Нищо не идва от нищото. Още за фонетиката и типологията на „спонтанната“ назализация
Nothing Will Come of Nothing. More on Phonetics and Typology of “Spontaneous” Nasalization

Summary/Abstract: This paper examines the phonetics and typology of “spontaneous” nasalization, a process of emergence of nasality (in vowels or consonants) in which this feature does not derive from an etymological nasal segment. The definition adopted here encompasses four major rare sound changes documented in isolated languages or language families: appearance of nasal segments near glottal and pharyngeal consonants (§2.1), near consonants produced with an extremely spread glottis (§2.2), prenasalization of voiced stops (§2.3), consonantally unconditioned nasalization of vowels (§2.4). The study explains the perceptive, articulatory, or aerodynamic motivation of the changes at issue, while seeking to account for their rarity in languages in the markedness of their output segments, and by reference to the notion of “evolutionary complexity”: the more complex the factors that drive linguistic change, and the more steps involved in the process, the rarer it will be.

• Details
• Contents