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Part of
Romance Linguistics 2012: Selected papers from the 42nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Cedar City, Utah, 20-22 April 2012
Edited by Jason Smith and Tabea Ihsane
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 7] 2015
► pp. 99–118

Revisiting /ʁ/-assimilation through schwa

The OT-CC perspective

This article revisits the facts underlying the assimilation of /ʁ/ to a preceding consonant in Lower Norman. This assimilation process, which requires the presence of an intervening lexical schwa, could not result from a simple interplay of markedness and faithfulness. The Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (OT-CC) framework argues that local evaluation models provide more robust generalizations than global evaluation models. The present work offers a complete treatment of /ʁ/ assimilation from an OT-CC perspective and extends the analysis beyond the original data of Northern Cotentinois to include assibilating varieties such as Island Norman.
Published online: 28 August 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.7.07mon
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