Coronality, velarity and why they are special This paper addresses the problem of the representation of places of articulation of consonants in the framework of Government Phonology. The emphasis will be on coronality and problems GP encounters when it has to give an account of the asymmetries in the behaviour of coronals. This is hypothesised to be a consequence of their unmarked nature, their lacking a specification of place of articulation. This hypothesis is supported by a number of phonological and non-phonological phenomena many of which are presented in Paradis & Prunet (1991). Velarity will also be briefly discussed because this is the consonantal place the GP model suggests to be most unmarked and I conclude that there are serious problems with consonantal representations in the model. Section 1 introduces the basics of GP crucial to the understanding of the later sections. In 2 evidence is brought up to prove that coronality is special among the other places of articulation: there is a coronal/non-coronal dichotomy. The problems GP faces in expressing this fact are discussed in 3, with an investigation of what happens if the coronality element is discarded in 3.1. The speciality GP tacitly attributes to velarity is pointed out in 3.2, and some conclusions are drawn in 4.