Michael Everson: Nasal Fricatives

[Elizabeth J. Pyatt]

Andrew Carnie wrote:

>Please forgive the phonetic naivite of a syntactician, but I have a question.
>I was sitting in a preliminary exam defense last week, when my
>colleague, a phonetician asserted "It is impossible to produce a
>nasal fricative".

Unless you are blowing your nose.

>(apparently because there is insufficient airflow to produce frication and
>simultaneous nasal airflow). This kind of blew me away, since of course, I
>think most people think of the slender version of <mh> in Irish at least
>(in SG too?) to be a nasalized [v] or bilabial fricative (and NOT a nasalized
>  bilabial approximant, which would be the broad version). So y'all,
>what do you think? Has anyone looked at this instrumentally?

The frication is bilabial. Nasality is an added 
feature due to the simultaneous egress of air 
through the nostrils.

For most speakers the -mh- in "séimhiú" isn't 
nasalized however, and it's labio-dental, not 
bilabial.
--
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com

--
o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o.o

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