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Homophony avoidance in the grammar: Russian nominal allomorphy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2021

Andrei Munteanu
Andrei Munteanu*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
*
*E-mail: andrei.munteanu@mail.utoronto.ca.
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Abstract

It has long been observed that languages tend to preserve contrast, either by introducing sound changes or by inhibiting them. However, it is not clear if any instances of so-called homophony avoidance reported to date constitute an active synchronic restriction in the grammar. This paper presents an instance of homophony avoidance in Russian masculine nouns. A perception experiment shows that the trends observed in the corpus are only partially extended to nonce words. I argue that the asymmetry observed in the experimental results can only be attributed to a synchronic restriction against homophonous forms in the same paradigm. Thus this paper presents strong evidence in favour of a synchronic anti-homophony constraint.

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Phonology , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 401 - 435
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This project was conducted in partial fulfilment of the PhD programme at the University of Toronto. I would like to thank first and foremost Yoonjung Kang for her support and encouragement throughout the project and beyond. I would also like to thank Daphna Heller, Peter Jurgec, Aleksei Nazarov and Eva Plesnik for their constructive comments on various drafts, as well as the editors and four anonymous reviewers at Phonology. I am also grateful to audiences of OCP 16 and MOT 2018, as well as classmates in the LIN1221 class of 2017 and members of the University of Toronto Phon Group. Finally, a special thanks to Alexandr Gerassimov and Andrei Munteanu Sr for their help in the creation of experiment stimuli.

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