The prosodic status of glides in Anaañ reduplication

Based on their unsteady states, and audible transitional propensity towards a following sound or away from a preceding sound, the palatal and labial glides look quite unique vis-à-vis the more steady state vowels and true consonants. This uniqueness lies chiefly in the ability of the glide to occur either as a true onset segment or a nuclear on-glide, as well as a post-peak segment in languages. With reduplication as a basis, this paper employs correspondence theory to examine the precise pre-peak and post-peak positions of glides in the Anaañ syllable, with a view to ascertaining their moraic status and place in the verbal foot construction. Words in the verbal contrast and denominal categories were used as the yardstick for analysing the glides in Anaañ reduplicative constructions. It was discovered that the pre-peak glide in Anaañ (with no mora value) belongs to the nucleus, since it remains undeleted in the reduplicant (RED) morpheme. Contrary to CV inputs, where the no-single-mora constraint comes out as emergently unmarked, the glide in CGV inputs is analysed as the normal application of lengthening in RED, to maintain a minimally permitted heavy-light trochee. At the post-peak level, the palatal off-glide is different from true consonants because its deletion in RED (e.g. /láí/ ➔ [láj] ‘lick’ ➔ [láá-láj] ‘lick, rather than…’) is due to a drop in nucleus sonority, while the deletion of the true consonant (e.g. /ʤít/ ‘lock’ ➔ [ʤíí-ʤít] ‘lock, rather than…’) results from NOCODA.