Phonological Processes of Nasalization in Baule

Abstract

This paper explores the phonological process of nasalization in Baule, a Kwa language spoken in Côte d'Ivoire. Baule has a rich inventory of both nasal consonants and nasal vowels. Drawing structural approaches of phonology, we describe the processes that give rise to these nasal consonants and vowels, illustrating them with examples from different speakers. The findings show that nasalization is context-dependent, emerging at the boundary of CVN or VN syllables. It unfolds from the phonological level to the phonetic, or surface, level. In Baule, vowel nasalization develops in three stages: (1) at word boundaries with the nasal /m/; (2) through deletion of the nasal consonant; and (3) through phonetic nasalization. The homorganic consonant /N/ triggers consonant nasalization. Although Baule shows a surface contrast between [a] and [ã], the feature [+nasal] is not an inherent property of the vowel. Instead, it is conditioned by the phonetic structure of the word. This indicates that the nasal vowel in Baule is not phonological (NV). When nasalization occurs before nasal consonants other than prenasalized stops, it tends to be weak.