Nasals

[Mike Cleven]

George Lang wrote:
>
> I've been lurking for what I hope is an hono(u)rable lapse of time, so for
> the record I thought I'd put Boas's remark on bilabials/nasals into the
> mail, since it has a certain descriptive clarity, though is not directly
> related to the ongoing discussion.

Mahsie kopa mahsh youtl kopa kingchauch wawa tzum!  [hono(u)rable]

>
> "The lower Chinook has a sound which is readily perceived [by Europeans] as
> a b, m or w. As a matter of fact, it is a b sound, produced by a very weak
> closure of the lips and with open nose, the breath passing weakly both
> through the mouth and through the nose, and accompanied by a faint
> intonation of the vocal chords. This sound associates withself with our b,
> which is produced by a moderately weak release of the lips; with our m,
> which is a free breath through the nose with closed lips; and with our w,
> which is a breath trhough the lips, which are all closed, all accompanied
> by a faint intonation of the vocal chords." (1911 [1969]:17)

Which really makes us non-linguists gasp in wonder; and Boas - he was
really more of an ethnologist/anthropologist, wasn't he?  What I wonder
here concerns the (supposedly) absolute definitions of the IPA and
suchlike; I remember in the one linguistics course I took long ago that
vowel chart that's sort of trapezoidal and reminds me of some kind of
gnostic/cabalistic line-chart encompassing metaphysical truth, but
really only describing back and front vowels etc.  Are phonologies
really definable into a certain number of possible phonemes?  Boas'
description is another reminder that, well, probably not....

MC