Unveiling Consonant Harmony: Nonlexical reduplication in English

There is a lack of strong diachronic evidence in English phonology to demonstrate consonant harmony (hereafter CH) in reduplication (Fikkert et al. 2005; Goad & Buckley 2006; Hale & Reiss 2008; Pater & Werle 2003; Rose 2000; Wolfram & Johnson 1982). In the present study, we investigated CH in synchronic settings wherein native English speakers were asked to produce a euphonious pseudo reduplicant from a nonce base in uncontrolled and controlled experiments. The results of the experiments indicated that, in English, consonantal assimilations might have a hierarchical structure when CH is present in the synchronic formation of a rhyming reduplicant. Taken holistically, these findings suggest that the rate of coronal assimilation exceeds that of labial assimilation. The occurrence of dorsal assimilation may be restricted even further by the scarcity of word-initial dorsal onsets that meet the requirements for rhyming reduplication.