Abstract
Nasal harmony patterns differ in terms of the segments that are transparent, opaque or targets. Typical analyses attribute the differences to idiosyncratic restrictions on rules. This paper argues for an alternative approach according to which differences follow from the organization of the feature [nasal]. Two options are proposed, yielding two fundamentally different harmony types. In one type, [nasal] is a dependent of the Soft Palate node, and harmony is transmitted by spreading the superordinate node. In the second type, the harmony process spreads the features [nasal], which is organized as a dependent of a node, Spontaneous Voicing, present in sonorants. A salient difference between the two types is the absence of opaque segments in the latter, while in the former, nasal spreading is always arrested by a consonant. The two harmony types really reflect a typological distinction between languages that manifest a nasal-oral contrast within the class of [+consonantal] segments and those in which a similar contrast is restricted either to vowels or to sonorant consonants. The sonorant consonants often include prenasalized stops.
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Work for this paper was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (410-88-1277, 410-89-0515). Many of the ideas were presented in a talk to 12th GLOW Colloquium, University of Utrecht, 1989. I wish to acknowledge the valuable contribution of my colleagues and students at McGill, especially Dominique Rodier, José Tourville and Karin Michelson. Their comments and criticism helped to strengthen the arguments and improve the quality of the evidence. Other useful input came from five very conscientious anonymous reviewers.
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Piggott, G.L. Variability in feature dependency: The case of nasality. Nat Lang Linguist Theory 10, 33–77 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00135358
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00135358