ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a description and analysis of a cross-linguistic typology of nasal harmony, focusing on variability in the set of segments undergoing nasalization and in those that block or behave transparent to nasal spreading. The hierarchical cross-linguistic variation in nasal harmony and summarizing the key generalizations established by the nasal harmony database. Factorial ranking in the optimality-theoretic framework predicts the possibility of a grammar in which nasal spreading would be ranked high enough to derive even nasalized segments at the extreme of incompatibility. This chapter compiled a database of nasal harmony systems, which comprises descriptions from over 75 languages. Each language entry includes information about the inventory of segments, the set of segments undergoing nasalization, and any blocking or transparent segments. The typology established by the database confirms that crosslinguistic variation in nasal harmony obeys the implicational hierarchy. To characterize the basic typology of nasal harmony, two kinds of constraints required are: spreading constraints and nasal markedness constraints.
