Colloquium

The typology of complex nasal segments: Evidence from Amazonian Indigenous Languages

This talk presents an overview of the typology of complex nasal-oral consonants, an empirically heterogenous class of consonants that has received considerably different analytical treatment in the literature. I propose a classification system that categorizes complex nasal-oral consonants into three basic types, each of which is the result of distinct functional pressures in the grammar: (1) post-oralized nasal stops, which result from a contrast-preserving mechanism that maximizes the distinction between oral and nasal vowels; (2) pre-nasalized oral stops, which result from coarticulation nasalization from an immediately adjacent nasal vowel; and (3) spontaneously pre-nasalized voiced oral stops, which serve as an articulatory strategy to circumvent the build-up of air pressure in the supraglottal cavity during the production of voiced oral stops. This classification is supported by findings from an exhaustive typological survey of the phonology of nasal and oral segments in the Jê, Takana, and Tupí language families.