1. A nasal vowel (NV) is a phoneme the most characteristic allophone of which has oral and velic opening and vibration of the vocal cords. (Ferguson 1963: 58). 2. Hyman (1975a: 253) proposes an amendment to this universal: When there is extensive neutralization of nasal vowels with oral vowels historically, i.e. as a process, this occurs next to nasal consonants.3. Ferguson specifies his claim in a later paper (1974: 6): “Nasals tend to neutralize before following obstruents, where they tend to be homorganic with the obstruent, and they tend to neutralize at the ends of words, where there are several possible phonetic patterns: either the undifferentiated /n/, it is reduced to a velar nasal stop, or nasal glide, or it appears as a nasal vowel (cf. Chen 1973b,c; Cedergren 1973).”4. Two well-documented examples of this kind of neutralization are Bengali and Yoruba (Ferguson 1963: 59)
1. A nasal vowel (NV) is a phoneme the most characteristic allophone of which has oral and velic opening and vibration of the vocal cords. (Ferguson 1963: 58). 2. Hyman (1975a: 253) proposes an amendment to this universal: When there is extensive neutralization of nasal vowels with oral vowels historically, i.e. as a process, this occurs next to nasal consonants.3. Ferguson specifies his claim in a later paper (1974: 6): “Nasals tend to neutralize before following obstruents, where they tend to be homorganic with the obstruent, and they tend to neutralize at the ends of words, where there are several possible phonetic patterns: either the undifferentiated /n/, it is reduced to a velar nasal stop, or nasal glide, or it appears as a nasal vowel (cf. Chen 1973b,c; Cedergren 1973).”4. Two well-documented examples of this kind of neutralization are Bengali and Yoruba (Ferguson 1963: 59)