Postnasal Devoicing in Nasioi

The investigation of the prohibition on sequences consisting of a nasal followed by a voiceless stop across languages has yielded a productive analytical approach to typology in phonology. Assuming phonetically grounded constraints banning these sequences makes the strong prediction that there should be no symmetrical process of postnasal devoicing. This paper presents evidence from Nasioi to challenge this claim, where sequences of nasals followed by voiceless stops are favored structures. The Nasioi pattern of postnasal devoicing is placed in a larger South Bougainville context, where it is shown that there are slight, but notable, differences across the consonant inventories and processes relevant to postnasal phenomena.