variant of Multnomah

[Dave Robertson]

Hi,

Please see the message I've just posted about the "Annals of Astoria"; there, I suggest we consider a parallel with other (synchronic) variation such as the [l] ~ [t] in <waltap> ~ <wattap/whattap>.

Sonorants that aren't semivowels, meaning mostly nasals and liquids, give one a strong impression of instability or variability throughout the indigenous Northwest.  There's a not infrequent realization of the phoneme /l/ as [dl], for example, which can be heard by foreign ears as a sort of /d/.

Then there's Boas' well-known remark about the difficulty of determining whether his Chinookan consultant was uttering an /m/ or a /b/...or should I say an [m] or a [b]?!  (That is, explicitly referring to phonetics and not to a phonological analysis.)

And I do feel it's worth pondering what connection the above phenomena have with the well-documented diachronic *change* from nasals to voiced stops in various circum-Olympic-Peninsula Chimakuan, Wakashan, and Salishan languages.  These developments, in turn, may perhaps be compared with the Upriver Halq'emeylem Salish development of /n/ into /l/, which happened at roughly the same time -- and this with the frequent realization of /l/ as [n] and /n/ as [l] in regional Chinuk-Wawa (just think of the word <doctin>, presumably from approx. [daktEl], from English "doctor"; also <lapilitas> "penance" < French "la pe'nitance").

It's bedtime, so I'll desist from linguizing after a final note:  Nile Thompson, in the volume in honor of Larry Thompson, has one of my favorite little papers, demonstrating how historical documents trace a clear trajectory of Twana Salish nasals' development into stops.  Similar historical studies of other NW languages may yield equally illuminating results.

Lhush nanich,

Dave

"Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at D.UMN.EDU> wrote:

>"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
>
--
"Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a doctor how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous



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