How phonotactic patterns contribute to the emergence and spread of /r/ metathesis in Neapolitan

This paper investigates the emergence and spread of /r/ metathesis in Neapolitan. Its aim is to develop an evolutionary model of metathesis which takes phonetic and phonological factors into account, as well as the influence of social structure and language use. After arguing in favor of a perceptual basis for /r/ metathesis in Neapolitan, I will focus on the hypothesis that the phonotactic patterns of this language are an important predictor of the process, following the model developed by Hume (2004). For this purpose, statistics on Neapolitan consonant clusters and their relative frequency in different prosodic positions are calculated. By relying on these data, it is possible to verify if metathetic forms display more common phonotactic patterns than their non-metathetic alternatives. Results show that the influence of phonotactic patterns on metathesis is limited to special cases under which this phenomenon tends to regularize.