Uneven Realizations of NC̥ and NS in English

This study deals with the realization patterns of NC and NS in different loci where the sequences appear in a word such as across the prefix-stem boundary and within a root/stem. The NC and NS show asymmetrical output patterns. The former is faithfully realized across the morpheme boundary maintaining its voicing feature of the obstruent while a coronal stop after a nasal is optionally deleted when followed by an unstressed vowel within a stem. An NC-Peripheral sequence occurs within a stem without undergoing changes. On the other hand, the prefix-final nasal in an NS is deleted across the prefix-stem boundary while it is faithfully realized within a stem. The uneven realization patterns in English are interesting in that the NC shows different realization patterns observed in cross-linguistic NC sequences while the NS shows similar realization patterns found in languages of the world. We ascribe these asymmetrical output patterns of NC clusters in English to variant interactions of *NC-Cor and *NS with high-ranked constraints which protect the initial segment of a stem and a stem-sonorant. In addition to these, a word-medial coronal [t] is ensured by Max-F(σˊ) which reflects the prosodic prominence in a word. The target of deletion is confined to a prefix-final nasal and an onset of unstressed vowel in a word which shows that the realization asymmetries are controlled by morphological and phonological prominence versus non-prominence.