Introduction
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285591389 PRE-ORALIZED NASAL CODAS IN MAMAINDÊ And the Oral Vowel Enhancement Proposal Conference Paper · January 2011 CITATIONS READS 2 48 1 author: David Eberhard SIL International 21 PUBLICATIONS 387 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Community Based Language Development View project Language ecology View project All content following this page was uploaded by David Eberhard on 04 December 2015. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. PRE-ORALIZED NASAL CODAS IN MAMAINDÊ And the Oral Vowel Enhancement Proposal david m eberhard sil INTRODUCTION The various Nambikwara nations gained short lived notoriety in the 1940s thru the writings of the French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss, who dubbed them the ‘earth people’, for their characteristic aversion to sleeping anywhere other than on the ground. These ‘earth peoples’ constitute a loose-knit cluster of bands, native to an area covering some 50,000 square kilometers in northwest Brazil, not far from the Bolivia border. When considered altogether, they number some 1200 individuals. However, each Nambikwara band considers itself quite independent from the others, with its own individual identity and language. Due to distinct variables of social contact, these small languages find themselves at various stages along the road to endangerment and extinction. In the midst of this rather fragile family is Mamaindê, spoken by some 250 individuals. It can be classified as a member of the Guapore cluster of the Northern Nambikwara branch of the Nambikwara language family. The Mamaindê live in 4 communities, which are having increased contact with the outside world, resulting in a high rate of bilingualism with Portuguese. A few of the younger children are only passive speakers of the language, signaling that the highly endangered stage has already begun. As far as its phonology is concerned, Mamaindê has proved to be quite fascinating. Some of the major points of interest include 4 contrastive vowel qualities (oral, nasal, creaky voice, and nasal & creaky voice - yielding 16 vowel phonemes); it also has an intricate place feature spreading process from vowels to consonants (requiring a new look at feature geometry); a tone system with 2 lexical tones, tone plateauing and floating tones; a stress system that is predicated on syllable weight, syllable position, and 4 lexical strata; and a coda position which routinely employs biphasic oral/nasal segments. OBJECTIVES OF THIS STUDY It is this last point which will be the focus of our study today. The behavior of the nasal coda is one of the more salient features of the Mamaindê sound system. This behavior results in the formation of three biphasic oral/nasal segments in syllable final positions: labial [bm], coronal [dn], and dorsal [gŋ]. It will be shown that in the Mamaindê language these complex codas require a phonology which treats their primary articulation as nasal [dn, bm, and gŋ] rather than oral [dn, bm, gŋ], and thus the process involved is one of pre-oralization as opposed to post-nasalization. In this presentation, my objective will be to explore three alternatives for the analysis of this pre-oralization process, first from a phonological (autosegmental) perspective, and then two analyses from a phonetic implementation approach. This paper will show that one of the phonetic alternatives is the more satisfactory of the three. It will also demonstrate that adopting a specific set of parameters proposed by Wetzels (2008) is helpful in predicting the type of phonetic enhancement found in this language. DISTRIBUTION OF ORAL/NASAL BIPHASIC SEGMENTS Biphasic oral/nasal segments (as well as their counterpart nasal/oral segments) have been documented in a large number of languages and language families around the world, many of these endangered. They seem to be concentrated in four general areas; South America, Africa, Australia, and Austronesia (Ladefoged, 1993:165-166; Wetzels, 2009:1; see also Rosendall, 1992, and Mills, 1984 for data on the African languages Gwari and Senoufo respectively). However, other parts of the world are not without them. Chen and Clumeck give examples of post-stopped nasals in Cantonese (1975:128). In Borneo, the Bonggi language (Boutin 1993, 2000), as well as the Malayic and Land Dayak language families (Blust 1997; Court 1972; Scott; 1964) are reported to have this feature, which is also commonly referred to in the literature as pre- or post-nasalization, or, when looked at another way, pre-oralization, denasalization, or pre-plosion. Oral-nasal contours are also quite prevalent among Amazonian languages. Wetzels (2009), whose recent study focuses on nasal/oral contour consonants in South America, gives examples from eight Amazonian languages with this feature: Yuhup, Dâw, Wari, Wansajot, Kaingang, Maxacali, Barasana, and Mebengokre. In Amazonia, the language families