----- Original Message -----
From: "elmeras2000" <jer@...>
To: <phoNet@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 1:35 AM
Subject: [phoNet] Re: Nasals from Non-nasals


--- In phoNet@yahoogroups.com, "Wordingham, Richard"
<richard.wordingham@m...> wrote:
>> I have seen a claim (at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nostratic/message/450)
>> that Eskimo-Aleut voiceless plosives becomes nasal when word
final, but that
>> source is at best secondary. If this is correct, and not the
result of say,
>> analogy arising after an intervocalic change /nt/ to /tt/, it
would be a
>> clear counter example to the rule that nasals only derive from
nasals.

> Sure I'm secondary, if I'm the one, but I can read.

That probably makes the posting at Nostratic tertiary! Actually I was
saying that Miguel's posting was secondary.

> It is a living
> rule in the entirety of the West in Eskimo (from Sibiria to the
> Mackenzie River), where nasals and stops are not merged in word-
> final position, that t, c, k become -n, *-ñ (*-ny > -ni), -N (eng)
> when word-final, but stay unchanged inside the word. All nasals also
> occur word-internally, so the stops are old stops.

Other examples, backed up by secure non-internal reconstructions, have been
pointed out by Piotr and Miguel. Is there any evidence of the order in
which such mergers occur? For example, is contrastive non-nasalisation lost
in velars or labials first?

>I suppose it is
> a matter of relaxation of the speech organs when the word comes to
> an end, the lowering of the velum being simply a further relaxation.
> It seems compatible with the fact that /-N-/ is optionally inserted
> as a hiatus-filler, as nuna 'land' + -a 'his' > nuna(N)a 'his land'.
> I interpret this too as an event of relaxation of the speech organs
> to the point of losing the velum closure.

Would the parasitic -n- in English 'messenger' from 'message' and
'passenger' from 'passage' fit in here?

I suppose the (non-standard) Siamese contraction _yim ha:_ from _yi: sip
ha:_ 'twenty five' (literally 'two ten five') would fit in here. WARNING:
This may be idiolectical. The usual contraction (colloquial) is _yi:sip_ >
_yip_ 'twenty'. I've only heard the contraction in compond numbers, and I'm
not sure of the tone.

Richard.