Friday, July 3, 2015

Detail #180: Nasal Affricates

Consider the articulation of an affricate - a stop with a slow release, such that the release essentially produces a fricative. 

Now, what prevents us from having a nasal airstream during the time of closure? (It will weaken once the closure opens a bit, though, so that bit actually helps us a bit in turning this into a meaningful thing)

/n͡z/ or even /n̥͡s/ could be pretty neat phonemes. These seem realistic enough - at least nz - to actually maybe exist somewhere, so if someone knows whether they're attested, please comment!

1 comment:

  1. These sounds do exist, and they're usually called "prenasalized fricatives". They're most common in Africa, but a quick googling turned up examples from several other regions too: /ⁿz/ in Shona (Bantu) and Central Buang (Papuan), /ⁿʒ/ in Chalcatongo Mixtec (Oto-Manguean), and /ⁿð/ in Meru (Bantu). In most languages that have them, these sounds do not contrast with prenasalized affricates of the same voicing though, and they may be realized as the latter allophonically.

    ReplyDelete