which have been most documented in terms of oral/nasal contour segments appear to be the Macro-Je family (specifically Apinaye, Kaingang, Maxacali, and Xokleng) and the Maku family (Yuhup and Dâw). To this list the Nambikwara family must also be added (specifically Southern Nambikwara and all the Northern Nambikwara lects, namely Mamaindê, Negarotê, Latundê and Lakondê), as it becomes evident that oral/nasal contours occupy a prominent place in most of the phonologies of Nambikwara languages outside of Sabanê. In the Nambikwara languages, biphasic oral/nasal segments are the result of oralization, being output variants of simple nasals. These languages also limit the oralization of nasal stops to the coda position, and thus only the pre-oralized nasals are present. Post-oralized nasals, such as those found in Kaingang and Maxacali, are not a Nambikwara phenomenon, these being more characteristic of Macro-Je languages (See Wetzels 2009). Of the three pre-oralized nasal forms found in the family - [bm], [dn] and [gŋ] - Southern Nambikwara (Kroeker, 2001:79), Mamaindê (Eberhard, 2003a), and Negarotê1 possess all three, while Latundê and Lakondê (Telles, 2002:56-57) have only the labial [bm] and coronal [dn] varieties, apparently lacking the dorsal counterpart.2 Antunes (2004) does not mention any pre-oralized nasal variants for Sabanê. Mamaindê pre-oralized nasals, however, can be distinguished from all the other Nambikwara biphasic segments by the unique manner in which they acquire their place features (we will touch on this later - see Eberhard, 2009). 1 The Negarotê data comes from my own Mamaindê database. These two Lects are very sImILar and there are a number of Negarotê lIvIng wIthIn the Mamaindê communIty who continue to use some Negarotê forms. 2 TeLLes (2002:56‐57) notes that the pre‐stopped nasals, whILe common in Lakondê, are quIte rare in Latundê. THE MAMAINDÊ BIPHASIC ORAL/NASAL SEGMENTS We will start our discussion of the MD biphasic oral/nasal segments by defining their phonological status. Here is a sampling of the abundant examples found in the language, organized according to the variant involved: [bm] /kadeunta-latʰa-wa/ [gadeubmdalatʰwa] it is alive /waun-latʰa-wa/ [waubmlatʰwa] it is red /taun-tu/ [daubmdu] tail /leunʔ-tu/ [leubmʔdu] tapir [gŋ] /sin-tu/ [sigŋdu] meat /jalinʔja̰-tu/ [jaligŋʔja̰ɾu] puberty flute music /walinʔ-tu/ [waligŋʔdu] anteater: type ‘mirim’ /wainsi-tu/ [waigŋtʃiɾu] medicine [dn] /jalakwatun-tu/ [jalakwadudndu] howler monkey /ʔon-latʰa-wa/ [ʔodnlatʰwa] he is lazy /nahon-sa̰-tu/ [nahodnsa̰ɾu] sweet beverage /nakajanʔ-tu/ [nagajadnʔdu] person/indian While these sequences appear at first glance to be the result of intrusive stops, I intend to show that there is no epenthesis occurring here at all – it is simply a case of gestural timing. In articulatory terms, the opening of the velum is simply delayed until after the tongue has assumed its place of articulation for the nasal. One of the basic questions being asked in this study is whether this timing delay is phonological or phonetic in character. First I give distributional evidence that these biphasic coda segments in Mamaindê are in fact simple nasals underlyingly. The forms listed here show biphasic segments alternating with simple nasal stops. The conditioning environment has to do with syllable position and the quality of the preceding vowel. When the simple nasal consonant is in the coda position and preceded by a tautosyllabic oral vowel, it is systematically realized as a biphasic nasal. (01) /alain-sihtaʔ/ [a.laigŋ.sih.r̥aʔ] cross.over-IN.ORDER.TO.DS in order for him/her to cross over (02) /naʔtun-hĩʔ/ [naʔ.dudn.hĩʔ] to.be.full-THEN.DS he/she was full, then… (03) /kateun-kʰatoʔ/ [ka.deubm.kʰə.ɾəʔ] be.alive-THEN.SS he/she was still alive, then… In the intervocalic position, however, or after nasal vowels, only the simple nasal appears. Note that the addition of the first person marker /a/ in the first three forms forces the resyllabification of the nasal from coda to onset, and the biphasic variant is lost. (04) /alain-a-sihtaʔ/ [a.lai.na.sih.ɾ̥aʔ] cross.over-S1‐IN.ORDER.TO.DS in order for me to cross over (05) /naʔtun-a-hĩʔ/ [naʔ.duː.na.hĩʔ] to.be.full-S1‐THEN.DS I was full, then… (06) /kateun-a-hĩʔ/ [ka.deu.na.hĩʔ] be.alive-S1‐THEN.DS I was (still) alive, then… (07) /wanũn-sa/ [wanũnsa] good-speech good speech (08) /na-ʔmĩn/ [naʔmĩn] 3Poss-skin his skin (09) /hãn-latha-wa/ [hãnlathwa] white-S3-Decl it is white Oral stops, on the other hand, are never found alternating with these contour segments. This distribution pattern, then, provides sufficient evidence for establishing the simple nasal consonant as the lexical form for each of these biphasic nasals. Additional support comes from the phonetic data. In most tokens during natural speech, the nasal phase of biphasic stops is from 10% to 100% longer than the oral phase (range of oral phase: from .042ms - .090ms / range of nasal phase: from .081ms - .110ms).