15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
This paper investigates the phonetic factors of diachronic nasal place
change from the alveolar to the velar place of articulation. Evidence
is given from Cuban Spanish, Hausa, Brazilian Portuguese, and Chinese.
There appear to be two distinct pathways leading to change. The first
is a pathway in which the word-final alveolar nasal becomes velar with
no independent stage of phonemic word-final nasalized vowels (Cuban
Spanish, Hausa, and certain dialectal groups of Chinese). In the second
pathway (Brazilian Portuguese), there is a documented stage of phonemically
nasalized vowels. It is concluded that the change from alveolar-to-velar
nasal is one of phonetic changes, in no way explained by an abstract
notion of markedness.
Bibliographic reference. Lederer, Jenny Simone (2003): "The diachronic coronal-velar nasal relationship", In ICPhS-15, 2801-2804.