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Austronesian nasal substitution revisited: what’s wrong with *NC (and what’s not)

Pater, J. (2001). In Segmental Phonology in Optimality Theory: Constraints and Representations (pp. 159–182). Cambridge University Press

Pater argues that nasal substitution, the fusion of a prefix nasal with a following voiceless obstruent, is not an effect of *NC̥. Muna -um- fuses with a root-initial voiceless labial although no candidate has a nasal before a voiceless obstruent, and the Muna forms follow from a ban on two labials and faithfulness to [Pharyngeal Expansion], which voiced obstruents bear. The same faithfulness, ranked above a ban on place shared across the left edge of a Prosodic Word, derives the Indonesian forms, among them assimilation between two prefixes, where the earlier *NC̥ analysis fuses. With NASASSIM on top, no reranking makes only some voiced stops fuse, as the intermediate types of Newman's typology do.

Implementation notes

  • The page images read are those of the manuscript at https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/32431, whose cover sheet calls the chapter a slightly revised version of it. Example numbers are the manuscript's.
  • A candidate is a correspondence from the input to the output, and each constraint reads it: faithfulness the relation, markedness the output. The Indonesian fused nasal is the nasal that the Indonesian rules assimilate the prefix nasal to (NasalSubstitution.substitute), so fusion and assimilation followed by loss of the consonant give one string. The Muna fused nasal is Muna's nasal homorganic with the consonant in the same way: m before p and f, and the m of -um- unchanged before w, whose double articulation no Muna nasal has.
  • [Pharyngeal Expansion] is [−sonorant, +voice], and two segments are homorganic when they agree on the major articulators (Segment.Homorganic). The input carries the morph of each segment and the Prosodic Word is read off it, prefixes outside and an output segment inside when one of its correspondents is. *PL/LAB² counts non-syllabic labials, since PHOIBLE makes round vowels [+labial].
  • With NASASSIM dominated, the velars alone fuse, a type Newman's typology lacks.

Errata

TODO

  • The other NC effects of (5) and (6), the infixation of (7) to (10), the co-occurrence table (13), and the hiatus evidence for CRISPEDGE[PRWD] of (26) to (34).
  • Before a sonorant consonant, which the paper does not discuss, the ranking fuses where Indonesian loses the nasal, and loss is not a candidate.

References

  • Pater 2001, Austronesian nasal substitution revisited: what’s wrong with *NC (and what’s not)
  • Pater 1999, Austronesian nasal substitution and other NC effects
  • Newman 1984, Nasal replacement in Western Austronesian: an overview
  • Sneddon 1996, Indonesian: A comprehensive grammar formalized

Features

L80

Constraints

A candidate is an input and an output related as Pater's subscripts relate them, a correspondence from the input to the output.

The Prosodic Word

The input carries the morph each segment belongs to, and the Prosodic Word is read off it as ALIGN-WD places it: prefixes lie outside, and roots and suffixes inside.

Indonesian

L181–185

Muna

L253–259

The forms

The *NC̥ analysis

Muna

Under *PL/LAB², IDENT[PHAREXP] ≫ MAX ≫ UNIFORMITY, -um- fuses with a root-initial voiceless labial and is deleted before a voiced or implosive one. Every form of the table follows but wanu, which Pater leaves to a lexically specific faithfulness constraint.

theorem muna_predictsL333–339

Built from , ,

The reanalysis of Indonesian

Under NASASSIM, IDENT[PHAREXP] ≫ CRISPEDGE[PRWD] ≫ UNIFORMITY ≫ IDENT[PLACE], every Indonesian form of the table follows: the prefix nasal fuses with a voiceless obstruent at the left edge of a root, and assimilates to a voiced one and to the p of per-.

theorem indonesian_predictsL349–355

Built from , ,

Typology

With NASASSIM undominated, the stops that fuse are none, the voiceless ones or all of them, as in Newman's Malay and Kalinga types, never only some of the voiced ones, as in his intermediate types.

theorem fusingStops_memL397–402

Built from