Sibilants at the edge and beyond

Abstract This paper presents a case study in diachronic phonology within a stratal perspective by examining evolving licensing possibilities for consonant clusters containing sibilants (“/S/-clusters”) in Old French (OF) (10th–14th centuries), as well as somewhat before and after this period, with a particular focus on exceptional sequences at domain edges (word, word-internal morpheme edges, phrase), especially the word-final edge. Expanding on Rainsford’s (2020) proposal of word-final empty-headed syllables for early OF, and informed by the diachrony of word-initial and word-medial /S/-clusters and the repair processes affecting them (prothesis, coda /s/ deletion), the formal analysis of word-final /S/-clusters identifies parallels and contrasts amongst edge and word-internal positions as repair processes’ domains of application expand and contract diachronically (word to phrase, phrase to word, word to word-internal stem edges). The account identifies a cohesive diachronic trajectory for /S/-clusters at edges as well as where exceptional /S/-adjuncts are licensed to anchor, with cross-linguistic implications for the coda or onset status of word-final consonants, the licensing of adjunct segments, word-final empty-headed syllables, and stratal phonological structure in a diachronic perspective.