Re: Ejectives, was Re: New H/G lang?

You're quite right, Kristian; I was confused, and you corrected me
before I could correct myself.

However, introspecting my attempts to produce ejective nasals has
made me start to wonder whether my ejectives weren't ejectives at all,
because for me it seems like *something* is closed *above* the nasal
port.  That would suggest velar closure (actually uvular, probably),
and would mean that perhaps when I've tried to produce ejectives I'm
actually producing some weird species of click?  Crap!!  How will I
sort this out??

---------------------------------------------------------------
Ed doesn't know everything, but he hasn't figured that out yet.
Please break it to him gently.              edheil@postmark.net
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Kristian Jensen wrote:

> I'm not sure what you mean by the nasal passage not affected by a
> closed glottis, but it is definitely possible for a constricted
> glottis to affect nasal consonants. E.g., creaky voiced nasals.
....
>
> Strictly speaking, that's not the glottis that does that. Its the
> epiglottis. The glottis is the chords in the larynx that vibrates
> when we talk, the epiglottis is the piece of flesh above the larynx
> that covers the larynx when we swallow.
...
>
> I don't see why the glottis cannot propel air out of the nasal passage
> when it can propel air out into the vocal cavity. All you have to do
> is lower the velum to allow air to escape into the nasal passage.
> Imagine a nasally release ejective stop (e.g. [p_m' t_n' k_N']. In
> such sounds, the (constricted) glottis forces air into the oral cavity
> while there is an oral closure. But instead of releasing the oral
> closure as you would in normal ejectives, you lower the velum allowing
> the compressed air from behind the oral closure (and above the glottis)
> to escape into the the nasal passage.
>
> I must add, however, that I don't think its possible for ejectives
> without an oral constriction (obstruent) element to exist as a speech
> sound. Sonorants with a glottal airstream mechanism would not produce
> any auditorily perceptive sounds to become useful as a speech sound.
>
.....
> This brings us back to the Salishan languages. Indeed, the creaky
> voiced nasals of some Salish languages can be narrowly transcribed as
> [m<creaky>? n<creaky>?]. The feature cuts across the obstruent-sonorant
> paradigm - the feature being [+/-constricted glottis].