction in the language.

8.4.3.6 Summary of patterns

Comparing pairs of related languages with differing syllable patterns, we find
a fair amount of variation in the extent to which their phonological patterns
conform to the “prototypical” properties of languages in the Simple and Highly
Complex categories established earlier. Some patterns were more consistent than
others: 4/5 of the pairs followed the predicted pattern by which the language with
more complex syllable structure had a larger consonant phoneme inventory. The
pairs also typically fall in line with the predictions regarding syllabic consonants,
consonant allophony, and morphological properties.

Patterns within segment inventories were less predictable: languages often
had articulations associated with both ends of the syllable structure scale. It is
actually not appropriate to expect some of these segmental patterns to be cate-
gorical. For example, while the percentage of languages with affricates is higher
in the Highly Complex category than the Simple category, in general at least half
of languages from all categories had these sounds (§4.4.5), so it is not reasonable
to expect that languages in the Simple category are likely to lack them. Never-
theless, even disregarding specific articulations, there are unexpected patterns
8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

in the comparisons above: e.g. the presence of the same groups of Simple- and Highly Complex-associated articulations for both members of the Uto-Aztecan and Arawakan pairs.

Word stress is relevant in 4/5 pairs, and it is notable that in each of these, both members are reported to have word stress. This suggests that stress was relevant in the incipient stages of syllable structure change in the languages that eventually developed more complex syllable structure. A comparison of stress placement does not reveal strong trends. Sometimes the language with more complex syllable structure had more predictable stress placement patterns than its counterpart, sometimes not. The question of stress predictability and syllable structure change is still very much a puzzle in light of this data.

The related pairs are most reflective of the crosslinguistic trends in their vowel reduction patterns. In all pairs, vowel reduction is more prevalent in the language with more complex syllable structure. The effects of vowel reduction are also more extreme in the languages with more complex syllable structure in 3/4 languages for which vowel reduction is reported for both members of the pair. The Indo-European and Austronesian pairs follow the crosslinguistic trend by which languages with more complex syllable structure have stress-conditioned vowel reduction and languages with simpler syllable structure have other (usually domain) conditioning environments. In Uto-Aztecan and Arawakan, stress conditions vowel reduction in both members of the pair.

Some of the diachronic implications taken from the crosslinguistic trends in the sample find support in the pairs of languages examined here. Word stress and a high degree of morphological synthesis are relevant factors in the development of highly complex syllable structure. Vowel reduction persists and is in fact more prevalent and extreme in the members of the pairs which have higher syllable complexity. The size of consonant segment inventories is almost universally associated with syllable structure complexity, and the allophonic patterns producing articulations associated with Highly Complex syllable structure were largely found in the languages with simpler syllable structure, as expected. However, the specifics of segmental patterns did not generally match up as expected with syllable complexity. This suggests that phonologization of the consonant allophony processes observed in languages with simpler syllable structure may proceed in a different manner than expected, or that mechanisms of phonemicization are highly language-specific and proceed differently in different languages. Clearly there are many potential factors at play in the development of consonant phoneme inventories. An additional complication is that the pairs of related languages compared above may represent a variety of time depths, and that where the time depth is considerable (as with Darai and Albanian), there is a greater
likelihood that the phenomena examined here have been influenced by other
language-internal and -external factors.

In the following section, I revisit the historically attested case of Lezgian in
order to compare it with the findings here.

8.4.4 The case of Lezgian

To my knowledge, there are no cases of languages shifting from Simple syllable patterns to Highly Complex syllable patterns for which all stages of the process are historically documented. However, Lezgian presents a historically documented situation of dramatic syllable structure change in one syllable margin in the language.

Lezgian has recently undergone a process of high vowel syncope preceding stressed syllables, which changed its earlier canonical syllable structure of CV(C)(C) to today's (C)(C)CV(C)(C) pattern. As discussed in §6.1, processes of syncope continue to this day in the language. Transcriptions by Petr K. Uslar in 1896 suggest at first glance that pretonic high vowel syncope had not yet taken place: cf. Uslar's transcription χiper and modern transcription χper 'sheep (pl.)' (Haspelmath 1993: 36). However, Haspelmath (1993: 56) states that Uslar may have used the high vowel transcriptions to represent the residual palatalization and labialization left on the preceding consonant by the deletion process. These remnants of the reduction process can still be observed in some modern forms (as also noted by Chitoran & Babaliyeva 2007). Haspelmath notes that where modern spelling represents the pretonic high vowel, there is usually still palatalization or labialization on the consonant in pronunciation (3).

(3) Lezgian (Nakh-Daghestanian; Azerbaijan, Russia)

<table><thead><tr><th>Standard spelling</th><th>Phonemic form</th><th>Gloss</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>čükwer</td><td>tʃʰʷχʷer</td><td>'pear'</td></tr><tr><td>kifer</td><td>kʰiʃer</td><td>'plaits'</td></tr></tbody><tfoot><tr><td colspan="3">(Haspelmath 1993: 37)</td></tr></tfoot></table>

Perhaps this is not such a clear case of historical attestation of all stages of a
shift to Highly Complex syllable structure after all. However, another comment
of Haspelmath's hints at the implications that this process has for the segmental
patterns of the language:

The preservation of palatalization and labialization after vowel syncope
means that theoretically one would have to add more than a dozen palatal-
ized and labialized-palatalized obstruent phonemes to the consonant inventory. This is not done here because the change of vowel syncope is very recent and more research is needed to determine precisely all its implications. (Haspelmath 1993: 38)

To put Haspelmath’s quote in context, the consonant phoneme inventory he reports for Lezgian numbers 54 consonants and already has a number of labialized consonants (4).

(4) Consonant phoneme inventory of Lezgian

$$ \frac{p^h b^h t^h d^h t^w t^{wh} k^h g^h k^{wh} g^w q^h q^w q^{wh} ? p^t t^t k^t k^{tw} q^t q^{tw} \hat{t}s^t \hat{t}s^h}{\hat{t}s^w \hat{t}s^{wh} \hat{t}j^t \hat{t}j^h \hat{t}s^t' \hat{t}s^{tw} \hat{t}j^t' f^z s^w z^w \int_3 x^\chi k^\chi \hat{\chi}^w k^w h^m n^l r^j w^l} $$

In addressing how highly complex syllable structure develops out of relatively simple syllable structure, the Lezgian example provides the following: (i) the process was conditioned by stress, (ii) similar processes operate in the language to this day, (iii) the original process affected high vowels, (iv) consonant allophony associated with this process apparently followed, rather than preceded, the vowel reduction (similarly, any segments which are phonemicized from these patterns will follow the vowel reduction), and (v) since Lezgian has very few prefixes, the process has only created tautomorphemic clusters up to now.

