Amurdak intersyllabic phonotactics and morphophonemic alternations as motivated by the Contact Law

This contribution examines the intersyllabic phonotactics and morphophonemic alternations of the northern Australian language Amurdak. It argues that they are motivated by the preferences formulated in the Contact Law (Vennemann 1988). Amurdak goes beyond the general tendency of Australian languages to have word-medial clusters that conform to the Contact Law (Baker 2014, Hamilton 1996). Moreover, diachronic patterns of morphophonemic alternations find a natural explanation if the Contact Law as a constraint is assumed (see Baker 2014). What is interesting, however, is how the Contact Law is implemented, because processes of fortition go against the preferences of the Strength Assimilation Law. It is suggested that the fact that these changes occur exclusively at morpheme boundaries may be an important factor in the history of Amurdak phonotactics and morphophonemics.