speaker awareness of non-local ejective phonotactics in cochabamba quechua

this paper presents evidence that speakers of cochabamba quechua are aware of non-local restrictions on ejectives in their language. a repetition task was run to investigate the synchronic status of two restrictions in quechua: the co-occurrence restriction on ejectives, which prohibits roots with two ejectives (e.g., *[k’ap’i]), and the ordering restriction on ejectives, which prohibits roots with an initial plain stop and a medial ejective (e.g., *[kap’i]). medial ejectives are generally attested in the language, but only occur in roots with an initial fricative or sonorant (e.g., [mat’i] ‘forehead’). native quechua speakers were asked to repeat a mixture of real and nonsense words with medial ejectives, where the nonsense words were either phonotactically legal but unattested roots or phonotactically illegal roots that violated either the co-occurrence restriction or the ordering restriction. medial ejectives are accurately repeated significantly more often in nonce roots where the medial ejective is phonotactically legal than when it is illegal.