Re: Unilang: the Phonology

In a message dated 4/25/01 6:40:01 PM, romilly@EGL.NET writes:

<< As I thought. A hummed nasal, which can be held till breath runs out, is a

syllabic nasal, right?  Question:  Is Swahili [Ngeni] two or three

syllables?  I would guess 3, since AFAIK (and it's very little) it is not

always the case that the initial nasal (which at least in some cases is a

separate morpheme) is followed by a homorganic sound. (Is is possible to

have initial /n/ before /g/?) Swahili could also have a words like *mgeni*

or *Nzeni*,  in which cases the nasal would perforce have to be pronounced

somewhat separately.

 >>

    Yeah, syllabic--I don't know why I forgot that.  But no, you can't get
any nasal before any sound.  In fact, a better way to think about it in
Swahili is that there is a nasal phone which shifts depending on what plosive
it comes before.  So, no, you can't have [ngeni] or [mgeni] only [Ngeni].

-David