INTRODUCTION

There are three main goals of this study. The first is to provide evidence for the natural class of sounds comprised of front vowels, front glides and coronal consonants. Although the primary evidence for this view is drawn from the patterning of these sounds in phonological rules cross-linguistically, I also draw on phonetic evidence. The second goal of this work is to show that a revised definition of the articulator feature [coronal] properly characterizes this natural class of sounds. As such, I draw on and develop the idea that front vowels are coronals, as first proposed in Clements (1976a). The third goal of this study is to provide a formal representation of front vowels and coronal consonants and their interaction within a nonlinear model of feature organization. Proposals concerning the representation of front vowel/coronal consonant interaction naturally extend to the interaction of vowels and consonants in general.