This chapter examines the phonological rule of nasal substitution in Tagalog, specifically its rate of application in different constructions. Nasal substitution can occur whenever a prefix that ends in /ŋ/ attaches to a stem beginning with an obstruent, as in /maŋ + bigáj/ → [mamigáj] ‘to distribute’. Different prefixes trigger nasal substitution at different rates. This is similar to cases in which word-internal syntactic structure determines how and whether a phonological rule applies (e.g. Newell and Piggott 2014), but different because none of these words’ syntactic structure absolutely prevents nasal substitution, such as by placing a phase boundary between the prefix and stem. The focus of the chapter is on laying out the data, but it does suggest three possible interpretations: variable syntactic structure, a phonology directly sensitive to prefix identity, or competition between productive syntactic structure and lexicalized pronunciation.
