variant of Multnomah

[Alan H. Hartley]

"Alan H. Hartley" wrote:
>
> Thanks to Tom Larsen, and to Liland Brajant Ros' who wrote:
> >
> > My impression is that in a wide variety of WA/OR languages there is a
> > tendency to replace nasals with voiced stops. This appears to have been an
> > accelerating inclination in Lushootseed over the last couple hundred years,
> > and is of course very marked in Quileute. Seems to be a general regional
> > tendency. And at least within the Salishan Lushootseed group of dialects it
> > doesn't seem to have been sudden or across the board.
>
> Good analogy: Suttles and Lane (HNAI VII. (1990) 485) credit Hess (1976)
> for pointing out that the "voiced stops b and d developed within
> historic times from nasals m and n, and these nasals are still used in
> some proper names and ritual terms and in some styles of speech".

Or maybe not such a close analogy, as Boas' problem in distinguishing m
from b in Chinookan was a synchronic one. Perhaps a better analog would
be the alternation in (Siouan) Hidatsa between m and w (again two
labials): m appears after a pause (word-initially in very careful
speech, and in syllabification), while w is found in normal (rapid)
speech. (Thanks to Wesley Jones.) The Hidatsa band-name Awaxawi is
pronounced A-ma-ha-mi in careful speech, and Sacagawea is Sa-ca-ga-me-a
(forms anglicized).

Alan