Stuart Davis. 2001. The Distribution of Aspirated Stops and /h/ in American English. Studies in Modern Grammar 24, 1-23. Languages that have both aspirated stops and the phoneme /h/ frequently manifest a close parallel in their distribution. Previous work in phonology either has failed to recognize this close parallel or does not formally account for it. For example, virtually none of the work on American English phonology observes the similarity of distribution that exists between /h/ and aspirated stops. In this paper we illustrate the close parallelism and then offer an analysis of it within Optimality Theory. The organization of this paper is as follows. In Section I we present the data that show the parallel distribution between /h/ and aspirated stops in American English. In Section 2 we develop an optimality-theoretic analysis accounting for the distribution of aspirated stops and /h/ in American English in a unified way. In Section 3 we discuss two other possible approaches in accounting for the distribution of /h/ and aspirated stops in American English and note their shortcomings. Finally, in Section 4 we briefly consider the distribution of aspiration and /h/ beyond American English and show the range of distribution patterns that are predicted to occur under the optimality-theoretic approach.

• Stuart Davis