Representing a four-way contrast: Nepali, voiced aspirates, and laryngeal realism

Theories of laryngeal realism (Honeybone 2005, Iverson & Salmons 1995, Beckman et al. 2011) argue for a tight correspondence between a segment’s phonetic cues and the (laryngeal) phonological features that represent it. Consequently, the ‘p’/‘b’ contrast in French, expressed phonetically by vocal fold vibration during the stop closure is represented by a [voice] feature whereas the ‘p’/‘b’ contrast in English, expressed phonetically by long and short lag VOT, is represented by a [spread glottis] feature. However, this theory predicts potential conflicts for segments specified for multiple laryngeal cues, i.e. voicing and aspiration. We therefore analyze Nepali’s four-way contrast between voiceless, voiced, voiceless aspirated, and voiced aspirated stops, the type of system Iverson and Salmons (1995) propose is represented by the features in (1) (assumes privative features).