A phonological analysis of the onset velar nasal merger in Hong Kong Cantonese

This paper provides a phonological analysis of the onset /ŋ/ ↔ /∅/ merger in Hong Kong Cantonese (HKC). What is particularly challenging for a formal analysis here is that the insertion and deletion of [ŋ] can occur in the same environment, since a sound normally does not allow two contrasting operations in the same environment (McCarthy 2003). The current study employs an analysis using a probabilistic constraint-based grammar (Goldwater et al. 2003), by proposing that [ŋ] is a placeless consonant at the onset position. Thus, [ŋ] is inserted placelessly and gets its place from the following vowel. Insertion of other sounds can thus be excluded by penalizing place insertion.