CJ phonemes 2

[Henry Kammler]

This is a follow-up to my previous posting.

In early January this year we had a discussion about spelling conventions. My
proposal is that we should stick to the questions of  "phonology" now. I
appreciate David's and Tony's phonemic/phonetic writing because I never heard CJ
spoken. If they write "khapa" I have a clearer picture of what this word actually
sounds like in GR. In the texts one also finds the forms "kaba" and "kapa" among
others. The interesting matter is now whether we can find examples where [k] and
[kh] make a distinction. This would not only have practical consequences (oh,
"official" spelling issue again ...) but would also clear up some aspects of how
CJ and its source languages are linked.
One could look at the native sound systems of the southern NW coast:

THE K-SOUND (velar stop)
************************
Old Chinook distinguished voiced vs. voiceless, i.e. G / K

other major sources:
English G / K
French G / K
Nootka K / K'

and then, regionally:
Puget Sound Salish mostly had voiced/nonglottalized voiceless/glottalized
voiceless G / K / K'
Kalapuya and Takelma had aspirated/non-aspirated/glottalized, i.e. K / Kh / K'
(are there loans from Kalapuya into CJ in Grand Ronde?)
Tillamook (Salishan) had plain(voiceless)/lenis(voiced)/glottalized, i.e. K / Gh /
K'

the following languages probably did not have influence on CJ but anyway:
Quileute G / K / K'
Alsea K / K'
Coosan G / K / K'

Well, we see, among the *major* donor languages those with a voiced/voiceless
distinction (Ch, E, F) defeat the one that only has voiceless (Noo) 3:1. In Grand
Ronde other players may have jumped into the field (like Kalapuya) and made a
phonetic point. Although languages do not develop by arithmetics I would (not
surprisingly) predict a phonemic opposition of voiced/voiceless for CJ, while the
aspiration /kh/ is simply a variant of /k/ (just like in English but unlike French
where aspiration is only heard in the opera...).
We could also look at the respective vowel inventories...
Anyway, I'm too new to the field and maybe I'm not aware of phonological studies
that have cleared this all up already.

uk chichaku Henry