Re: Nasal semivowels/fricatives?

At 11:13 pm -0300 14/2/00, FFlores wrote:
>Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
>
>>Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>>> Those nasalized stops are *really* nasalized, not simply prenasalized,
>>> and yet I have no difficulties pronuncing them. So you can nasalize even
>>> stops,
>>
>>I don't understand - what's the difference between a "nasalized stop"
>>and an ordinary nasal?
>
>
>And how are prenasalized stops different from nasal + stop clusters?
They can begin syllables.  This is not not the case that I know of in any
European language (with the possible exception of some varieties of modern
Greek) - but it is quite common among African languages.

>I seem to recall a discussion about this somewhere (maybe here),
>but there must be a difference. As for me, if I'm pronouncing
>/b/ and let air through my nose, I make a sound that is quite
>like /m/, but not the same. The question is: do these nasalized
>stops contrast with proper nasal stops in any natlang?
Good question - and if the air passes through your nose, it does not seem
to be the sound Christophe is describing.

----------------------------------------------------------
At 2:45 pm +0100 15/2/00, Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>At 06:55 15/02/00 +0100, you wrote:
>>
>>Indeed, I also don't understand.
>>
>>Some phoneticians regularly classify 'ordinary nasals' as stops, with two
>>subsets: "nasal stops" [m], [n], [N] etc., and "oral stops" [p], [b], [t],
>>[d], [k], [g] etc.
>>
>>So what is the difference between a nasalized stop & a nasal stop?
>>
>
>I know that classification, and I know that some phoneticians classify
>nasals as stops. Personnally I don't like this classification,
Nor do I.
as nasals
>certainly don't behave like stops (depending on the languages, they often
>behave like fricatives, and even approximants!). Nasals are different from
>stops as there is no blockage in the air flow, unlike stops (yes, there is
>blockage in the oral cavity, but the nasal cavity is wide open and stays
>wide open without discontinuity, just like a fricative or an approximant).
I agree.

>What I call
>"nasalized stops" are real stops, that's to say the airstream passes a
>little and then is blocked in both the oral and nasal cavities. At least I
>can make them and I find them different from both the regular nasals and
>the regular stops.
They would be!
But how can one block the nasal cavity other than by raising the soft
palate?  But then one is left with just plain ol' (oral) stops.


>Of course they are not the easiest sounds of Tj'a-ts'a~n,
I agree :)

>but I'm pretty
>sure of my description, and I can hear them (and they are different from
>prenasalized stops, as the nasalization stays until the end of the
>consonnant).
I wonder if these are nasal plosives.  These occur when the release of air
after the closure of the vocal tract is made through the nose rather than
through the mouth.  It occurs in some English pronunciations of 'sudden'
[sVd_n], and is fairly common, I believe, in modern Cornish.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
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