NASALITY AND VOICING IN NON-STANDARD DIALECT OF MALAY

This study discusses nasality and voicing in non-standard dialect of Malay i.e. Perak dialect (PD). As is widely claimed in previous Malay scholars, nasal substitution applies when there is a sequence of nasal and voiceless obstruent by no means to avoid the cluster from emerging in the surface representation. In this analysis, I argue that nasal substitution is not always applied in PD when there is a sequence of nasal and voiceless obstruent. The sequence is permitted to emerge root-internally in the dialect. In this analysis, I will also argue that nasal substitution is not only applied to voiceless obstruents, but it also applies to voiced obstruents after nasal segments. I suggest that the application of nasal substitution in both voiced and voiceless obstruents as occurred in the dialect is to satisfy CRISP-EDGE[s] which rules out candidates with both nasal and voiceless/voiced obstruent clusters in the surface representation.