Nasals on My Mind
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Nasals on My Mind The Phonetic and the Cognitive Approach to the Phonology of Nasality Stefan Ploch 1999 Submitted to the Department of Linguistics at the School of Oriental & African Studies, the University of London, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ProQuest Number: 10672685 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10672685 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Fur Mich .1 “Was soil nicht alles Meine Sache sein! Vor allem die gute Sache, dann die Sache Gottes, die Sache der Menschheit, der Wahrheit, der Freiheit, der Humanitat, der Gerechtigkeit; ferner die Sache Meines Volkes, Meines Fursten, Meines Vaterlandes; endlich gar die Sache des Geistes und tausend andere Sachen. Nur Meine Sache soil niemals Meine Sache sein. Tfui liber den Egoisten, der nur an sich denkt!’ ” [Max Stirner]2 “Das Gottliche ist Gottes Sache, das Menschliche Sache ‘des Menschen’. Meine Sache ist weder das Gottliche noch das Menschliche, ist nicht das Wahre, Gute, Rechte, Freie usw., sondern allein das Meinige, und sie ist keine allgemeine, son- dern ist— einzig, wie Ich einzig bin. Mir geht nichts liber Mich!” [Max Stirner]3 'Translation (mine): To Myself. 2Cf. Stirner [463]. Translation (mine, adapted from Byington’s translation from 1907 which is available on the internet [462, p. 4]): What is not supposed to be My cause [concern]! First and foremost, the good cause, then God’s cause, (hu)mankind’s cause, truth’s, freedom’s, humanity’s [humaneness’s], justice’s cause; further, My people’s, My prince’s, My fatherland’s cause; at last the cause of mind [intellect/spirit] and a thousand other causes. Only My cause is never to be My cause. ‘Boo, shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!’ 3ibid., p. 5. Translation (mine, based on [462, p. 6]): The divine is the Divine’s [God’s] cause; the human, ‘man’s’. My cause is neither the divine nor the human, is not the true, good, just, free, and so forth, but solely Mine, and it is not a general one, but is — one and only one [unique] as I am one and only one [unique]. To Me nothing is more than Myself! 2 Nasals on My Mind The Phonetic and the Cognitive Approach to the Phonology of Nasality Stefan Ploch Department of Linguistics, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London Contents Thanks to ... 10 Introduction 11 I The Phonetic Approach 14 1 The Nasal Fallacy 15 1.1 In defense of method, empiricism and falsifiability .............................. 16 1.2 The irrelevance of the articulatory system .......................................... 21 1.3 Maintaining the Phonetic Hypothesis ....................................................... 24 1.3.1 Strategy 1; den ial .......................................................................... 25 1.3.2 Strategy 2: flexibility of applicability ....................................... 25 1.3.3 Degrees of falsifiability: disproving vs. not applying an as sumption ...................................................................................... 28 1.4 Phonetic definitions of nasality ................................................................. 31 1.4.1 Entenman (1976): the problematic status of the concept ‘nas ality’ ............................................................................................. 32 1.4.1.1 Acoustic definitions .................................................... 32 1.4.1.2 Articulatory definitions ............................................. 33 1.4.2 Vaissiere (1988): prediction of velum movement from pho nological specifications ................................................................ 34 1.4.3 Ladefoged (1989): the non-existence of a well-defined pho netic framework .......................................................................... 35 1.4.4 Huffman (1989): nasal airflow and articulatory landmarks for N a s a l ...................................................................................... 36 1.4.5 Brun, Spencer & Fourcin (1990): nasalisation detection us ing the electrolaryngography principle ....................................... 39 4 1.5 The Phonetic Hypothesis in action ....................................................... 41 1.5.1 Brownian & Goldstein (1986): articulatory phonology . 42 1.5.1.1 A gestural analysis of word-initial sC-clusters in E nglish ...................................................................... 42 1.5.1.2 Chaga prenasalised stops and English nasal-stop clusters....................................................................... 46 Articulatory phonology: conclusion ....................................... 48 1.5.2 Kawasaki (1986): experimental p h o n o lo g y ........................... 48 1.5.3 Hawkins & Stevens (1985): acoustic co rrelates ..................... 51 1.5.4 Clements & Hertz (1996): an integrated approach to phono logy and p h o n etics ................................................................... 52 Conclusion .................................................................................................. 54 2 The Feature [Nasal] 56 2.1 Overgeneration ........................................................................................ 57 2.2 Counteracting overgeneration ................................................................. 58 2.2.1 Language-specific monovalency ................................. 58 2.2.2 Redundancy rules ....................................................................... 59 2.2.2.1 Archangeli &Pulleyblank(1994): Default and Com plement rules .......................................................... 59 2.2.2.2 Steriade (1987): Redundant and Distinctive values 60 2.3 U nderspecification .................................................................................. 68 2.3.1 Keating (1988): underspecification in phonetics ...................... 68 2.3.2 Pulleyblank (1995) completes the circle: phonetics in under specification ............................................................................. 71 2.4 A word about monovalent features ...................................................... 72 2.5 Feature g eo m etry ................................................................................... 72 2.5.1 Pulleyblank (1995): motivation for and basic concepts of fea ture geom etry ............................................................................. 73 2.5.2 Piggott’s (1992) analysis of nasal harmony within feature ge ometry ...................................................................................... 78 Conclusion .................... 94 3 The Height Myth 95 3.1 Historical evidence .................................................................................. 96 3.1.1 French: development and denasalisation of nasal vowels . 96 5 3.1.1.1 The development of French nasal vow els ..... 96 3.1.1.2 The denasalisation of French nasal vowels .... 103 3.1.2 Chinese: nasal vowels via merger and loss of final nasal con sonants 108 3.1.3 The Teke language group: nasalisation before Proto-Bantu °a, °e, ° o ................................................................................... 114 3.1.4 Romagnol dialects: nasalisation of Stage 2 ° a ...................... 119 3.1.4.1 The Height Myth and the Romagnol dialects . 119 3.1.4.2 Nasality-length correlation as explanation of the Romagnol data .......................................................... 123 3.2 Synchronic evidence ............................................................................. 130 3.2.1 Beddor (1982): a perceptual view of synchronic nasality- induced vowel height shifts ............................................... 131 3.2.2 The irrelevance of synchronic ‘morphophonemic’ variation to phonological research .......................................................... 140 3.2.3 The irrelevance of diachronically related forms to phonology 144 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 152 II The Cognitive Approach 154 4 The Cognitive Solution: a ‘Nasal’ Element 155 4.1 Melody in Government Phonology ...................................................... 156 4.1.1 The cognitive v ie w .................................................................... 156 4.1.2 The Theory of Elem ents ........................................................... 160 4.1.3 Element Theory: consonants .................................................... 163 4.1.4 The Theory of Generative Constraints ..................................... 169 4.2 A ‘nasal’ element .................................................................................... 177 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 191 5 The Merger of L and N 192 5.1 The theory-internal history of the proposed L/N merger ..................... 192 5.2 Merging L and N ..................................................................................... 193 5.2.1 Postnasal voicing of voiceless