Resonant devoicing in Cowichan

Extract

The Cowichan Dialect of Halkomelem, a Coast Salishan language, has a reduplication process in three morphological categories that copies stem-initial CV. When a stem-initial resonant (voiced sonorant) is reduplicated, a prefix hə- results. Two possible explanations for h instead of the predicted resonant support distinct, although not necessarily mutually exclusive, claims for the status of h in a universal classification. One possible explanation is that the reduplicated resonant devoices to h-lending support to Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) classification of h as a voiceless sonorant, since h would be functioning as the voiceless counterpart to Cowichan voiced sonorants. But an alternative is that the prefixed sonorant elides, with the subsequent insertion of h as a juncture phenomenon—suggesting that h functions here as a neutral nonsyllabic segment.