Consonant clusters and verb stems: making sense of distributional gaps

Abstract

This paper investigates an apparent gap in the distribution of nasal + stop clusters, as well as certain aspects of the diachronic emergence of this gap, in Latin and Hungarian. The phenomenon investigated is the absence of a frequent consonant cluster ([nt] in Latin, [ŋk] in Hungarian) from a position at the end of verb stems. An important property of the missing consonant cluster in both languages is that it also functions as a person marker in the verbal inflection. It is argued that in Latin this gap is functionally motivated: it represents a case of syntagmatic pressure to avoid repeating the same sequence at too close an interval. In Hungarian, by contrast, the absence of [ŋk] from verb stem-final position is arguably unrelated to the identical phonological form of the 1Plural affix and is simply the result of accidents of diachronic development.