Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-222).

In this thesis, we investigate several processes affecting coronals and velars in Tamil and Malayalam, two Dravidian languages spoken in southern India. We begin by discussing two assimilation processes which apply adjacent to front vowels, Palatalization, where anterior coronals become palatoalveolar, and Coronalization, where velars are fronted to palatoalveolar. We compare and contrast the feature geometries proposed by Sagey (1986) and Hume (1992) in their ability to adequately express these processes. In Sagey's model, front vowels are argued to be Dorsal. It is thus impossible to express either Palatalization or Coronalization as spreading. In Hume's model, where front vowels are Coronal, both processes involve spreading. However, the model does not formally distinguish between these two processes across languages; thus, it fails to capture the fact that Palatalization is widely attested but Coronalization seems to be restricted to diachronic alternations. In order to express this asymmetry, we adopt the model advanced by Goad & Narasimhan (1994), a revision of Goad (1993), where Palatalization involves spreading but Coronalization is a two-step process, spreading followed by reanalysis. In this model, a single feature (front), defined as "front of articulator", is doubly dependent on both Dorsal and Coronal nodes. Its interpretation is thus partly determined by the node to which it links; it marks apicality in coronals and front of tongue body in dorsals. In Chapter 3, we demonstrate how this model allows us to capture the fact that in Malayalam, only a subset of the anterior coronal consonants, the apicals, form a natural class with front vowels. In Chapter 4, we provide support for the model from languages other than Tamil and Malayalam, both Dravidian and non-Dravidian.

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