Proceedings

Emergence of the marked: Vowel lengthening in Bangla

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Abstract

Bangla (Indo-Aryan) shows an unexpected pattern of vowel lengthening in focused forms despite the language lacking a phonemic vowel length contrast. Further, vowel lengthening is preferred to consonant gemination, even though there is contrastive consonant length, creating an apparent markedness paradox. This paper argues that Bangla vowel length under focus is the result of serial interleaving of morphology with phonology, with the requirement of incrementally improving harmony with every change. Focus involves affixation of a mora which aligns to the position of stress. Bangla focus lengthening is a case of a phonologically marked structure emerging under morphological pressure.

Keywords: markedness, morphophonology, stress

How to Cite:

Ghoshal, K., (2026) “Emergence of the marked: Vowel lengthening in Bangla”, Proceedings of the Annual Meetings on Phonology 2(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/amphonology.3705