a phonetic mystery

[Pamela Munro]

After I sent my note I realized I should have added lots of
"synchronically"s (e.g. in "the vowel after the mn in 'water' seems to
me to be SYNCHRONICALLY a derived nasal vowel"). But I know you all got
that. Thanks, Bob.

Pam

('I do'/'I wear' is m-ún; 'I am located' is wa-'ún...)



"Rankin, Robert L" wrote:
>
> >From: Pamela Munro
> >I can't speak to the historical issue here, but I think there is a good
> >reason why we might hear a difference between mní 'water' and mnínkte
> >(as I would write it) 'I will go'. The vowel after the mn in 'water'
> >seems to me to be a derived nasal vowel that acquires its nasality from
> >the preceding nasal consonant, while the vowel after the mn in 'I will
> >go' is an underlyingly nasal vowel (the future of every ablaut verb ends
> >in -inkta/e, regardless of what consonant precedes). In fact, it's this
> >underlying nasality that causes the expected bl- of 'I will go' to
> >become mn- ...
>
> It is often said (e.g. Fox's recent book on linguistic reconstruction) that
> the methodologies of (internal) reconstruction and synchronic phonology are
> identical and (by others) that the rules of synchronic phonology
> recapitulate the historical processes that led to the present-day system. I
> have strongly opposed this in a chapter that will appear in Blackwell's
> Handbook of Historical Ling. Pam's examples are a nice case in point.
> Historically, it is clearly 'water' that had the underlying nasal vowel, and
> its consonants represent secondary nasalization, but synchronically, as both
> David and Pam point out, the vowel has lost its underlying nasality. 'Go',
> on the other hand, had the oral vowel *e, and it's nasalization is strictly
> secondary, from *iN+kte, just as Pam says. The language has simply been
> restructured and our synchronic and diachronic methodologies and rules (or
> constraints, for those who believe in them) simply yield different results.
>
> Synchronically in Dakotan it is probably no longer possible to associate the
> /m/ of m-ni 'water', the /b/ of b-loka 'male' or the /p/ of 'p-te' 'buffalo
> cow' with absolutive wa- (or, historically, in the case of these particular
> nouns, the animate *wi-). It has been lexicalized, or "phoneticized" as part
> of the noun root.
>
> The parallel allomorphs of first singular actor wa-, however, must still be
> associated in 1st person actor forms such as m-aNka 'I sit', m-uN 'I do/use'
> (I can't recall which of those 2 uses m-), and m-niN- 'I will go-IRR'; b-le
> 'I go'; p-hu 'I arrive coming', etc. where there is still a clear 1st person
> semantic association.
>
> Bob