Harmony versus the OCP: Vowel and Consonant Cooccurrence in the Lexicon

Abstract

While cooccurrence avoidance of similar or identical consonants within lexical items is well-documented, similar investigations of vowel patterns are lacking. Phonetic patterns suggest that an opposite tendency may exist, and lead to observed asymmetries in the phonological patterning of vowels and consonants. The results of corpus studies of lexical vowel cooccurrence in Croatian and Spanish support this conjecture. Cooccurrence avoidance of similar segments is seen in only one of the languages (Spanish), while the other shows the opposite tendency, with similar vowels preferred in close proximity (Croatian). This finding suggests that vowel cooccurrence can be exempt from restrictions shown for consonants, and in at least some cases, subject to the opposite restriction.