Re: Nasal semivowels/fricatives?

Ed Heil wrote:

> > Could Christophes nasal stops possibly be ejective
> > (or otherwise glottalic)
> > nasals?  When I pronounce these, they seem to be
> > both a stop and a nasal.
Well, "nasals" are actually just stops where air is allowed to
flow through the nasal cavity.

> I think we may have discussed this before.  I was of
> the opinion that an ejective nasal was very unlikely
> because, well, I didn't put it this way, but it adds
> up to: nasals tend to be voiced, because unvoiced
> nasals are comparatively difficult to hear (though not
> so difficult that they don't exist in some languages,
> but they're marked), and ejectives are virtually
> always unvoiced*.
Well, granted, voiceless sounds have lower sonority than do
voiced sounds, but there's nothing deterministic about that
fact:  plenty of languages have voiceless sounds.  How does
Japanese perpetuate its voiceless vowels if they're as "hard to
hear" as they are?

> Unvoiced nasals usually only exist when voiced
> counterparts also exist; however, there could not* be
> a voiced counterpart to an ejective nasal; hence it
> would be very awkward in terms of markedness for a
> language to have an ejective nasal.  It would be
> difficult to hear, and there would be no counterpart
> which is easier to hear.
>
> That said, they exist.  They're just very very very
> rare. :)
Eh?  Thai and some other languages in South-East Asia
have them.  I don't think they're as rare as, say, the so-called
voiced aspirates (there are exactly 6 such languages documented
in the world today, five of which are descendents of Sanskrit).

> * I understand that voiced ejectives are said to in
> fact exist, but as I understand ejectives that would
> be a contradiction in terms -- the necessary glottis
> settings for ejectives and voice are not compatible.
> If somebody can explain to me what a "voiced ejective"
> is like, phonetically, I'd love to hear it...
As far as I know, no language has voiced ejectives, but the reverse
is not true:  there are languages that have voiceless implosives.  Mam,
a Mayan language, allophonically devoices the voiced bilabial implosive
under certain phonetic conditions, for example (the nature of which escape
me at the moment).

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
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"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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