6.553 Sum: Spontaneous Nasalisation

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-553. Thu 13 Apr 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 91
 
Subject: 6.553 Sum: Spontaneous Nasalisation
 
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1)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 13:03:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: robert boivin (r26670 at er.uqam.ca)
Subject: sum.:Spontaneous Nasalisation
 
-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 1995 13:03:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: robert boivin (r26670 at er.uqam.ca)
Subject: sum.:Spontaneous Nasalisation
 
        Fellow linguists,
        A few weeks ago I asked for your help in finding data on
spontaneous vowel nasalisation. Here is a summary of the answers that
where send to me. First I would like to thank the following people for
there help:
-Charles Scott          (CSCOTT at macc.wisc.edu)
-Marc Picard            (PICARD at VAX2.CONCORDIA.CA)
-Kirk Widdison          (WIDDISN%ILSTU.bitnet at vmd.cso.uiuc.edu)
-Doug Wahlen            (wahlen at lenny.haskins.yale.edu)
-John E.Koontz          (koontz at boulder.nist.gov)
-Geoffrey S.Nathan      (geoffn at siu.edu)
-John Kingston          (KINGSTON at coins.cs.umass.edu)
-Jakob Dempsey          (jakob at u.washington.edu)
-Brian D.Joseph         (bjoseph at magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu)
-George Childs          (gchilds at epas.utoronto.ca)
-John Davis             (davis at justice.usdoj.gov)
-Dan "Moonhawk" Alford  (dalford at s1.csuhayward.edu)
-Marguerite Mackenzie   (mmackenz at morgan.ucs.mun.ca)
 
Suggested readings:
 
OHALA, John (1993) "Sound changes as nature's speech perception experiement"
        In: Speech Communication, vol.13, pp.155-61.
        --  (1984) "Explanation in Phonology: Opinions and Examples"
        In: Phonologica 1984, Dressler et al (eds.), Cambridge U.P.
        --  (1983) "The phonological ends justifies any means"
        In: Proceedings of the 13th international congress of linguistics,
        Hattori and Inoue (eds.), pp.232-43.
 
        Ohala relates spontaneous vowel nasalisation with the heavy
airflow produced by certain adjacent consonants.
 
FERGUSON, C. et al. (1975) Nasalfest: Papers from a Symposium on Nasals and
        Nasalisation, Standford, CA.
        (Includes: Matisoff, J.A."Rhinoglottophilia: the mysterious
connection between nasality and glottality")
 
WARNE, Janet (1975) A Historical Phonology of Abenaki, MA thesis, McGill U.
 
WAHLEN, Doug and Pam Beddor (1989) "Connections between nasality and vowel
        duration and height: Elucidation of the Eastern Algonquian intrusive
        nasal" In: Language, 65, pp.457-86.
 
CHILDS, Goerges (1991) "Nasalisation in Kisi" In: Journal of West African
        Languages, 21, pp.25-36.
 
        I received many answers suggesting to look into Eastern
Algonquians and Siouans languages where spontaneous vowel nasalisation
seems to be a regular process (often phonological and sometimes flexionnal).
        In other cases, spontaneous nasalisation has appeared in
diachrony: Sanskrit "sarpa" - Hindustani "saNp" (snake).
        There also seem to be a relatively high nasalisation in
Minnesotan's speech, regardless of the context.
        Finally, "Moonhawk" points to me that we nasalise the vowel when
we say "uh-huh" "huh-uh"...
 
        Once again, thank you all for your help. I will be working on the
same project for some time. If anybody else has information that might
help, I would be gratefull if you could e-mail me the information.
 
Robert Boivin
Universite du Quebec a Montreal
r26670 at er.uqam.ca
 
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