Plural formation in Galician

This paper offers an optimality-theoretic analysis of synchronic Galician plural formation that explains the distribution of allomorphs in the standard dialect as well as the patterns of dialectal variation. Gliding serves to parse a nasal or lateral coda in the nucleus, thus avoiding the complex cluster that would have resulted from plural attachment. Epenthesis takes place in the plural of l-final singulars when gliding would otherwise result in an unstressed extra heavy coda or a violation of minimality. The plurals of singulars ending in a nasal avoid epenthesis if this requires parsing of a velar nasal in the onset. Non-normative dialects such as the Eastern varieties also repair clusters through vocalization of the singular-final nasal, but a front nasal is preferred to the back unrounded one of normative Galician; Southern dialects resort to nasal and lateral deletion in the plural.

Published online: 30 November 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.318.06col