The first two properties are consistent with the crosslinguistic patterns established in this book. The third property is also consistent with the finding that vowel reduction is more likely to affect high vowels in languages with non-Highly Complex patterns (§6.3.3). The fourth property is not consistent with the patterns suggested by the crosslinguistic data here, which imply that stress may condition consonant allophony before it conditions vowel reduction in a language. Finally, the last pattern is not consistent with the strong role that morphology is expected to play in the development of highly complex syllable structure.

Thus it seems that the case of Lezgian confirms some of the diachronic implications derived from the crosslinguistic patterns in previous chapters, but also diverges with respect to a few of these implications. I will return to this point in §8.4.6. In the following section I turn to a discussion of language contact as a factor in syllable structure change.
8.4.5 Language contact and syllable structure complexity

As mentioned in the introductory chapters, complex syllable structure, and especially highly complex syllable structure, is limited in its geographical distribution. The Pacific Northwest area of North America and the Caucasus region, in particular, are famous “hotspots” for syllable complexity; in these regions, groups of unrelated languages may be found to have similarly remarkably complex syllable structure (Chirikba 2008; Thompson & Kinkade 1990). As defined in the current study, languages with highly complex syllable patterns may be found in every geographical macro-area (see Figure 8.1). However, despite attempts to make the language sample as geographically balanced as possible, most of the languages in the Highly Complex category can be found in geographical proximity to others in the category.

<figure><img src="image_59.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8.1: Geographical distribution of languages in Highly Complex portion of sample.</figcaption></figure>

In Figure 8.1, there are the expected clusters of languages in the Pacific Northwest and Caucasus regions. Smaller clusters of unrelated languages include: Tohono O'odham and Cocopa in the Sonoran Desert region, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet and Mohawk in the northeastern region of the USA and Canada, and Qawasqar and Tehuelche in Patagonia. Even three of the languages with Highly Complex syllable structure as a minor pattern – Alamblak, Menya, and Wutung
8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

- are found in relative geographic proximity to one another in New Guinea. In most of these regions, there is historical and linguistic evidence of long-term cultural contact among unrelated ethnolinguistic groups. For example, while Tohono O'odham and Cocopa are not known to have been in intensive direct contact with each other, recall the discussion from §8.4.3 noting that languages from the Tepiman branch of Uto-Aztecan and those of the Yuman family are known to have a long history of contact.

In a few cases, the evidence suggests that phonological patterns of languages in the sample have changed in the context of language contact. As mentioned in §8.4.3, Lelepa is known to be in direct contact with other languages with similarly complex syllable patterns. In the preface to a volume titled *Angan Languages Are Different*, Healey (1981: 4) writes that the Angan language family to which Menya belongs is “characterized by phonological complexity unusual in this country”. Wurm and colleagues remark on the “aberrant” nature of Angan languages within the Trans-New Guinea context and suggest that the characteristics of this small family suggest a “strong super-imposition upon an older, probably unrelated language type” (1977: 310). This seems to imply a contact or substrate origin for some of the phonological differences that Angan languages exhibit.

That syllable structure complexity has been described as a feature of linguistic areas known for their diversity such as the Pacific Northwest and the Caucasus suggests that such patterns can spread from one language to another in situations of heavy language contact and bi- or multilingualism. Yet we know from observations of loanword adaptation that novel syllable structures are not easily borrowed; one of the major crosslinguistic loci of epenthesis processes is precisely in this context (Hall 2011). This raises the question of how syllable patterns, especially highly complex ones that are crosslinguistically rare to begin with, converge in languages in situations of contact.

It has been noted that in situations of language contact, prosodic and supraseg-
mental phenomena are more likely to diffuse than phonemes (chapters in Aikhen-
vald & Dixon 2001a). There is a growing body of empirical evidence for this obser-
vation. Mennen (2004) found that Dutch-Greek bilinguals who acquired Greek
in adulthood transferred peak alignment patterns from Dutch into their Greek
speech. Native speakers of Tswana were found not to apply phrase-final length-
ening in their English speech, in accordance with their L1 patterns, setting the
intonational properties of their speech apart from those of South African English
and Afrikaans English speakers (Coetzee & Wissing 2007). Simonet (2011) reports
that Spanish-Majorcan Catalan bilinguals tend to transfer utterance-final pitch
accents from their L1 to their L2. In a study of English-Mexican Spanish bilin-
guals in Los Angeles, Robles-Puente (2014) found that both speakers who had
moved to Los Angeles in childhood and those who had been born in Los Angeles
to immigrant parents retained Mexican Spanish intonational contours in their
Spanish and English speech.

As discussed in previous chapters, the component of speech prosody which
has been most often associated with syllable complexity is speech rhythm. In-
strumental investigations providing evidence for the influence of L1 rhythmic
patterns on L2 (and sometimes vice versa) are becoming more prevalent in the lit-
erature. White & Mattys (2007) measured acoustic correlates of rhythm in native
and non-native English, Dutch, Spanish, and French speech. They found that L1
has an effect on L2 which is observable in the rhythm metrics VarcoV (standard
deviation of vocalic interval duration divided by the mean vocalic duration) and
%V (proportion of vocalic intervals). In L2 speech, the values for these metrics
usually fell somewhere between the values measured for native speech in each
of the languages. A comparison of the Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) metric in
the speech of Spanish monolinguals and speakers of Hispanic English revealed a
Spanish substrate influence on the speech of the latter (Carter 2005). Further, the
rhythmic properties of Hispanic English were found to be quite uniform across
speakers regardless of generation, which the author suggests may be indicative
of long-term persistence of the substrate influence. Robles-Puente (2014) found
that English-Spanish bilinguals who had been in Los Angeles since childhood or
were raised there by immigrant parents showed Spanish-like rhythm in both lan-
guages. Finally, the effect may go the other way as well: Afrikaans-Spanish bilin-
guals who had been living in a Spanish-dominant environment (in Patagonia)
for at least two-thirds of their lives were found to show more Spanish-like val-
ues for the nPVI-V metric in their Afrikaans speech than non-bilingual Afrikaans
speakers (Coetzee et al. 2015).

Because the rhythm metrics mentioned in the research above correspond to
durational properties of consonant and vowel intervals, they may reflect tim-
ing patterns which relate directly to syllable structure complexity. There is at
least one case in which the instrumentally-confirmed rhythmic properties of a
language correspond to a historically documented process of contact-induced
syllable structure change. This is the case of Moroccan Arabic.

