L'atelier : PhN3

Phonologie des nasales, de la nasalité et de la nasalisation à travers les langues

Cet atelier entend réunir des phonologues issus d’orientations et d’approches théoriques variées intéressés par l’étude de la nasalité et des processus de nasalisation dans diverses familles linguistiques.

Sont proposées des interventions de 30 minutes (discussion comprise) portant sur des faits synchroniques, diachroniques ou typologiques et traitant tant des aspects représentationnels que des aspects computationnels de la nasalité, tels que :

- place de la nasalité, dépendance / relations dissymétriques,

- contraintes sur les contrastes mettant en jeu la nasalité, préservation des contrastes,

- contours nasals: consonnes pré-nasalisées, nasales préconsonantiques, géminées nasales,

- nasales finales,

- poids prosodique de la nasalité,

- nasalité et ton : effets tonals sur le trait nasal,

- voyelles nasales et règles de nasalisation,

- types d’harmonie nasale : domaines, déclencheurs, directionnalité,

- dissimilation et assimilation dans les clusters à nasale,

- syncope ou substitution des consonnes nasales,

- relation entre nasalité et voisement,

- etc.

Conférencière invitée pour cet atelier : Juliet Stanton (New York University) - Postnasal devoicing as contrast enhancement

Postnasal voicing, where an underlying voiceless nasal-stop sequence is mapped to a voiced nasal-stop sequence (NT > ND), is a common process that has a well-known phonetic motivation (e.g. Pater 1999, Hayes & Stivers 2000). The converse of postnasal voicing, postnasal devoicing (ND > NT), is uncommon and often claimed to be phonetically unnatural (e.g. Beguš 2019). In this talk I argue against this characterization by showing that postnasal devoicing is perceptually advantageous. The idea (following Stanton 2017) is that, all else being equal, the contrast between a nasal (N) and ND is less distinct than a contrast between N and NT. Speakers employ post-nasal devoicing as a form of enhancement, in order to render the N-ND contrast more distinct.

Evidence for this claim comes from a perception study, which has two main results. First, the N-NT contrast is more distinguishable than the N-ND contrast, both prevocalically and word-finally. Second, both the N-ND and N-NT contrasts are more distinguishable prevocalically than they are word-finally. I demonstrate that this second finding has parallels in the typology of PND: prevocalic PND entails word-final PND. I present an analysis of PND that references auditory factors and show that it can be easily extended to account for other post-nasal laryngeal alternations, such as post-nasal aspiration (see Downing & Hamann 2021). Time permitting, I discuss points of intersection with and differences between the present proposal and those of Beguš (2019) and Downing & Hamann (2021).