h- vs. x-aspiration in LDN

rwd0002 at unt.edu rwd0002 at unt.edu
Tue Feb 20 15:46:41 UTC 2001


Regarding velar aspiration in Siouan.  As John points
out it is indeed common in Athabaskan.  In Southern
Athabaskan or Apachean, the aspirated t's in front of
back vowels are more or less velar.  Hoijer wrote that
Western Apache, (one of the Apachean languages) had no
velar aspiration, but his field notes on this language
show that it occurs even there, even though not as
consistently as in Navajo or Chiricahua.

Another place where this phenomenon occurs: the
Northwest Mandarin Chinese dialect of Qinghai has strong
velar aspiration of aspirated stops.

Greetings,

Willem J. de Reuse
Department of English
University of North Texas



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