The status of external sandhi in Cree

Abstract

The Cree language has a set of vowel deletion and coalescence processes that apply at word boundaries. These processes seem to be perfect examples of the kind of post-lexical phonological rule which has led some researchers to propose complicated extensions to the rheory of phonology. In this paper, I argue that Cree sandhi is not a true phonological rule, but is the kind of gradient phenomenon which can be handled by a number of existing theories of phonetics and the phonetics-phonology interface. As Cree sandhi joins the growing list of apparent phonological rules which are better assigned to the phonetic domain, it lends support to the hypothesis that phonology is categorical and lexical, and that postlexical phonology need not exist.