A’ingae nasality always floats
Abstract:
The phonology of nasality in A’ingae (or Cofán, ISO 639-3: con) is complex and has received several treatments in the previous literature (e.g. Bennett et al., t.a.; Sanker, 2025; Sanker and AnderBois, 2024). In this talk, I focus specifically on nasality in the language’s native roots, and observe a new restriction on its distribution: If present, nasality always “starts” from the left edge and extends through (a part of) the root. To account for this pattern, I propose that nasality in A’ingae is always a floating feature that associates from the left, and all segments are underlyingly either (a) underspecified for orality/nasality, (b) specified as fully oral, or (c) specified as oral but with an underspecified stop closure. The interaction of (1) and (2) accounts for the A’ingae patterns, including the following (previously unobserved) new generalizations: Within a native root, (i) a nasal (or prenasalized) segment is never preceded by oral sonorants/vowels, and (ii) a prenasalized stop is always followed only by oral segments.
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