Vowel prothesis before /r/ revisited: acoustics and typology

Abstract

Vowel prothesis is a phonological process by which a vowel is inserted at the beginning of a word. Vowel prothesis before a rhotic is attested in a number of languages of the world and has been discussed by Hall (2011), where the instantiation of this phenomenon in the Walliser dialect of Swiss German received a theoretical treatment couched in the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). In this paper, I revisit that process of vowel prothesis and discuss vowel prothesis before /r/ in light of the phonetics of such a development as well as the typology of such a change. It will be argued that vowel prothesis before a rhotic only comes about when that rhotic is a trill. This is because trilled rhotics in the world’s languages are known to involve a brief vocalic period (roughly 50 ms) prior to the onset of vibration. Furthermore, all languages with an attested change of #rV- → #VrV- e.g. Walliser German, Campidanian Sardinian, Basque, Gascon and Sakha (Yakut) have an alveolar trilled /r/. In terms of OT, I analyze this as due to a high-ranking constraint against trills in the prosodic-word initial position, formulated as *ω[Trill.