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What it means to be phonetic or phonological: the case of Romanian devoiced nasals*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2010

Benjamin V. Tucker  and
Natasha Warner
Benjamin V. Tucker
Affiliation:
University of Arizona and University of Alberta
Natasha Warner
Affiliation:
University of Arizona and Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen
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Abstract

Abstract phonological patterns and detailed phonetic patterns can combine to produce unusual acoustic results, but criteria for what aspects of a pattern are phonetic and what aspects are phonological are often disputed. Early literature on Romanian makes mention of nasal devoicing in word-final clusters (e.g. in /basm/ ‘fairy-tale’). Using acoustic, aerodynamic and ultrasound data, the current work investigates how syllable structure, prosodic boundaries, phonetic paradigm uniformity and assimilation influence Romanian nasal devoicing. It provides instrumental phonetic documentation of devoiced nasals, a phenomenon that has not been widely studied experimentally, in a phonetically underdocumented language. We argue that sound patterns should not be separated into phonetics and phonology as two distinct systems, but neither should they all be grouped together as a single, undifferentiated system. Instead, we argue for viewing the distinction between phonetics and phonology as a largely continuous multidimensional space, within which sound patterns, including Romanian nasal devoicing, fall.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 289 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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