OP velar fricative orthography

[Rory M Larson]

Bryan,

Thanks for your thoughtful input!  Generally the people on the Siouanist
list are not making the final decision, but the problem is thorny enough
that we thought we would like to solicit the advice of the scholars and
linguists who work with these and analogous issues.  Your comments are very
welcome.

> 6) Loss of distinctions in clusters


This is the main point of the post Rory just sent. He points out that the
phonetic realisation of a velar fricative in a cluster is always unvoiced,
so we should use the unvoiced variant in the orthography (or, in his
proposal with x-hacek and x-underdot, the unmarked variant – a very
autosegmentalist solution!). Itʼs not just the fricatives, though.
Comparative and phonetic evidence suggests that the stops in fricative-stop
clusters in Omaha-Ponca are the "simple" stops, i.e., the voiced ones. So
should the orthography move from <shk, xp, st, etc.> to <shg, xb, sd>?


I would say no to this.  Historically they are the same, but in the
fricative-stop clusters the simple stop is voiceless, while floating free
of other consonants it is voiced in OP.  It would make more sense, if we
want to preserve the equivalency of the simple stops, to reduce them all to
p, t, and k, as Carolyn does with Osage (where I understand they are
actually unvoiced), and preserve the double consonant history of the tense
stops as pp, tt, and kk.  But we have a perfectly good voiced stop series
in the English alphabet, b, d, and g, and I think we might as well use it,
given that that is how the simple stops are pronounced when roaming free.


 I think that would weird a lot of people out, too! Thereʼs also something
to be said for the fact that Hahn, for one, did hear and note such
distinctions as /xð ɣð/.


Thanks for the tip; I was not aware of that.  If that's true, then my
"point" stands corrected, and we will have to start checking for that as
well.  Do you have any sample words that we could test?

Rory