Funny W. More cold water.
Rankin, Robert L
rankin at ku.edu
Mon Nov 27 20:28:50 UTC 2006
Guys,
I'd like to bring up the extreme distributional skewing of */mb/, */nd/ if you consider them distinct phonological segments.
I explain the skewing as the interaction of prefixes with root/stem initials, i.e., morphological and phonological clusters.
If we ignore the morphology and go with the unit phonemes (which I admit we're sort of doing using the symbols W and R), how do we explain why these units only occur in very narrowly defined contexts? Don't we already have enough trouble with /glottal stop/?
Bob
________________________________
From: owner-siouan at lists.colorado.edu on behalf of Rory M Larson
Sent: Mon 11/27/2006 9:01 AM
To: siouan at lists.colorado.edu
Subject: RE: Funny W
John wrote:
> But the
> "voiced stop" in question may well have some prenasalization, and that's
> what I was referring to. English orthography has no way to represent
> this, of course. My main point was that my digraphs mb, nd, etc., are
> not intended to imply a fully syllabic nasal, just a prenasalized one.
That makes sense. I think using mb, nd, etc. with the caveat that the prenasalization is short and non-syllabic is quite clear. Of course, we'd still have the problem of these same sounds arising epenthetically in interior positions wherever a stop is preceded by a nasal vowel.
If English orthography is a problem, we could represent these stops more precisely as:
Nasal: N
Oral: PPPP*aaaaa
Laryngeal: V VVVVVV
for /mba/, and
Nasal: N
Oral: TTTT*aaaaa
Laryngeal: V VVVVVV
for /nda/.
(Nasal track: N - nasalization;
Oral track: P - full labial closure; T - full alveolar closure; * - release click; a - the vowel;
Laryngeal track: V - voicing.)
These would be in contrast to my idea of nasally released stops:
Nasal: *NN
Oral: PPPPPaaaaa
Laryngeal: VVVV
for /pm^a/, and
Nasal: *NN
Oral: TTTTTaaaaa
Laryngeal: VVVV
for /tn^a/.
Rory
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