However, those that do remain indicate that the Mercians turned an 'a' into an 'o' before a
nasal consonant such as 'n', 'm' and 'ng.' .' Thus Mercians would have said mon for man, hond for hand and lond for land.
The following chart (Figure 22) shows the attested distribution of each consonant phoneme within free word stems in the following positions: word-initial simple onset, complex onset with /w/, complex onset with /j/, intervocalic, [C.sub.1] in a consonant cluster with an oral consonant, [C.sub.1] in a consonant cluster with a
nasal consonant, [C.sub.2] in a consonant cluster with an oral consonant, [C.sub.2] in a consonant cluster with a
nasal consonant, and word-final simple coda.
A bilabial
nasal consonant contrasts with a dental
nasal consonant.
As shown in Table 6 (a), the vast majority of the syllables in the West African-based words consists of one pronounced consonant plus vowel (CV) with just a few others: CV followed by a
nasal consonant (CVN) or a syllable which has just a vowel sound (V).
(31) Innovative (long-distance)
nasal consonant harmony in Yaka (Hyman 1995) a.
(2) Nasal spread happens when a
nasal consonant influences adjacent vowels in such a way that they also acquire a nasal pronunciation.
Wolfram and Fasold (1974) and Haynes and colleagues (2006) described this feature as an economical feature of AAE, as the nasality of the final consonant is imposed on the vowel, allowing the
nasal consonant to be deleted.
However, such simplifications were due to the influence of the consonant initial in the second segment of a compound, as is ilustrated by the metamorphoses of the compound-initial nouns strand, sand and mound, which not only suffered d-loss but also occasionally assimilated their
nasal consonant /n/ to the consonant which followed directly, the result being the labial nasal /m/; cf.:
The third class (Class III), which is largely a category of verbs ending with
nasal consonants, retained all its strong inflections while verbs without
nasal consonant endings almost all became weak.
nasal consonant - a consonant produced through the nose with the mouth closed