Problems of Analyzing Consonant-Tone Interaction in Thai: A Reply to Ruangjaroon

The interaction between the distribution of tones and syllable types in Thai has been found to be interesting. The absence of the rising contour tone on CVO and CVVO supports the argument that syllables with shorter phonetic duration are bad licensers for the rising contour tone (Zhang 2002). The distributional gaps on CVO and CVVO are also found to be correlated with syllable-final glottalization (Morn & Zsiga 2006). Furthermore, Ruangjaroon (2006) argues that there is the consonant-tone interaction in Thai and analyzes it under the framework of OT. However, I will indicate both theoretical and analytical problems faced by analyses in Ruangjaroon (2006) in this paper.