The distribution of aspirated stops and |h| in American English and Korean:: an alignment approach with typological implications

Languages that have both aspirated stops and the phoneme \h\ often manifest a close parallel in their distribution. Previous work in phonology either has failed to recognize this close parallel or does not formally account for it. For example, American English witnesses a close parallel in the distribution of \h\ and aspirated stops that has largely gone unrecognized in the phonological literature. This paper offers a detailed optimality-theoretic analysis of the distribution of aspirated stops and \h\ for both American English and Korean. For each of these languages we delineate their distribution and show how an optimality-theoretic analysis can account for it. We develop an alignment analysis of their distribution that makes reference to constraints that require positions of prominence (such as word-initial or foot-initial position) to be aligned with the feature [spread glottis]. We further demonstrate how the alignment analysis predicts a typology of patterning of aspirated stops and \h\. Crucially, the typology does not predict that every language should have a close parallel in their distribution like American English, but as we show, it predicts a range of patterns that are instantiated.