Andrew Carnie: Nasal Fricatives

[Elizabeth J. Pyatt]

Colleagues,

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".
(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?

A quick glance at Ni Chaiside's entry on Irish in the IPA manual
doesn't recognize this sound.

Best,

Andrew

--
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