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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Dear Corpora colleagues, I have computed
the Haida Indian texts. I came across a new encounter in
my detective story of investigating the occurrence of labial consonants in
AmerIndian texts. It has the lowest use of labials - 1.70% only. As I said
earlier I expected the labial consonants to have a very small share of the
Cocopa speech sound chain since there are only 3 labials in Cocopa [p, w, m].
So, I thought that they would take only 4% or 5% like in Navaho (4.15%) or
Iquito (4.83%). To my great surprise the Cocopa labials take 18.69%, i.e. like
Odjibwa (17.14%) or Apinaye (17.40%). Therefore, Cocopa has one of the highest
concentration of labial consonants in its speech sound chain. However in Haida
the same 3 labials give only 1.70% in the Haida speech sound chain. It is the
smallest use of labials I found in 168 world languages. I wonder, if it is
a typological similarity or it shows some genetical
relatedness? I wonder who can tell me why Haida uses so little labials? I
guess that the great typological difference in the use of labials can speak for
the great genetical difference in AmerIndian languages. Looking forward to
hearing from you to my new email address <A
href="mailto:yutamb@mail.ru">yutamb@mail.ru</A> Remain yours sincerely
Yuri Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia <A
href="mailto:yutamb@mail.ru">yutamb@mail.ru</A>
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