Variants of "handkerchief" in CJ & /n/ - /l/ - stop relations

[phil cash cash]

This is certainly an interesting word, once you consider the output in
CJ.
Klamath has the following entry for 'handkerchief' (see Barker 1963):

[kikjam]  where [j] is shown as a "wedge J", B. suggests "gyp" in
analogy

...similar to your [khikchEm].  I am not sure of your suggested
analysis, (i am not a phonetician/phonologist) but it does seem that
there is a distinct minimal prosodic template in action here in the CJ
outputs, which makes me wonder--ikta lalang?  that is, where does the
syllable shape [kikjam] come from when one says "handkerchief" in CJ?

this is why i like CJ so much, because it is just so darn interesting...

wext,
Phil Cash Cash
cayuse/nez perce

M.A.R. Barker
1963 Klamath Dictionary UCPL Vol. 31


> -----Original Message-----
> So how about the CJ word for "handkerchief", as an illustration of the
> lively variation among nasal, lateral, labial, and stop sounds in the
> indigenous Pacific Northwest?
>
> Here are a few of the recorded forms of the CJ word:
>
> hekchum
> hikchEm
> khikchEm
> henkEchim
> anikchim
>
> We can see that the nasal was dropped from the first two forms.
>
> Interestingly for a linguist, that nasal could easily be heard as
either
> nasalization on the preceding vowel -- and French nasal vowels were
> realized very, very frequently by indigenous speakers as oral, cf.
Demers'
> & Blanchet's materials -- or else as homorganic ("eng")
prenasalization of
> the following stop, which perhaps also would make it highly
susceptible to
> being dropped in pronunciation -- by analogy with the perhaps free or
at
> least liberal variation between "m-like" and "b-like" sounds in Lower
> Chinookan.
>
> Also interestingly for a linguist, all the forms shown above display a
> pronunciation [m] for the English original's final [f].  While,
excepting
> K'alapuyan, the indigenous languages' common phoneme /xw/ might be
> *acoustically* the most similar correspondent to [f] in a Native's
> language repertoire, perhaps Native people had a high awareness of the
> tighter stricture at the labial articulator in this European sound
than in
> /xw/, leading them to opt for the most labially strictured indigenous
> correspondent, /m/.  Was this solution optimal only in early contact
days?
> Later, we generally find [p] as a Native realization of etymological
/f/.
>
> If anyone read the preceding two paragraphs, give a holler.  :-)
>
> Dave
> --
> "Asking a linguist how many languages she knows is like asking a
doctor
> how many diseases he has!" -- anonymous
>
>
>
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