Past Event

Quantity and quality in Nauruan

The phonology of Nauruan (Remote Oceanic; Nauru) has been described by Nathan (1973) as “exasperating”. After some years of working with Nauruan, I concur in Nathan’s assessment, but I am now ready to present a more optimistic view of the facts. I argue for an analysis of Nauruan vowel quantity and quality that solves some of the long-standing problems.

The main difficulties with Nauruan phonology are, first, the questionable phonemic status of central vowels and their apparently chaotic distribution, second, the apparently chaotic distribution of vocalic and consonantal length, and third, the not-very-well-behaved stress rule. 

I show that the three issues only appear problematic if viewed in isolation. Once seen together, the exasperations cancel each other out. The key observation that unmasks the system is that vowels which are anomalous with respect to the stress rule only occur in environments that do not support a full set of central vowel contrasts. With this observation, and the consequent allophonic patterns, the distribution of both quality and quantity becomes simple and predictable. The phonological proposals are buttressed by instrumental analysis of quantity and quality using original field data collected over the last few years.

This event is sponsored by the School of Linguistics and Language Studies.