On synchronic and diachronic rules: French nasalisation

Non-agreement on Romance disagreements

“…It can justifiably be claimed that prevocalic mon [mon] ~ [mon] is not identical, except in graphy, with masculine mon [mo] -if we do not accept that French phonetic nasal vowels represent underlying 'vowel + nasal consonant' sequences (like e.g. Posner, 1971;Rochet, 1976;Tranel, 1981). Even if we do, (like Schane, 1968;Foley, 1977) we must view the more prestigious modern variant e.g.…”

“…Posner, 1971;Rochet, 1976;Tranel, 1981). It can justifiably be claimed that prevocalic mon [mon] ~ [mon] is not identical, except in graphy, with masculine mon [mo] -if we do not accept that French phonetic nasal vowels represent underlying 'vowel + nasal consonant' sequences (like e.g.…”

“…Also, as Plank points out, the introduction of ' disagreeing' possessives in French was a radical morphosyntactic innovation (see Rickard, 1959), rather a matter of phonological accident: the wholesale upheaval of the determiner systems (cf. Price, 1969;Dees, 1971;Posner 1973) is, perhaps, linked to a change in French accentuation, probably in the fourteenth century, with the consequent elision and liaison processes that obscured the phonetic identity of the lexical word, sealed the fate of the nominal case system, and played havoc with gender and number marking.…”

Old French nasalization and universals of sound change

“…In line with the general pattern of discussion in the literature, I will focus discussion on aN, eN, oN, iN and uN, and make only limited reference to some, but not all diphthongs. 5 Pope (1952) and Posner (1971) Ruhlen (1979), and Rochet (1976). On the other hand, Straka (1955), Fouche (1958) and Pierret (1981) 6 Diphthongs 01, ie and ui were initially stressed but underwent rightward stress shift, possibly in the mid or late twelfth century.…”