Two Types of Nasal in Okinawan

Abstract

This paper claims that it is necessary to distinguish obstruent nasals from sonorant nasals in the phonology of Okinawan and Japanese; the former are underlyingly specified with [+nasal, −continuant] and the latter with [+nasal] only. Just as in the adjustment of C/h/ to pp in the two genetically related languages, it is necessary that the feature specification of an obstruent nasal should be adjusted by a phonotactic constraint on consonant clusters and acquire [+voice] when followed by a consonant with [+voice]. In Okinawan, there is a sharp contrast between obstruent nasals (/n/, /m/) and sonorant nasals (/n/, /m/) when they occur before suffix-initial /t/; the former trigger voicing assimilation and undergo some other rules, but the latter do not. In Japanese, recognizing obstruent nasals, /m/ and /n/, makes more natural the voicing change of suffix-initial /t/ to d after stem-final /m/ and /b/ in /yom+ta/ ‘read’ and /yob+ta/ ‘called’ and a subsequent change of both m and b to n before suffix-initial d, because these changes take place between the same type of segment, i.e., (voiced) non-continuants. In the proposed analysis of Japanese, whether the suffix-initial consonant undergoes voicing or deletion in post-consonantal position depends on the value of continuancy, [±continuant].