Becky 06/14

4.1 Introduction

The study by Ferguson (1963) on nasals has served many ways as the model of article on universals of segment types. This chapter will discuss nasal consonants mainly based on Ferguson’s assumption and the UPSID data will also be presented.

4.2 Types of nasals

Note: * means plain voiced nasals with distinctive length or a secondary articulation.

Nasal segments in UPSID

1.      Nasals in the dental/alveolar area are the most common, bilabials are also very frequent.

2.      Although velar nasals are far from rare, they are much less frequent than velar stops. /k/: /N/= 283: 167

3.      Palatal nasals are more common than stops of the same place of articulation.

/ø/: /c/= 107: 41

4.      In the uvular, pharyngeal and glottal places, there is no nasal reported in the UPSID because of articulatory constraint.

3 reliable patterns of small number of nasals that are not simple plain voiced nasals.

4.3 Ferguson’s “Assumptions about nasals”: primary nasal consonants (PNC)

I.                   He suggests that “every language has at least one PNC in its inventory”.

Exceptions: there are 10 languages without any PNC in UPSID.

Number of PNC’s in UPSID languages

1.      Almost 97% of the UPSID sample have one or more nasals.

2.      None of the UPSID languages has more than 6 PNC’s.

II.                 If a language has only one PNC, it will be an apical nasal. e.g, /*n/ (total class of dental and alveolar nasals)

                7 languages in UPSID have only one nasal, and it is even rarer than languages with not nasals (7 vs. 10).

    One PNC

          Conclusion: Amerindian languages have fewer nasals; of 17 languages with zero or one nasal, 13 are American languages.

III.             A language with 2 PNC’s will have an /m/.

    Two PNC

         Exception: without plain bilabial nasal /m/

         Crothers (1975) conflates Ferguson’s first three observations into a single general rule, namely, “nearly all languages have contrasting labial and dental nasals”. 297 out of 317 in UPSID have both /m/ and /*n/ in accord with this rule.

IV. Others

The most usual third nasal is velar /N/.

Three PNC

Four PNC

         Note: /*ø/ includes palato-alveolar and “pre-palatal” nasals.

Five PNC

    Six PNC

1.      Only language with a large number of nasals contrast dental and alveolar places

2.      Astralian languages typically have more nasals than languages of other families. (11 out of 19 have 5 or 6 nasals)

4.4  Primary nasals and obstruents

    I. The number of PNC’s in any language is never greater than the number of obstruents.

    II. The presence of a nasal at a given place usually implies the presence of an obstruent at the same place of articulation.

            Exceptions:

4.5  Secondary nasal consonants (SNC)

     I. This class includes nasals with a secondary articulation, or with an unusual phonation type as well as pre- or post-nasalized obstruents.

    II. No language has SNC's unless it also has one or more PNC’s, and that the number of SNC's in any language is never greater than the number of PNC’s.

             Exception: Lakkia has 3 PNC’s but has 5 PNC’s.

   Other phonation types

    Nasals with unusual phonation types, that is, voiceless, laryngealized or breathy voiced nasals, do not occur unless a plain voiced counterpart occurs in the language.

      Nasals with secondary articulation

        A. No nasal with a secondary articulation occurs unless a simple nasal occurs at the same place of articulation.

        B. None occurs unless consonants of another type also occur with the same secondary articulation and in the same place of articulation.

   Long nasals

      In the 13 languages with long nasals, a matching short nasal occurs with each long nasal, except for the case of /N:/ in Finnish.

  Prenasalized obstruents

    It seems more appropriate to relate prenasalized obstruents to the other obstruent series of the language, rather than considering them in relation to the nasals.

    A. There are languages with no PNC’s but do have a prenasalized plosive series.

    B. There are languages with both a series of PNC’s and a prenasalized stop series in place of a simple voiced series of stops.

    C. A language like Sara (217) has PNC’s, voiced plosives and prenasalized plosives, but it has no velar PNC while there are velars in the plosive series. 

   Nasalized clicks

    Languages with clicks in their inventory seem to include nasalized ones among them.

4.6  Conclusion

I.           Nasals are more distinctive speech sounds.

II.         They are among the most stable of sounds diachronically.

III.      The preferred places of articulation for nasals: dental/alveolar, bilabial, velar, palatal.

IV.      Nasals are rarely voiceless.

Sound Patterns of Nasals