A Target Based Analysis of Syllable Contact Sonority in Bashkir

Like many Turkic languages, the initial consonant in Bashkir suffixes is often subject to change depending on the immediately preceding segment. Unlike other Turkic languages, this often manifests as a four-way alternation in Bashkir. This larger pool of affix-initial consonants sheds light on an incomplete aspect of the typical conception of sonority drop across syllable boundary. Rather than always picking the largest possible drop in sonority or not alternating at all, a middle ground is achieved with a tension towards a particular size of sonority fall. The traditional Syllable Contact Law (SCL) as operationalized by the Sonority Contact Scale (SCS) cannot account for the Bashkir data. Part categorical and part gradient, this new view of SCS utilizes sonority drop targets in order to aim for a particular jump of -2 in sonority as opposed to simply maximizing sonority drop. This novel Bashkir data sheds light on the SCL not as a typological set of constraints against increasingly lower cross-syllable sonority jumps, but instead as simple a language specific target sonority change target.