대한언어학회 전자저널

Chung, Chin-Wan. (2025). An aspect of phonological processes motivated by an epenthetic vowel. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 33(3), 71-95. The study on epenthetic vowels has focused on their roles in adjusting unallowed structures in languages. However, an intriguing aspect of the vowel epenthesis is that it actively participates in and engages in phonological processes. Considering this, the current study collects and investigates the roles of epenthetic vowels. We observe that an epenthetic vowel induces or interacts with other phonological factors in spirantization, palatalization, obstruent voicing, consonant deletion, and stress attraction in languages. Their behaviors in processes suggest that they behave like lexical vowels on specific conditions in some aspect, even though they are different from lexical vowels phonetically and phonologically. In addition, epenthetic vowels act as a prosodic non-head or head foot member in stress attraction. Especially, the inserted vowel should be in an appropriate position to be a target of the stress attractor; otherwise, it may disrupt the regular stress pattern in Winnebago. The constraint-based account provided in this study highlights how relevant constraints and their ranking can explain various phonological processes. The analysis opens up a possibility of research on inserted vowels and phonological processes.

# epenthetic vowel # interaction # constraint # phonological processes # stress attraction

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