The morphology and phonology of metathesis in Amarasi

Abstract

I describe and analyse data from Amarasi, a language with morphological consonant-vowel metathesis. Depending on the phonotactic structure of the stem to which it applies, metathesis is associated with a number of other phonological processes including: vowel deletion, consonant deletion and two kinds of vowel assimilation. By proposing that Amarasi has an obligatory CVCVC foot in which C-slots can be empty all these phonological processes can be derived from a single process of metathesis and one associated morphemically conditioned process. I consider analyses other than the rule-based one adopted in this paper and show that they cannot account for all the data in a consistent, plausible way.