Re: nasalless and stopless language

>
>> I don't mean to say the all plosives are voiceless, but they are during
>> the time when the air-flow is cut off, since the vocal cords can't
vibrate
>> if there is no air movement.

Dirk Elzinga wrote:
>Not true. If a stop is held long enough then sure, they will of
>necessity become voiceless for the very reason you state. This is a
>reason why voiced geminate stops are not as common as voiceless
>geminate stops.
The Austronesian langs. of South Sulawesi (ex-Celebes) abound in geminate
stops, both voiced and voiceless.  The latter, of course, are relatively
easy to produce.  For the voiced gem. stops, most of the languages resort to
a cluster glottal stop + stop; one informant even had an brief intrusive
echo of the preceding vowel between the /?/ and the stop.  The Buginese,
however, consider the /?C/ pronunciation to be inelegant.  As nearly as I
could determine, and produce to their satisfaction, you hold the stop
closure (without glottal closure) just to the point of  voicelessness, then
release it; at the time of release there's probably a very brief period of
voicelessness before voicing restarts (these are always intervocalic).
Graphically and stretched out, sort of /-b....(p)b-/.   Does that make
sense?  It might involve some slight puffing out of the cheeks, but
definitely not Tricks 1 or 3 below...


However, there are lots of tricks which can be
>employed to prolong airflow, even when the oral cavity is completely
>occluded. These tricks include:
>
>1)  lowering the larynx
>2)  expanding the walls of the oral cavity (puffing out the cheeks)
>3)  allowing air to leak through a slightly opened velum
>
>Tricks 1 and 2 effectively increase the volume of the supralaryngeal
>space; trick 3 allows an escape hatch for the building pressure. All
>three of these tricks can be employed to produce genuine voiced stops.
>
>> Along the same line, I suppose that nasals are so common because of the
>> resonance they pick up while escaping through the nasal passage rather
>> than the mouth.  The nasality adds distinction to them.
>
>Exactly. Also, lowering the velum is another easy maneuver. In both
>cases (oral stops and nasals) you get a lot of perceptual bang for the
>articulatory buck.
>
Interestingly, in Buginese, historic *_nasal+vl.stop_ > geminate vl. stop,
while *_nasal +vd.stop_ > nasal+vl. stop.   With a distressing number of
exceptions, presumably inter-language or Malay/Jav. loans.