Re: Nasal semivowels/fricatives?

At 23:03 11/02/00 +0200, you wrote:
>The interesting h-debate (I'd dare bet alot that I'm the only 15-year old
>that finds it interesting), that probably everybody has noticed, made me
>wonder - if approximants *are* more or less vowels, then they should have
>the ability to be nasal, wouldn't they?
>
        Well, in fact I wonder if the nasals as we know them couldn't just be the
nasalized versions of the approximants (like /m/ being simply a nasalised
/w/ - or maybe something like /N_m/ would be more exact to be the nasal
corresponding to the labiovelar /w/ - or /J/ (sampa system) being a
nasalized /j/). I know some linguists think of something like that to
explain some features of PIE where /w/ and /m/ seem to act as one phoneme.

>According to the same debate, fricatives / approximants are very close to
>each others, articulatorily, so the same should be possible for fricatives,
>wouldn't it?
>
I know that I'm gonna give an example from a conlang, but oh well... In
Tj'a-ts'a~n, stops have a three-way distinction between voiceless, voiced
and voiced nasalized stops (for the labial series, I write them p, b and
~b). Those nasalized stops are *really* nasalized, not simply prenasalized,
and yet I have no difficulties pronuncing them. So you can nasalize even
stops, so I think fricatives can also be nasalized :) .

>My question basically can be put like this: 1) is this actually possible, 2)
>are there languages using this 3) can I have a nasal affricate in my lingo,
>mommy?
>
        Yes sonny! (well, I'm only 23, a little young to use this word :) ).

                                                Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://rainbow.conlang.org