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Re: Random |mormon| :-) (was: my proposals for a philosophical

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Sunday, January 26, 2003, 20:04
John Cowan wrote:
>Andreas Johansson scripsit: > > > I meant, of course, that Tairezazh can't have non-initial /m/. > >Arrgh, and I thought "can't have non-final /m/" was such a k3wl konstraint, >er, constraint. AFAIK there are no natlangs that put more restrictions on >initial consonants than on final ones. A challenge! > > > Non-initial [m] occurs, but only as an allophone of /n/ occuring before > > labial consonants. Eg _tshenp_ [tSEmp] "forest". > >Then perhaps it is better to say that there is only one final nasal, >which is given the same place of articulation as the following consonant, >or [n] if there is none.
That works beautifully if we use an andesque description with different phonemic sets in different positions. But if we insist that this non-initial nasal phoneme has to be identified with on of the contrasting initial pair /m/ and /n/, it clearly must go with the latter, and the native (and romanized) orthography assumes a such identification.
> This is what happens in Italian, although for >historical reasons both "n" and "m" are used in spelling. But the >nasal in "inferno", e.g., gets labiodental articulation. Does this >work across morpheme/word boundaries, as it does in Italian?
Always across morpheme boundaries, usually across word ones. Prefices turn formerly initial m- to -n-, too. Andreas _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus