<OT> New Posting: ROA-612

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 612-0903

Mamainde pre-stopped nasals - an optimality account of vowel dominance and a proposal for the Identical Rhyme Constraint

David Eberhard <dave-julie_eberhard at sil.org>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=612


Abstract:
This paper explores the world of nasality in the Mamainde
language, in particular, the nasal coda segment. The behaviour
of these nasal codas poses an interesting challenge for
any theory, including Optimality. In some environments,
simple nasals can be realized as pre-stopped nasal segments,
where a stop is inserted before the nasal coda. These nasals
also get their place features from the previous vowel. I
propose a new family of constraints to deal with these problems
- the Identical Rhyme Constraints (IRC). These constraints
require both the nucleus and the coda to share the same
features for nasality/orality (the IRCNasal), as well as
identical features in place (the IRCPlace).  Along the way,
some other controversial topics are discussed, including
binary features of nasality, underspecification of vowel
features, and a rethinking of how vowel and consonant features
interact. A constraint ranking is proposed and a number
of tableaus are given as examples. The end result is that
in both the nasal/oral features and the place features,
the vowels dominate the articulation of coda consonants
in this language.

Comments: 
Keywords: prosody, nasality, pre-stopped nasals, vowel features, Mamainde, Nambiquara, Identical Rhyme Constraint
Areas: 
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=612