THE STATUS OF NASALIZED CONTINUANTS

Publisher Summary Typological surveys show that nasal consonants are very common cross-linguistically. This chapter reviews the cases of both underlying and derived nasalized continuants to better understand the distribution of the segments when they occur. Nasal consonants trigger Nasal Spread, and both vowels and laryngeals are permeable to nasalization. Phonologically, both the [ – nasal, –continuant] and the supralaryngeal [+continuant] consonants block Nasal Spread. This is because of the underlying [– nasal] specification in the former case (including the trill |r|) and the proposed configuration constraint in the latter. Although phonological and phonetic patterns of nasalization differ in Sundanese, in that some phonological blockers are phonetically amenable to nasalization and others are not, both the phonological and phonetic patterns follow the sonority hierarchy proposed in the chapter.