Awahawi / Amahami

[Koontz John E]

On Tue, 20 Jul 1999 VOORHIS at BrandonU.CA wrote:
> This situation, where nasal consonants appear as allophones of phonemes
> which also have oral allophones, is a bit uncommon but not unique.  In
> at least some varieties of Fukienese Chinese I believe [b] and [m]
> belong to one phoneme, as do [l] and [n], with the nasal consonants
> preceding nasal vowels and the oral consonants preceding oral vowels.

I think have run into this dialect of Chinese, in the form of a Chinese
second language speaker of English who substituted n for l initially in
English.

> According to Gregores and Suarez, Guarani has [m], [n], and [ng] before nasal
> vowels and [mb], [nd] and [ngg] before oral vowels.

I've seen some comments that make me wonder if some Stoney dialects don't
have an nd / __ V(oral) ~ n / __ V(nasal).  However, I don't believe I've
ever seen this in so many words.

> produce the [b] allophone.  On the other hand, I think the [l]~[n] phoneme
> derives from both [l] and [n] which contrast in Ancient Chinese, so here we
> have both denasalization of original [n] before oral vowels and nasalization of
> original [l] before nasal vowels.

> The phonetics of Guarani suggest a denasalization to me, inasmuch as there is a
> nasal element in both allophones, but an oral element only in the pre-oral.

This sort of logic could be applied to Proto-Dakotan, too.  One could
argue that the Stoney/Assiniboine pattern of n and mn and (S)n for *R and
*pR < *pr and *SR < *Sr plus md for *pR < *pr in some Santee dialects
suggests that PreDakotan had *n and *mn and *Sn for Proto-Siouan *R and
*pR < *pr and *SR < *Sr.  This would be even without any possible n ~ nd
alternation.  However, it doesn't - at this point - look like *R/*pR/*SR
had *n for *R in other Siouan languages.  Thus, it seems that oral
resonants can probably spontaneously nasalize, too, even in languages in
which there are (a) nasal vowels and (b) (apparently) some nasal
resonants.  In regard to the latter, there seem to be some Proto-Siouan
sets cf. Omaha-Ponca nie 'be pained/have pain' that look like they have
always had n, albeit before a nasal(izable) vowel, and it appears that *r
~ [*n] may be an oldor at least repeated pattern in Siouan, as most *r /
__ V(nasal) sets seem to have n (but Dhegiha has dh and other oral
reflexes of *r in verb initials).

On the other hand, returning to the issue of whether *R was [n], consider
that Omaha-Ponca has n < *R and *pR < *pr in nouns and m < *W, i.e.,
perhaps *W was [m]. Examples would be negi < *Rek- 'mother's brother', nu
< *pro(-ka) 'male', mu- < *Wo 'by shooting'.  The u in these forms is not
a nasal vowel, so all these forms involve n or m before oral vowels. There
are also a few cases where *W > m unexpected even where *W > p or w
normally, as in mi 'sun' (I forget which languages at the moment!).
However, *R and *W are pretty consistently oral in Dhegiha, Chiwere, and
Winnebago otherwise.  I believe Bob Rankin inclines toward the theory that
all *R < *Xr, usually *wr, and all *W from *ww.  Of course, it occurs to
me that these are similar to the contexts where Crow has *r and *w as nn
and mm, i.e., in "geminations."

> In each of these admittedly rather few examples of nasal~oral consonantal
> allophones, the recoverable history suggests denasalization of original nasal
> segments always plays a role, while the opposite also happens in only some of
> the cases.  Furthermore, all these unusual phonologies derive from more
> conventional ones with nasal consonants that have only nasal allophones.

As this last contention is in line with the statistics of distribution of
the behavior of nasals, it seems reasonable.  However, it also seems a
little too convenient for me to be entirely comfortable with it.  It makes
me wonder what I'm overlooking.

Other Siouan languages in which nasality of consonants seems fairly
conditioned:  Mandan, Winnebago, and Tutelo.  Note that in most Siouan
languages it is pretty close to being conditioned, as there are relatively
few examples of oral sonorants before nasal vowels or nasal sonorants
before oral vowels.