Historical transfer of nasality between consonantal onset and vowel
Comparative data from several language families show that nasality can be transferred between a syllable-initial consonant cluster and the following vowel. The cases reported to date are summarized, and a new analysis is proposed for a set of Sino-Tibetan data. The evolution appears
to go in both directions: from the consonantal onset to the following vowel in Tai-Kadai, Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Niger-Congo (Kwa) and Indo-European (Celtic), and from the vowel to the preceding consonant in Siouan. However, an examination of the conditions on these changes brings out
an asymmetry. In most cases, transfers of nasality take place from a consonantal onset to a following vowel; the instances we found of a regular change in the opposite direction all come from languages where there is one of the following restrictions on nasal sounds: (i) nasal consonants are
nonphonemic (contextually predictable), or (ii) the opposition between nasal and oral vowels is neutralized after nasal consonants (in favor of nasal vowels).
Keywords: consonant clusters; modeling of sound change; nasal onsets; nasal vowels; nasalization; panchronic phonology; transphonologization
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 2012
- International Journal for Historical Linguistics
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