Awahawi / Amahami

[Robert L. Rankin]

> 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.

The n, l, r alternations, whether allophonic or morphophonemic, are
pretty common.  As a humorous aside, we had a student who spoke a Thai
dialect (I don't know how literary) with a distribution of these sounds
that consistently made the words "phonological rules" come out
[fonorajikan lunz].  I think all three sounds are phonemes contextually
in Thai, but the contrast is obviously neutralized in some environments.

> I believe Bob Rankin inclines toward the theory that all *R < *Xr, usually *wr, and all *W from *ww.

Pretty much.  Where X, above, is a certain kind of consonant.  Where the
conditioning C is retained, it is usually [b], s or sh as I recall.
Where it isn't retained, it was probably a laryngeal (h or ?), but this
last is just an educated guess.  Certainly *w-w gives W, but it is
possible that an h or ? in contact with *w might also.  I seem to recall
having to posit one or two such cases.

Another interesting (and undiscussed) alternation of b/m and d/l/n is
found in Dakotan where underlying (and reconstructed) p, t, k end up
syllable final due to compounding or reduplication.  Dakotan does not
license such obstruents syllable finally, so they become their
corresponding resonants, which may be either oral or nasal depending on
the preceding vowel.

So you get sapa 'be black' but sab-sapa 'black redup.'  Then:
           nu~pa 'be two'  but num-nu~pa 'two redup.' with an [m].

As you know, there are parallel examples with t giving l/n syllable and
k giving g/ng (where ng is the velar nasal) syllable finally.

These [b, d, g] have (I think mistakenly) been analyzed by a whole
string of linguists as variants of p, t, k syllable finally, but what
happens to the dental series in Lakota (a clear resonant, [l]) and what
happens after a nasal V (m, n, ng) make it clear to me that the [b, d,
g] are what Keren Rice has called obstruent sonorants.  And since
sonorants are voiced in their unmarked state, this explains why we get
voiced stops syllable-finally, and we resolve what many linguists
considered a paradox.

I'm experiencing some trouble with my hands typing too much, so I'm
going to stop here.  If this is unclear, I have a long handout on it I
can share

Bob