Dialects of Arabic spoken in North Africa, also known as Western Arabic, have
often been said to have phonetic and rhythmic properties which differ markedly
from those of the dialects spoken in the Middle East (Eastern Arabic dialects). In
a perceptual experiment, native speakers of various dialects of Arabic were able
to correctly identify Arabic speakers as coming from North Africa or the Middle
8.4 The development of Highly Complex syllable structure

East 98% of the time (Barkat et al. 1999). In this task, speakers mentioned that the perceptual characteristics of Western Arabic which helped them make this identification were that it sounded “faster” than Eastern Arabic and had a “jerky” or “halting” sound (Ghazali et al. 2002). All varieties of Arabic have been described as stress-timed in the literature; however, the salient perceptual differences between Western and Eastern Arabic have prompted instrumental investigations into the nature of rhythmic timing in the various dialects. An analysis of the acoustic properties of Western (specifically Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian) and Eastern (specifically Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian) dialects of Arabic revealed extreme differences in their values for metrics used to quantify speech rhythm properties (Hamdi et al. 2004). Western Arabic dialects had values for ΔC (standard deviation in consonant intervals) and %V (proportion of vocalic intervals) which were even more extreme than those found for the “prototypical” stress-timed language English. The ΔC and %V values for Eastern Arabic dialects put these languages closer to French, which is said to have syllable timing. Of the three Western Arabic dialects, Moroccan Arabic had the most extreme high ΔC and low %V values. The authors attributed this pattern to the frequent deletion of short vowels in this dialect, which creates consonant clusters and syllabic consonants, and also to the generally shorter duration noted for both phonologically long and short vowels in this dialect as compared to Eastern Arabic dialects.

Chtatou (1997) notes that the phonetics, phonology, morphology, and lexicon of Moroccan Arabic have been heavily influenced by contact with the Amazigh (Berber) languages indigenous to the region, including Tamazight, Tarifit, and Tashlhiyt, with influences being likened to heavy substrate effects. In the most recently Arabized regions, Moroccan Arabic may be so phonetically different from other Western dialects of Arabic that speakers of the other dialects have trouble understanding it (Ibid. 105). Some of the phonetic differences can be attributed to patterns of vowel reduction resulting in complex consonant clusters. Recall from previous examples that Tashlhiyt has highly complex syllable structure due to the prevalence of syllabic consonants in the language, which frequently result in long word-marginal strings of consonants or even words without vowels. In accordance with the phonetic patterns of local Amazigh dialects, Moroccan Arabic varieties are characterized by rampant vowel reduction resulting in tautosyllabic clusters or syllabic consonants, depending on the analysis. This is apparent when comparing Classical Arabic (CA) forms to their Moroccan Arabic (MA) equivalents: e.g. CA /na.di.ma/ > MA /n.dm/ ‘to regret,’ CA /ta.qa:.ba.la/ > MA /t.qa:.bl/ ‘to meet’ (Chtatou 1997: 110). We see from comparison with Eastern dialects of Arabic that this pattern is unique to Moroccan Arabic. Other dialects have kept
most of the vowels of Classical Arabic, though vowel quality changes may have
occurred (5):

(5) Comparison of forms in Classical Arabic, Eastern dialects, and Moroccan Arabic

CA *katabtu* > Egyptian Arabic *katabt* > MA *ktbt* ‘I wrote’

CA *taktubu* > Saudi Arabic *tiktib* > MA *ka tktb* ‘you (m) write’

CA *taskunu* > Iraqi Arabic *tiskin* > MA *ka tskn* ‘you (m) live’ (Chtatou 1997: 111–112)

This pattern of vowel deletion is extremely productive and applied quite gen-
erally to loanwords. The most common pattern in syllable structure adaptation
in lexical items from Classical Arabic is the deletion of short vowels and the
preservation of long ones, as in the word for ‘to meet’ given above. Similar pat-
terns may be observed in the adaptation of French loanwords into Moroccan
Arabic: e.g. Fr. *direction* > MA *drksju:n* ‘direction;’ Fr. *tracteur* > MA *trktu:r* ‘tractor’ (Chtatou 1997: 116; note that the final prosodically prominent vowel has been
retained). Sayahi (2005) describes a number of patterns by which vowel-initial
Spanish loanwords into Moroccan Arabic are made to have more complex syl-
lable structure: e.g. Sp. *equipo* > MA *lkipo* ‘team;’ Sp. *espia* > MA *spia* ‘spy;’ Sp.
*enfermero* > MA *frmiro* ‘nurse.’

The phenomenon described above is quite interesting, because reported in-
stances of nativization of syllable patterns in the literature tend to involve the
simplification of patterns; e.g. English *technostress* > Japanese *tekunosutoresu*
(Kay 1995: 69). Similarly, when languages with complex syllable structure borrow
words from languages with simpler syllable structure, segmental patterns are of-
ten nativized, but syllable patterns are usually retained; e.g. Japanese *tsunami*
([tsunami] > English [su]nami; English *Hamlet* > Russian [g]am[l']et. Both Mo-
roccan Arabic and Amazigh varieties have phonological words which are similar
in shape to the Classical Arabic, French, and Spanish source words given above;
e.g. Tashlhiyt *tifunasin* ‘cows,’ Moroccan Arabic *hadak* ‘DEM.’ Thus it is not read-
ily apparent why loanwords would be borrowed in such a way as to create such
complex onsets. This is a case in which morphosyntactic patterns of the lan-
guage may have some effect on the phonological adaptation of loanwords. In
Moroccan Arabic, as in Tashlhiyt, the inflectional morphology of the language
relies in part on nonconcatenative processes which can be lexically determined
and dependent upon the phonological form of words, many of which have com-
plex clusters and also tend to be monosyllabic (Heath 2007). Perhaps loanword
adaptation is in part affected by analogy to such patterns. Nevertheless, as we
know from the historical and comparative evidence, those very patterns origi-
nated in highly productive patterns of vowel reduction which were carried over
from Amazigh.

The case of Moroccan Arabic suggests that native properties of speech rhythm,
including vowel reduction and tendencies toward longer consonant intervals and
shorter vowel intervals in speech, may be transferred by speakers to an L2 much
in the same way that intonational contours are transferred. In situations of in-
tense cultural contact and high rates of bilingualism and multilingualism, it is
easy to imagine rhythmic properties being transferred in this way among un-
related languages with the effect that similar syllable patterns may be found in
them.

8.4.6 Development of Highly Complex syllable structure: Conclusions
and questions

Syllable structure has long been known to become more complex through pro-
cesses of vowel reduction. The associations between syllable complexity and
other phonetic, phonological, and morphological properties suggest that the path
to highly complex syllable structure additionally tends to include other specific
processes and properties in addition to vowel reduction or deletion.

It is clear from the crosslinguistic trends, the comparison of related pairs of lan-
guages, and the case study of Lezgian that stress-conditioned vowel reduction,
in particular, is almost always relevant in the development of highly complex
syllable structure. The findings here also point to the persistence and increas-
ing prevalence of vowel reduction as syllable structure becomes more complex.
Morphologically complex contexts are more often than not a factor, though the
Lezgian example shows that this does not always have to be the case.

