Morphological Status of Prefix and Nasal Assimilation in English

Abstract

This study focuses on nasal assimilation occurring across the boundary between a nasal‐final prefix and a consonant-initial base in English. It is argued that the coronal nasal of a Class I prefix undergoes assimilation when followed by a non‐coronal consonant initial base. On the other hand, the coronal nasal of a Class II prefix does not undergo any featural change in the same phonological environment. Thus, this assimilation pattern difference between Class I and Class II is ascribed to a morphological status difference between affixes, which has been evinced in traditional morphology. This difference is implemented as constraint ranking difference in the analysis. For a prefix which cannot be classified uniformly as either class is explained by adopting Uniform Exponence. This specific constraint can effectively explain the assimilation pattern difference between an obstruent-initial and a sonorant-initial base. By including Uniform Exponence, we could propose one constraint ranking which can explain nasal assimilation in English. We could also extend the analysis to other nasal assimilation examples that are from affixes belonging to other affix classes.