Database

Cherokee

(Eastern and Northeastern Oklahoma, Western North Carolina; Southern Iroquoian)

Summary:
In the derivation of the second singular forms, there is a reordering of a glide and glottal fricative.

Examples:

Counterfactive	Cislocative
/yi-hi-nega/ --> [hyinega]	/wi-hi-nega/ --> [hwinega]	'you'

cf.

Counterfactive	Cislocative
yi-ji-nega	wi-ji-nega	'I'
yi-ga-nega	wi-ga-nega	'he'

Conditions:
Deletion of the vowel 'i' conditions metathesis.
i-deletion: The vowel 'i' deletes when preceding a second singular form.

/yi-hi-nega/

-->
i-deletion

[yhinega]

-->
metathesis

[hyinega] 'you (S), counteractive'

/wi-hi-nega/

-->
i-deletion

[whinega]

-->
metathesis

[hwinega] 'you (S), cislocative'

Motivation:
Phonotactic Restriction (Foley 1980): In Cherokee, there are no cases of clusters of a glide plus a non-vocalic segment except in a couple of instances, e.g. dlayka 'bluejay'. This phonotactic restriction has been seen as the motivation for metathesis of a glide and glottal fricative.

Related Information:
No information currently available.

Symbols:
Thanks to Darin M. Howe (University of Calgary) for contributing information relevant to this page.

Last Updated: 6/20/2007

References:

Flemming, Edward. 1996. Laryngeal metathesis and deletion in Cherokee. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 16: Cherokee Papers from UCLA, ed. by Pamela Munro, 23-44.
Foley, Lawrence. 1980. Phonological Variation in Western Cherokee. Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics. Garland Publishing: New York & London.