Consonant inventory size is additionally strongly associated with syllable com-
plexity, and specific consonantal articulations with either end of the syllable com-
plexity scale. However, the crosslinguistic patterns in specific segmental con-
trasts were not strongly upheld in the comparisons of related languages. The
comparisons of related pairs of languages largely showed the expected patterns
with respect to a higher prevalence of consonant allophony in the languages with
simpler syllable patterns, but in the Lezgian example, place assimilation of con-
sonants to vowels occurs concurrently with, or shortly following, vowel reduc-
tion. Perhaps the inconsistent patterns with respect to consonantal articulations
and consonant-affecting processes are related to the speed with which vowel
reduction affects syllable structure patterns, or even the specific kind of vowel
reduction operating within a language (e.g. quality, devoicing, reduction in duration). That is, the same underlying mechanisms for vowel reduction may also condition consonant processes that lead to larger inventories, albeit in complex and varied ways. Without detailed historical accounts, it is difficult to identify the specific patterns that consonant changes may take as part of a larger process of syllable structure change. However, the consistent differences in consonant phoneme inventory size in languages with simpler and more complex syllable structure suggest that there is a non-coincidental relationship there.

Another important consideration in the development of highly complex syllable structure is the issue of contact and transfer of rhythmic properties from one language to another. It is not clear whether we should expect many correlates of highly complex syllable structure to occur when syllable complexity is increased as a result of rhythmic transfer from one language to another in situations of intense contact. Perhaps this is another case where segmental, allophonic, and even morphological patterns may deviate from the predictions derived from the crosslinguistic patterns.

A question that still remains open is how, specifically, the diachronic path leading to highly complex syllable structure gets started in a language. In light of the findings and discussions above, I have one specific hypothesis which is based on observations of vowel reduction patterns in languages with Simple syllable structure. Recall from the summary of vowel reduction processes in §6.3.6 that the most common process type in the Simple category is the devoicing of vowels at word or phrase/utterance margins. In the comparison of pairs in §8.4.3, 3/4 languages with the simpler syllable patterns (Ute, Apurinã, and Maori) have vowel devoicing as an outcome of vowel reduction. This proportion, though derived from a tiny group of languages, is larger than the overall proportion of languages in the Simple category which have devoicing as an outcome of vowel reduction (6/13). That is, in language families in which both extreme syllable patterns occur, such that there is the phonological and morphological potential for languages with simpler syllable patterns to follow a similar path as their relatives with more complex phonotactics, devoicing is very likely to be an outcome of vowel reduction in the languages with simpler patterns. This is interesting, because vowel reduction resulting in devoicing may be a more likely source of incipient syllable structure change than other forms of reduction. This is because devoiced vowels, especially in domain-marginal contexts, may be easily lost or restructured as glottal fricatives or aspiration. In Apurinã, it has been noted that stops become aspirated preceding a devoiced unstressed vowel (6).
(6) Apurinã (Arawakan; Brazil)
/ka'jati/
[ka'jatʰi]

‘paca (large rodent)’ (Facundes 2000: 60–61)

The Apurinã example suggests that the properties of the devoiced vowel are becoming associated with the consonant, providing an ideal context for sound change, and in this case, syllable structure change.<fnref n="2" /> As described in §3.2.3, a similar process of vowel devoicing in Ute has already affected the syllable patterns in that language. If domain-marginal vowel devoicing occurs in a language with word stress, perhaps such devoicing processes could disrupt the rhythmic patterns of the language, leading eventually to a stronger role of stress and associated segmental effects. This topic would be a good avenue for further research.

In Figure 8.2 I show how highly complex syllable structure and its associated properties might develop out of simpler syllable structure and its properties, according to the findings here.

In the discussions above I explored how highly complex syllable structure might arise over time in special phonological, morphological, and even sociolin- guistic contexts. While there are still open questions regarding the details of these paths, I believe that the evidence shows that the processes involved are quite natural and common patterns of language change, a fact that stands in stark contrast to the frequent description of highly complex structures as marked or dispreferred. In the following section I discuss the long-term stability of these structures.

## 8.5 Highly complex syllable structure: A stable and motivated pattern

Recall from the discussion of the literature in Chapter 1 that many of the proper- ties of highly complex syllable structure – the size and composition of clusters, the presence of syllabic obstruents, its association with morphological complex- ity – are crosslinguistically rare and/or theoretically problematic. Abstract the- oretical accounts for the structures rarely touch upon practical aspects of these “dispreferred” patterns such as their maintenance and stability in speech commu- nities in the long term. I discuss some of these issues here.

<footnote n="2">²On the other hand, the aspiration analysis may simply be another way of noting the devoiced vowel.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_60.png" /><figcaption>Figure 8.2: Proposed path of development for highly complex syllable structure out of simpler syllable patterns.</figcaption></figure>
### 8.5.1 Synchronic stability of Highly Complex syllable structure

In Chapter 6 it was found that 21/25 of the languages in the Highly Complex category were reported to have processes of vowel reduction. The 15 languages in this category with stress-conditioned vowel reduction had on average three such processes as ongoing synchronic patterns. Altogether, processes of vowel deletion or reduction were found to alter syllable patterns in 13 of the languages in this category, either by turning onsets into codas, producing tautosyllabic clusters, or producing syllabic consonants. As mentioned in that chapter, what the crosslinguistic data suggests is that vowel reduction has the strongest effects on syllable structure in languages in which such processes have previously altered the canonical syllable patterns.

Because highly complex syllable patterns are so crosslinguistically rare and “dispreferred,” we might expect to see in these languages more instances of simplification of syllable patterns than instances of syllable structure becoming more complex. As the discussion of directionality in §8.4.1 suggests, this does not seem to be the case. In that discussion, I mentioned incipient processes of variable epenthesis and historical processes of cluster simplification. Here I present additional information regarding the stability of highly complex syllable structure by discussing regular (phonologized) processes of epenthesis and active processes of cluster simplification.

An analysis of the languages in the Highly Complex category revealed that nine languages have regular phonological processes of epenthesis which break up consonant clusters. There are two kinds of epenthesis patterns which are characteristic of the languages of this group: processes which break up sequences of sounds which are identical or highly similar (e.g. sequences of sibilants), and processes which break up sequences of two sonorants or a sonorant and obstruent. I give an example of the latter process type in (7).

(7) Yakima Sahaptin (Sahaptian; USA)

a. /ʔínm/

[ʔínm]

‘excessively’

b. /t͡i̥'jálm/

[t͡i̥'jálim]

‘Cle Elum (place name)’

(Hargus & Beavert 2006: 28)

c. /talújm/

[talújim]

‘nail’
Similar processes can also be found in Kabardian and Doyayo, among others. What is interesting about such patterns is that they do not target the long sequences of obstruents which are prototypical of highly complex syllable structure.

