The production and provenance of palatal nasals in Portuguese and Spanish
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Ryan Shosted
Abstract
We present acoustic evidence bearing on the articulation of the palatal nasal consonants in Portuguese and Spanish. We outline the etymological origins of these consonants, some of which are shared by the two languages. One class of Portuguese palatal nasals arose from a nasalized palatal approximant – the phonetic leftovers of a historical process (typical of Galician-Portuguese but not Spanish) that nasalized vowels and deleted intervocalic alveolar nasal consonants. Some descriptions of Brazilian Portuguese suggest that this nasalized approximant is still extant and perhaps even dominant among speakers of the modern language. We compare the articulation of palatal nasals in a variety of vocalic contexts to determine the degree of impedance. We find evidence suggesting that the nasalized approximant of medieval Galician-Portuguese may have been retained in Brazilian Portuguese. This highly conservative trait appears to have spread throughout the lexicon even to etymologically unrelated forms and may be the reason for attested asymmetries in coarticulation among BP nasal consonants.
Abstract
We present acoustic evidence bearing on the articulation of the palatal nasal consonants in Portuguese and Spanish. We outline the etymological origins of these consonants, some of which are shared by the two languages. One class of Portuguese palatal nasals arose from a nasalized palatal approximant – the phonetic leftovers of a historical process (typical of Galician-Portuguese but not Spanish) that nasalized vowels and deleted intervocalic alveolar nasal consonants. Some descriptions of Brazilian Portuguese suggest that this nasalized approximant is still extant and perhaps even dominant among speakers of the modern language. We compare the articulation of palatal nasals in a variety of vocalic contexts to determine the degree of impedance. We find evidence suggesting that the nasalized approximant of medieval Galician-Portuguese may have been retained in Brazilian Portuguese. This highly conservative trait appears to have spread throughout the lexicon even to etymologically unrelated forms and may be the reason for attested asymmetries in coarticulation among BP nasal consonants.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Editors’ introduction 1
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Part I. Phonetics/Phonology
- Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection 15
- V-to-V assimilation in trisyllabic words in French 25
- The production and provenance of palatal nasals in Portuguese and Spanish 43
- Lenition and phonemic contrast in Majorcan Catalan 63
- Alveolar laterals in Majorcan Spanish 81
- Units of speech production in Italian 95
- Pitch polarity in Palenquero 111
- Word-minimality and sound change in Hispano-Romance 129
- Multiple opacity in Eastern Regional French 153
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Part II. Syntax
- Syntactic variation in Colombian Spanish 169
- Anaphoricity, logophoricity and intensification 187
- More on the clitic combination puzzle 203
- The Spanish dative alternation revisited 217
- Romanian genderless pronouns and parasitic gaps 231
- To agree or not to agree 249
- Variation in subject expression in Western Romance 267
- A phase-based analysis of Old French genitive constructions 285
- V2 loss in Old French and Old Occitan 301
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Part III. Morphology, and interfaces
- The loss and survival of inflectional morphology 323
- Allomorphy in pre-clitic imperatives in Formenteran Catalan 337
- Preverbal vowels in wh-questions and declarative sentences in Northern Italian Piacentine dialects 353
- Pitch accent, focus, and the interpretation of non- wh exclamatives in French 369
- Detours along the perfect path 387
- Grammaticalization of commencer/cominciare “to begin” in French and Italian 405
- Index of subjects, terms and languages 423
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Editors’ introduction 1
-
Part I. Phonetics/Phonology
- Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection 15
- V-to-V assimilation in trisyllabic words in French 25
- The production and provenance of palatal nasals in Portuguese and Spanish 43
- Lenition and phonemic contrast in Majorcan Catalan 63
- Alveolar laterals in Majorcan Spanish 81
- Units of speech production in Italian 95
- Pitch polarity in Palenquero 111
- Word-minimality and sound change in Hispano-Romance 129
- Multiple opacity in Eastern Regional French 153
-
Part II. Syntax
- Syntactic variation in Colombian Spanish 169
- Anaphoricity, logophoricity and intensification 187
- More on the clitic combination puzzle 203
- The Spanish dative alternation revisited 217
- Romanian genderless pronouns and parasitic gaps 231
- To agree or not to agree 249
- Variation in subject expression in Western Romance 267
- A phase-based analysis of Old French genitive constructions 285
- V2 loss in Old French and Old Occitan 301
-
Part III. Morphology, and interfaces
- The loss and survival of inflectional morphology 323
- Allomorphy in pre-clitic imperatives in Formenteran Catalan 337
- Preverbal vowels in wh-questions and declarative sentences in Northern Italian Piacentine dialects 353
- Pitch accent, focus, and the interpretation of non- wh exclamatives in French 369
- Detours along the perfect path 387
- Grammaticalization of commencer/cominciare “to begin” in French and Italian 405
- Index of subjects, terms and languages 423
