a phonetic mystery

[Pamela Munro]

I do not agree that "there is not much perceptible nasality in vowels
following nasal sonorants in Lakhota". I've only worked with two
speakers (representing two generations; born about early '20s and early
'40s), so maybe they were unusual, but both these ladies quite strongly
nasalize(d) vowels after nasals. E.g. the ma- 'I'/'me'/'my' "patient"
prefix has an overwhelmingly nasal vowel. But perhaps others hear things differently.

Pam

The impression I've always gotten from you is that there isn't much
perceptible nasality in vowels following nasal sonorants in Lakota.  I
tend to interpret this as a sort of lexical shift of nasality into
sonorants or sonorant clusters where this was possible.