a phonetic mystery

[ROOD DAVID S]

Yes, Bob, I found several minimal pairs in Eli's speech, but I later found
out that he had learned some of his Lakhota from a Nakoda speaker, and
apparently had an idiosyncratic distribution based on that person's
speech -- e.g. he had two different words for one of the 'cut' verbs,
with slightly different meanings, one with and one without a naslized
vowel -- but everyone else thought they were the same word.  So I'm not
relying on those data any more --  which is why I said we would have to
test several different speakers.
	Some of those data made it into the Sketch in the Handbook, p.
445a: maNka 'I sit' vs. maka 'skunk'; gmuNza 'slimy' vs. gmuza 'closed, as
the fist'; niNyaN 'cause to live' vs. niya 'to breathe'.  But I could
never get anyone except Eli to produce these contrasts.
	I would be interested in the results if anyone else on the list
has a way to check those pairs with a speaker.

	David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
Campus Box 295
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Thu, 22 Mar 2001, Rankin, Robert L wrote:

>
> >I do not believe there's a phonemic contrast. But if you guys
> >prove me wrong, great.
>
> David: Didn't you once point out a minimal pair in /gmuka/ vs. /gmuNka/? One
> is 'trap' and the other I can't recall.  Or am I just mixed up as usual?
>
> Bob
>