An analysis of active (variable) processes of consonant deletion resulting in cluster simplification turned up similar results. There are ten languages with such patterns. Interestingly, such processes typically affect sonorants or glottal fricatives in these languages. While the affected sound in the example in (8) is transcribed as a voiced fricative, it patterns phonotactically with sonorants in Georgian (Shosted & Chikovani 2006: 261).

(8) Georgian (Kartvelian; Georgia)
/vprrtskʰvni/
[φprrtskʰvni] ~ [prtskʰvni]
'I peel'
(Shosted & Chikovani 2006: 261)<fnref n="3" />

Again, the prototypical syllable patterns of these languages are not strongly affected by such processes. It should also be noted that four of the languages with processes like these have Highly Complex structures as a minor pattern (Alamblak, Kunjen, Menya, and Wutung).

The distribution of processes of epenthesis and consonant deletion, as compared to the distribution of vowel reduction processes, suggests that despite theoretical issues of analysis, highly complex syllable structure is neither problematic for speakers, nor synchronically unstable in speech communities. The phonetic processes responsible for creating these syllable patterns appear to be both remarkably persistent and more prevalent than processes which “repair” them, at least in languages which have Highly Complex syllable structure as a prevalent pattern.

### 8.5.2 Diachronic stability of syllable complexity

Complex syllable structure may show long-term stability within language families and regions. This is apparent in examining the geographical distribution of maximal syllable structure patterns. In constructing the language sample for the current study, it was impossible to find the Simple pattern within Eurasia, and very difficult to find such patterns in North America, such that 2/3 languages

<footnote n="3">³Elsewhere in this book I have followed Aronson (1991) in transcribing the voiced labial fricative of Georgian as bilabial /β/; however, some researchers classify it as a labiodental /v/. I use /v/ in this example to preserve Shosted & Chikovani’s transcription.</footnote>
8.5 Highly complex syllable structure: A stable and motivated pattern

from this region in the Simple portion of the sample actually have Moderately Complex patterns. If we assume that the complex syllable patterns of these regions developed at some point out of simpler patterns, then the geographical distributions suggest that, once it develops, syllable complexity tends to persist for long periods of time. Similarly, a recent study of maximal syllable shapes in four proposed linguistic areas found that the patterns were more closely associated with language families than with regions, though there was limited evidence for convergence in parts of the Caucasus and Pacific Northwest (Napoleão de Souza 2017). The author's interpretation of the findings was that syllable structure patterns may be a generally stable phonological property of languages, persisting for long periods of time within language families. If one considers only the universal preference for CV structures, these distributional facts are unexpected. We might expect that strong cognitive or physiological pressures favoring CV over all other syllable types would manifest crosslinguistically in such a way that languages with canonical (C)V patterns could be found in any language family or region.

From a diachronic point of view, the observed patterns may relate to the way
that vowel reduction, vowel epenthesis, and consonant deletion tend to oper-
ate within languages. Vowel deletion may cause canonical syllable patterns to
change from fairly simple to quite complex in a relatively short period of time,
such that a language which previously had only simple onsets may, just a few
generations later, have a wide variety of highly complex clusters (e.g. Lezgian).
The opposite scenario, in which highly complex syllable patterns in a language
are uniformly simplified by epenthesis in a short period of time, seems very un-
likely. Crosslinguistically, epenthesis processes tend to target specific phonotac-
tic environments or sequences of sounds (Hall 2011). While such processes might
simplify some specific syllable shapes in a language, they might leave many oth-
ers unaffected, such that the overall syllable pattern of the language is still com-
plex (cf. the Yakima Sahaptin example in 7). Unless vowel epenthesis becomes a
completely general process, or occurs in multiple iterations with different conso-
nant sequences (both of which seem unlikely given crosslinguistic patterns), it
is hard to imagine such a process dramatically changing the syllable patterns of
a language in a short period of time. This also seems unlikely from an articula-
tory point of view, given that the widespread temporal adjustments to gestural
organization required of such a scenario would run against general tendencies to-
wards increased overlap and reduction of gestures (Browman & Goldstein 1992b).
Similarly, processes of cluster reduction, as noted above, often target specific se-
quences, and it is hard to imagine these operating so generally as to obliterate
both word-marginal and word-internal clusters in a language to the point where
they dramatically affect canonical syllable patterns.

It seems that in the case of syllable structure, a high degree of complexity
may be introduced quite rapidly into the system, but once there, it is difficult to
completely remove. Historical processes suggest this is the case. In the Middle
English (ME) period, a series of vowel epenthesis processes targeted certain con-
sonant sequences in the language which had been present in Old English (OE):
e.g. OE *niht* > ME *nyhyt* ‘night;’ OE *myln* > ME *milne* ‘mill’ (Jones 1989: 167, 170).
Similarly, some codas were lost through sonorization processes: e.g. West Saxon
OE *he*¯ *g* > ME *hei* ‘hay’ (Ibid. 150). Meanwhile, cluster simplification processes
reduced /kn/ and /gn/ onsets (Minkova 2003). Despite these changes to syllable
patterns, which were quite widespread judging from orthographic evidence, on-
set clusters such as /pl/ and /fr/, and codas such as /nd/, were not affected by
such processes: cf. OE *ploga* ‘plough,’ OE *fre*¯ *ond* ‘friend.’ Thus while syllable
complexity was simplified at the level of specific sequences in the language, and
simple syllable shapes perhaps became more frequent, the canonical syllable pat-
terns of the language were not strongly affected. By comparison, later processes
of vowel deletion added considerably to the complexity of coda patterns in the
language, yielding what are today the maximal tautosyllabic clusters in the lan-
guage: *si*[ksθs], *te*[ksts], and so on.

8.5.3 Phonetic properties of Highly Complex syllable patterns and long-term stability

Researchers often remark upon the salient phonetic characteristics of highly com-
plex syllable patterns. In §3.4.3 I presented a variety of phonetic descriptions of
consonant (usually obstruent) clusters in languages from the Highly Complex
portion of the sample. The accounts describe the clusters in these languages as be-
ing characterized by “open transition,” “transitional vocoids,” “overtones,” “strong
aspirated release,” “audible intervals,” and so on. These phonetic properties are
described for sequences analyzed as clusters and those analyzed as syllabic ob-
struents, and all share properties typical of intrusive vowels as defined by Hall
(2006). In my previous discussion of these patterns, I concluded that such tran-
sitions are a prominent characteristic of Highly Complex syllable structure and
constitute a phonetic correlate of this language type. I propose that these salient
phonetic characteristics, which derive from temporal properties of gestural or-
ganization, facilitate the long-term maintenance and stability of highly complex
syllable patterns which most models of the syllable predict to be dispreferred.
## 8.5 Highly complex syllable structure: A stable and motivated pattern

There is a small body of research which relates the temporal properties of gestural organization of obstruent sequences to perceptual recoverability. Consonant clusters have been found to be characterized by less overlap between gestures when occurring in word-initial position than in other positions (cf. Byrd 1996b for English). In a perceptual recoverability account, word-initial position may correspond to utterance-initial position in discourse. If a word-initial sequence of obstruents, especially stops, occurs in utterance-initial position, there is no vowel preceding the first consonant which could provide acoustic cues as to its place of articulation. A release of the first stop would cue acoustic information on its place of articulation, while heavy overlap with the following consonant would obscure such acoustic cues. Perception of the first stop would be additionally facilitated if a vocalic transition is present, since this allows for a greater distribution of acoustic cues in time (Ridouane & Fougeron 2011: 294). In this view, gestural organization strategies resulting in a temporal lag between word-initial obstruents may have a perceptual motivation; that is, overlap between consonant gestures may be suppressed in order to preserve phonetic cues.

