On the cross-linguistic avoidance of rhotic plus high front vocoid sequences

In this article we present evidence from several languages that rhotic plus high front vocoid sequences (e.g. /rj ri/ or the reverse /jr ir/) exhibit various avoidance strategies; e.g. either the /r/ or the vocoid changes into some other sound or deletes, or these sequences simply do not occur. We demonstrate that the avoidance of such sequences does not always follow from more general co-occurrence constraints banning sequences of any sonorant consonant (or liquid) plus any glide. The avoidance of /rj/ etc. will also be argued not to be a consequence of sonority sequencing or any other abstract phonological entities (such as distinctive features). Instead, we claim that the tendency in many languages to avoid /rj/ etc. requires specific constraints (e.g. *rj), which are grounded in articulatory phonetics.