No transposition in Harmonic Serialism

Abstract

This paper presents a Harmonic Serialism analysis of synchronic metathesis, and proposes to eliminate transposition as an atomic operation, instead analysing metathesis as a result of the sequential application of simpler operations. The analysis of phase alternations in Rotuman offers a unified account of metathesis, deletion and umlaut as all undergoing splitting followed by fusion. A non-transposition analysis of multiple metathesis in Kwara'ae shows that a prosodically motivated locality restriction on the splitting domain is crucial in deriving the attested patterns. CC metathesis in Balangao is analysed as fusion followed by splitting. Eliminating transposition has several benefits: (a) it simplifies the inventory of operations in Harmonic Serialism, (b) it correctly predicts the locality restrictions on metathesis patterns with smaller constraint sets and (c) it accounts for the differences observed in the segment types involved in CV(VC) vs. CC metathesis.