Perceptual recoverability has been suggested as a motivation behind timing patterns observed in clusters in Korean (Silverman & Jun 1994), Tsou (Wright 1996), Georgian (Chitoran et al. 2002), and Tashlhiyt (Ridouane & Fougeron 2011). Some of these studies have shown that it is not just word onset position, but also the relative place of articulation of the consonants in sequence which contribute to observed temporal lag, which somewhat weakens the original argument for perceptual recoverability. Indeed, most of the phonetic descriptions of highly complex clusters in §3.4.3 do not refer specifically to word-initial or even onset environments, but instead mention specific sequences of consonants. In Cocopa, for example, transitional elements can be found in at least some word-final consonant sequences (9).

(9) Cocopa (Cochimi-Yuman; USA)

kªmyúxᵢ¶

‘I hope that somehow you will’ (Crawford Jr 1966: 47)

Additionally, Chitoran & Cohn (2009) note that in Georgian onsets, the timing lag between consonant gestures is larger than what is needed for the release burst to be perceptually recoverable. They further suggest that timing differences between consonant sequences in Georgian reflect phonologized patterns of language-specific gestural organization.

Considering that obstruent clusters in languages with highly complex syllable structure come about through vowel reduction, and that place characteristics of
the original vowel may be retained in release bursts (cf. descriptions of clusters in
Lezgian and Tohono O'odham in §3.4.3), it seems more likely that perceptual re-
coverability is an effect of, rather than a motivation for, the gestural organization
of clusters in these languages. I suggest that the gestural timing and perceptual
properties of such sequences may facilitate the long-term maintenance of highly
complex syllable patterns by making them less susceptible to complete overlap
resulting in consonant deletion (Browman & Goldstein 1990).

8.6 Topics for further research

In this book I have shown that highly complex syllable structure is a holistic
linguistic type associated with a number of phonetic, phonological, and mor-
phological correlates. Additionally, the crosslinguistic patterns identified here
may point to general tendencies in the diachronic development of these struc-
tures. However, there are many ways in which the studies here can be expanded.
Some of the results also suggest lines of research outside of the range of standard
phonological typology.

An issue which should be explored in more depth is that of the type frequency
of syllable patterns. This issue was touched upon only briefly in the discussion of
the prevalence of highly complex patterns in Chapter 3. A finer-grained analysis
of frequency patterns may refine our understanding of how processes of vowel
reduction and consonant allophony work their way through the language as syl-
lable structure changes. Similarly, the treatment of morphology was necessarily
brief and general in the current study, but there is ample ground for further re-
search here. Relevant topics may include the type (e.g. prefixing, suffixing, infix-
ing, templatic, etc.) and function (inflection, compounding, lexical class-changing
derivation, lexical affixation, etc.) of morphological patterns which occur in tau-
tosyllabic clusters of different degrees of complexity. Additionally, it would be
interesting to establish a crosslinguistic range for the distribution of morpho-
logically simple and complex tautosyllabic clusters or syllable inventories, as
the results here point to a great deal of variation with respect to such distri-
butions even within the Highly Complex portion of the sample. Though such
studies have been conducted for a handful of European languages (Dressler &
Dziubalska-Kołaczyk 2006, Dressler et al. 2010, inter alia), a truly global examina-
tion of these issues could better inform our understanding of the development of
phonotactic complexity. A preliminary investigation in this vein suggests that at
least for onsets, morphologically complex consonant clusters are more restricted
in their structure and distribution than morpheme-internal clusters in a variety
of ways (Easterday 2019).
Another issue which deserves more attention is that of language contact and syllable structure complexity. While linguistic areas such as the Pacific Northwest and the Caucasus region are well known for unusual syllable complexity, possibly as an effect of contact, some patterns noted above suggest that this phenomenon may be relatively frequent at an even smaller scale. The situation of Lelepa and its neighbors is especially striking because it shows emerging complexity at a very local level in a situation of contact, but within a larger family which is famous for its simple syllable patterns (Oceanic). A global survey of similar small-scale clusters of syllable patterns may reveal important information about the role of contact in the development of phonological complexity.

Finally, the results of the current study suggest that there are properties of gestural organization associated with both synchronic characteristics of highly complex syllable patterns and diachronic stages of their development. Synchronically, the obstruent clusters associated with these syllable patterns are characterized by open transitions between consonantal gestures which may in many cases have their source in processes of vowel reduction. Diachronically, the contrastive consonant articulations associated with these languages may originate in patterns of increased overlap of consonantal and vocalic gestures and strengthening of consonantal gestures at some point in the history of these languages, perhaps even before the development of complex syllable patterns. There is a growing literature of instrumental investigations of gestural organization in the syllable patterns of diverse languages. Many of these studies are relevant to the issues examined here concerning properties of consonant clusters (cf. Goldstein et al. 2007 for Georgian and Tashlhiyt, Hermes et al. 2013 for Italian, Marin 2014 for Romanian, Butler 2015 for Khmer and Bunong, Marin et al. 2017 for seven European languages) and syllabic consonants (cf. Hermes et al. 2011 for Tashlhiyt, Pouplier & Beňuš 2011 for Slovak). The findings in the current study reveal a prevalence of vowel reduction in languages with more complex syllable patterns and suggest a prevalence of coarticulation of consonants with adjacent vowels and strengthening in languages with simpler syllable patterns. In light of these findings, it would be interesting to instrumentally investigate general patterns of gestural organization as they pertain to those specific issues in languages with differing syllable complexity.
<figure><img src="image_61.png" /></figure>
# Appendix A: Language sample

Information on the language sample used in the study is listed in Tables A.1–A.4.

## Key to reading tables

(ISO) ISO 693-3: ISO 693-3 code for language used in survey.

**Language:** Dialect is given in parentheses where relevant.

(MA) Macro-area: Following Dryer (1989: 268; 1992: 83, 133–135).

(A) Africa: continent of Africa, including Semitic languages of southwest Asia.

(ANG) Australia & New Guinea: Australian continent and Melanesia, excluding Austronesian languages of Melanesia.

