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

Raymond A. Brown <raybrown@...> wrote:
[snip]
> Yep: Why not more nasals then voiced
> plosives?
>
Just for the record, I just found something in a
book about Mapuche/Araucano. It says that the language
has p, t, k, a co-articulated cluster /tr/ which
is sometimes retroflex (!), and also (someone commented about
this to Sahla, I think) an interdental t. No aspiration
contrast, and no voiced stops either. And the language
has five voiced nasals, one of them not corresponding
to any of the PsOA above: m, n, n_interdental, n~ (palatal),
ng (/N/).

You've been talking about nasals when there's a
voiced-unvoiced or aspirated-nonaspirated opposition.
What happens in this case? According to what I read, there
are fricatives in the stops' PsOA, so maybe the language
did have a contrast, and then one of the series shifted
to fricative (except one: <g> which is not /G/ but a velar
approximant). The "influence" of plosive series on nasals
has to take phonetic change into account.

(Please note that I'm not trying to make a point here,
just pointing something out that you may have not seen.
An "unusual" phonology regarding the distribution of plosives
and nasal might come from a very "usual" previous system.
Or maybe they're all possible and we haven't seen them.)


--Pablo Flores

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