Re: Why Not More Nasals!!!!? (was: Is this a realistic phonology?)

Hello, again, all.

On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, Kristian Jensen wrote:

> AND I'M STILL NOT. Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, and a whole lot of
> other Austro-Asiatic and Daic languages have *MORE* PHONEMIC
> _Nasals_ than _Voiced Stops_!!!! What in the world is so hard to
> believe about that?! What do you all have against the languages of
> Southeast Asia?! 8-)
I'm with you, Kristian.  FWIW, you can make the case that Manchu and
several (most?) other Tungusic languages (Altaic family) also have more
nasal phonemes /m n n^ N/ (common) than voiced stops /g b d/ (max).

Kenji