(EA) Eurasia: Eurasian landmass, excluding Semitic and languages from families of southeast Asia as defined below, and including the Munda languages of Austro-Asiatic.

(NA) North America: North American continent, including languages of Mexico, Mayan and Aztecan languages in Central America, and some branches of Chibchan-Paezan.

(SA) South America: South American continent, including languages of Central America except Mayan and Aztecan languages, and some Chibchan-Paezan branches.

(SEA) Southeast Asia & Oceania: Southeast Asian region, including all Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, Hmong-Mien, and Austro-Asiatic languages excluding Munda, and Oceania region (Austronesian languages).

(Tlf) Top-level family and Subfamily: Following genealogical classifications listed in Glottolog 3.3 (Hammarström et al. 2018).

(Pop) Speaker Population: L1 speaker population figure for language (or specific dialect) given in Ethnologue 21 (Simons & Fennig 2018). An asterisk indicates
A Language sample

that another source was used for population estimate; these can be found be-
neath the table.

**Date:** Date given in Ethnologue 21 (Simons & Fennig 2018) for speaker popula-
tion figure.

(Vit) Vitality Status: Following Ethnologue 21 (Simons & Fennig 2018).

(I) **Institutional**: language has wide use in the home and community and official status at educational, provincial, national, and/or international levels.

(D) **Developing**: language is used in the home, community, and sometimes broader contexts, and in initial stages of developing a system of writing and standardization.

(V) **Vigorous**: language is used in the home and community by speakers of all generations, but has not yet developed a system of graphization or standardization.

(T) **In trouble**: language is currently in the process of losing intergenerational transmission, with the community shifting to other languages for daily use, but there are still speakers of child-bearing age.

(†) **Dying**: language has lost intergenerational transmission entirely, and all fluent speakers are above child-bearing age.
<table><caption>Table A.1: Portion of language sample with Simple syllable structure.</caption><thead><tr><th>ISO</th><th>Language</th><th>MA</th><th>Tlf</th><th>Subfamily</th><th>Pop</th><th>Date</th><th>Vit</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>hts</td><td>Hadza</td><td>A</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>950</td><td>2013</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>grj</td><td>Southern Grebo</td><td>A</td><td>Atlantic-Congo</td><td>Volta-Congo</td><td>65,000</td><td>2012</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>yor</td><td>Yoruba</td><td>A</td><td>Atlantic-Congo</td><td>Volta-Congo</td><td>19,043,700</td><td>1993</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>mhi</td><td>Ma'di</td><td>A</td><td>Central Sudanic</td><td>Moru-Madi</td><td>293,000</td><td>2014</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>bbo</td><td>Southern Bobo Madaré</td><td>A</td><td>Mande</td><td>Western Mande</td><td>181,000</td><td>2009</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>svs</td><td>Savosavo</td><td>ANG</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>2,420</td><td>1999</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>kbk</td><td>Grass Koiari</td><td>ANG</td><td>Koiarian</td><td>Koiaric</td><td>1,700</td><td>2000</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>roo</td><td>Rotokas</td><td>ANG</td><td>North Bougainville</td><td>Rotokas-Askopan</td><td>4,320</td><td>1981</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>kjs</td><td>East Kewa</td><td>ANG</td><td>Nuclear Trans New Guinea</td><td>Enga-Kewa-Huli</td><td>45,000</td><td>2000</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>tow</td><td>Towa</td><td>NA</td><td>Kiowa-Tanoan</td><td></td><td>1,790</td><td>2007</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>mio</td><td>Pinotepa Mixtec</td><td>NA</td><td>Otomanguean</td><td>Eastern Otomanguean</td><td>20,000</td><td>1990</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>ute</td><td>Ute</td><td>NA</td><td>Uto-Aztecan</td><td>Northern Uto-Aztecan</td><td>920</td><td>2007</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>ura</td><td>Urarina</td><td>SA</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>3,000</td><td>2002</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>wba</td><td>Warao</td><td>SA</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>28,100</td><td>2007</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>apu</td><td>Apurinā</td><td>SA</td><td>Arawakan</td><td>Southern Maipuran</td><td>2,870</td><td>2006</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>huu</td><td>Murui Huitoto</td><td>SA</td><td>Huitotoan</td><td>Nuclear Witotoan</td><td>2,000</td><td>2016</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>cav</td><td>Cavineña</td><td>SA</td><td>Pano-Tacanan</td><td>Tacanan</td><td>600</td><td>2011</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>cub</td><td>Cubeo</td><td>SA</td><td>Tucanoan</td><td>Eastern Tucanoan</td><td>6,260</td><td>2008</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>dru</td><td>Rukai (Budai dialect)</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austronesian</td><td></td><td>10,500</td><td>2002</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>mri</td><td>Maori</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austronesian</td><td>Malayo-Polynesian</td><td>158,640</td><td>2013</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>khc</td><td>Tukang Besi North</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austronesian</td><td>Malayo-Polynesian</td><td>120,000</td><td>1995</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>sxr</td><td>Saaroa</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austronesian</td><td>Tsouic</td><td>10</td><td>2012</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>iii</td><td>Sichuan Yi</td><td>SEA</td><td>Sino-Tibetan</td><td>Burmo-Qiangic</td><td>2,000,000</td><td>2004</td><td>I</td></tr></tbody></table>
A Language sample

