earticle

영어

This study puts forth a new constraint-based analysis of vowel insertion occurring in the English word formation process in which a base word gets affixed with two derivational suffixes: An epenthetic vowel does not appear when the first affix is attached, but it gets inserted after the affixation of the second suffix. English speakers insert a vowel to break up a medial consonant cluster, which is rooted in the idea that a stressed syllable maximally has two positions or moras in the rhyme. With no vowel insertion, we render the final syllable of the base excessively heavy. As to epenthetic vowel position, we designate it at the end of the base before the first suffix because a vowel insertion never occurs between derivational suffixes in English. To explain these, we adopt *3μ(σˊ) and Contig-Aff to reflect the restriction of moras in stressed syllables and the position of the epenthetic vowel. Intriguingly, when stress does not fall on the final syllable of the base, and the base gets suffixed with identical affixes, the multiple coda clusters in an unstressed syllable are formed and are tolerated even if a vowel insertion does not apply. The constraints used in the study can explain these asymmetrical realizations of the multiple consonant clusters in stressed and unstressed syllables in English.