SONORITY SEQUENCING VIOLATIONS AND CONSTRAINT RANKING IN PAHARI: AN OPTIMALITY THEORY AND TYPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Through the Optimality Theory (OT) framework, this research examines the phonotactic behaviour of onset clusters in Pahari, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Although earlier depictions (Khan et al., 2011) implied a system mostly following the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP; Clements, 1990; Selkirk, 1984), the present field-based corpus, comprising a 350-item elicitation list and seven hours of spontaneous speech, reveals a more complex picture. Using OT restriction ranking, the study finds that faithfulness constraints (MAXIO, DEPIO) dominate markedness constraints (COMPLEX, SONSEQ), allowing for the retention of marked clusters even in violation of sonority expectations. Pahari exhibits both SSP-compliant clusters (e.g., stop–liquid, stop–glide) and systematic SSP-violating clusters (e.g., nasal–stop, nasal–fricative, obstruent–obstruent). This ranking aligns with perceptual recoverability models of cluster licensing (Kingston, 2020; Crouch et al., 2022) and with cross-linguistic typological studies revealing that almost half of the world's languages permit SSP violations (Yin et al., 2023). While recognising its unusual tolerance for marked onsets, partly attributable to historical vowel deletion, morphological concatenation, and loanword retention, the paper places Pahari within the "moderately complex" syllable typology (Easterday, 2019). Implications are offered for phonological theory, language documentation, and bilingual pedagogy, along with suggestions for future socio-phonetic and computational modelling studies.

Keywords: Pahari Phonology, Onset Clusters, Optimality Theory, Sonority Sequencing, Phonotactics, Typology