<table><caption>Table A.2: Portion of language sample with Moderately Complex syl-lable structure.</caption><thead><tr><th>ISO</th><th>Language</th><th>MA</th><th>Tlf</th><th>Subfamily</th><th>Pop</th><th>Date</th><th>Vit</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>ktb</td><td>Kambaata</td><td>A</td><td>Afro-Asiatic</td><td>Cushitic</td><td>743,000</td><td>2007</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>ewe</td><td>Ewe</td><td>A</td><td>Atlantic-Congo</td><td>Volta-Congo</td><td>4,184,000</td><td>2013</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>fvr</td><td>Fur</td><td>A</td><td>Furan</td><td></td><td>745,800</td><td>2004</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>knc</td><td>Kanuri</td><td>A</td><td>Saharan</td><td>Western Saharan</td><td>3,290,500</td><td>1985</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>ayz</td><td>Maybrat</td><td>ANG</td><td>Maybrat-Karon</td><td></td><td>20,000</td><td>1987</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>kms</td><td>Kamasau</td><td>ANG</td><td>Nuclear Torricelli</td><td>Marienberg</td><td>960</td><td>2003</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>spl</td><td>Selepet</td><td>ANG</td><td>Nuclear Trans New Guinea</td><td>Finisterre-Huon</td><td>7,000</td><td>1988</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>aly</td><td>Alyawarra</td><td>ANG</td><td>Pama-Nyungan</td><td>Arandic-Thura-Yura</td><td>1,660</td><td>2006</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>khr</td><td>Kharia</td><td>EA</td><td>Austroasiatic</td><td>Mundaic</td><td>241,580</td><td>2001</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>tel</td><td>Telugu</td><td>EA</td><td>Dravidian</td><td>South Dravidian</td><td>74,244,300</td><td>2001</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>dry</td><td>Darai</td><td>EA</td><td>Indo-Europ.</td><td>Indo-Iranian</td><td>11,700</td><td>2011</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>mjg</td><td>Tu</td><td>EA</td><td>Mongolic</td><td>Southern Periphery Mongolic</td><td>152,000</td><td>2000</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>kca</td><td>Eastern Khanty</td><td>EA</td><td>Uralic</td><td>Khantyic</td><td>2,000</td><td>2007</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>kyh</td><td>Karok</td><td>NA</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>12</td><td>2007</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>scs</td><td>North Slavey (Hare dialect)</td><td>NA</td><td>Athabaskan-Eyak-Tlingit</td><td>Athabaskan-Eyak</td><td>710</td><td>2007</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>kal</td><td>Kalaallisut</td><td>NA</td><td>Eskimo-Aleut</td><td>Eskimo</td><td>44,000</td><td>2007</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>cho</td><td>Choctaw</td><td>NA</td><td>Muskogean</td><td>Western Muskogean</td><td>10,400</td><td>2010</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>car</td><td>Carib</td><td>SA</td><td>Cariban</td><td>Guianan</td><td>7,358</td><td>2001</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>qvi</td><td>Imbabura Highland Quechua</td><td>SA</td><td>Quechuan</td><td>Quechua II</td><td>150,000</td><td>2007</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>cod</td><td>Cocama-Cocamilla</td><td>SA</td><td>Tupian</td><td>Maweti-Guarani</td><td>250</td><td>2007</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>pac</td><td>Pacoh</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austroasiatic</td><td>Katuic</td><td>32,500</td><td>2002</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>pwn</td><td>Paiwan</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austronesian</td><td></td><td>66,100</td><td>2002</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>mji</td><td>Kim Mun<sup>a</sup></td><td>SEA</td><td>Hmong-Mien</td><td>Mienic</td><td>374,500</td><td>2000</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>aot</td><td>Atong</td><td>SEA</td><td>Sino-Tibetan</td><td>Brahmaputran</td><td>10,000</td><td>n.d.</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>yue</td><td>Cantonese</td><td>SEA</td><td>Sino-Tibetan</td><td>Sinitic</td><td>62,967,910</td><td>2013</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>lao</td><td>Lao</td><td>SEA</td><td>Tai-Kadai</td><td>Kam-Tai</td><td>3,253,700</td><td>2005</td><td>I</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote><sup>a</sup>(Vietnam dialect)</footnote>
<table><caption>Table A.3: Portion of language sample with Complex syllable structure.</caption><thead><tr><th>ISO</th><th>Language</th><th>MA</th><th>Tlf</th><th>Subfamily</th><th>Pop</th><th>Date</th><th>Vit</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>mpi</td><td>Mpade (Makari dialect)</td><td>A</td><td>Afro-Asiatic</td><td>Chadic</td><td>16,000</td><td>2004</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>dyo</td><td>Jola-Fonyi</td><td>A</td><td>Atlantic-Congo</td><td>North-Central Atlantic</td><td>397,100</td><td>n.d.</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>lun</td><td>Lunda</td><td>A</td><td>Atlantic-Congo</td><td>Volta-Congo</td><td>403,000</td><td>2010</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>mdx</td><td>Dizin (Central dialect)</td><td>A</td><td>Dizoid</td><td></td><td>33,900</td><td>2010</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>tbi</td><td>Gaam</td><td>A</td><td>Eastern Jebel</td><td></td><td>67,200</td><td>2000</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>mpc</td><td>Mangarrayi</td><td>ANG</td><td>Mangarrayi-Maran</td><td></td><td>12</td><td>2006</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>nir</td><td>Nimboran</td><td>ANG</td><td>Nimboranic</td><td></td><td>2,000</td><td>1987</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>opm</td><td>Oksapmin</td><td>ANG</td><td>Nuclear Trans New Guinea</td><td>Asman-Awyu-Ok</td><td>8,000</td><td>1991</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>bcj</td><td>Bardi</td><td>ANG</td><td>Nyulnyulan</td><td>Western Nyulnyulan</td><td>160</td><td>2006</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>ung</td><td>Ngarinyin</td><td>ANG</td><td>Worrorran</td><td></td><td>57</td><td>2006</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>bsk</td><td>Burushaski</td><td>EA</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>96,800</td><td>2004</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>eus</td><td>Basque</td><td>EA</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>545,800</td><td>2012</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>niv</td><td>Nivkh (West Sakhalin dialect)</td><td>EA</td><td>(isolate)</td><td></td><td>15<sup>a</sup></td><td>2014</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>bak</td><td>Bashkir</td><td>EA</td><td>Turkic</td><td>Common Turkic</td><td>1,245,990</td><td>2010</td><td>I</td></tr><tr><td>ket</td><td>Ket</td><td>EA</td><td>Yeniseian</td><td>Northern Yeniseian</td><td>2010</td><td>2010</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>pay</td><td>Pech</td><td>NA</td><td>Chibchan</td><td></td><td>990</td><td>1993</td><td>†</td></tr><tr><td>tzh</td><td>Tzeltal</td><td>NA</td><td>Mayan</td><td>Core Mayan</td><td>372,000</td><td>2000</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>lkt</td><td>Lakota</td><td>NA</td><td>Siouan</td><td>Core Siouan</td><td>2,200</td><td>1997</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>kbc</td><td>Kadiwéu</td><td>SA</td><td>Guaicuruan</td><td></td><td>1,590</td><td>2006</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>wmd</td><td>Mamaindé</td><td>SA</td><td>Nambiquaran</td><td>Nambikwara Complex</td><td>330</td><td>2007</td><td>T</td></tr><tr><td>apn</td><td>Apinayé</td><td>SA</td><td>Nuclear-Macro-Je</td><td>Je</td><td>1,260</td><td>2003</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>cap</td><td>Chipaya</td><td>SA</td><td>Uru-Chipaya</td><td></td><td>1,200</td><td>1995</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>kpm</td><td>Koho</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austroasiatic</td><td>Baharic</td><td>166,000</td><td>2009</td><td>D</td></tr><tr><td>lpa</td><td>Lelepa</td><td>SEA</td><td>Austronesian</td><td>Malayo-Polynesian</td><td>400</td><td>1989</td><td>V</td></tr><tr><td>lep</td><td>Lepcha</td><td>SEA</td><td>Sino-Tibetan</td><td>Himalayish</td><td>69,800</td><td>2001</td><td>V</td></tr></tbody></table>

<footnote><sup>a</sup>Population figure from Botma & Shiraishi (2014).</footnote>