Nasal stops Pulmonic and glottalic consonants

2.1.3 Nasal stops

The distribution of the nasal stop phonemes m and n is shown in table 2.10. Table 2.10. Examples of m, n m Voiced bilabial nasal n Voiced alveolar nasal Word-initial: ma¬e to sort, choose mantSHa food, to eat maRaRa tree type m‡˘óa to grind mo˘kHo taboo na to burn intrans. naRagu hunger naRa shelf for arrows n¤ to go pl. subj. nor¤ bird’s nest Word-medial syll.-initial: huma˘ to win, defeat kame beer local mama grandmother noma mud wakHama black mamba a˘naka to dry trans. bo˘na tree type dLan¤ arrow hona to harvest honey sana beeswax Word-medial syll.-final: goxompe˘ arrow shaft kHombo yearning somba fish éumpHa to smoke cigarette óamba spleen antHa honey gourd gendZa poison of snake, bile kHu˘ntsa incline pHande to split éa˘nt¤ma fly Unlike the oral stops, the nasal stops occur in syllable-final position word-medially. The two nasals are clearly contrastive in syllable-initial position, but the third row of the table above suggests that in syllable-final position, m and n are in complementary distribution, with the bilabial m preceding bilabial consonants and the alveolar n preceding alveolar ones. However, the language does contain examples of multimorphemic words which contain heterorganic nasal and consonant clusters, as will be discussed below in the section on syllable structure 5.1.3. Nasal and obstruent clusters, whether homorganic or heterorganic, do not occur in word-initial position, except in loan words such as ndoa ‘marriage’ from Swahili ndoa. 9 Alongside m and n, the velar nasal stop [N] can be heard in Sandawe, but only in a restricted phonological environment: 9 An exception is the native Sandawe word mbo ‘word’, which is an abbreviated form of mbo. This word can also be pronounced as bo. The two longer forms are associated with the eastern dialect and the shorter form with the western dialect. Table 2.11. Distribution of [ N ] and m, n [ N ] preceding a velar stop m and n in other environments goNgo fighting game ko˘Ngo˘ squash koNkoRi• rooster kuNku blunt loNkHa fighting stick b›mb¤R¤˘ spirit ganda to be thin hente to limp kento callous skin ts‡˘ntHe immature, unripe, young The sound [ N] does not occur word-initially, but only word-medially before velar oral stops. Since neither [ n] nor [m] is found in this environment, [N] can be analyzed as an allophone of one of these sounds, which occurs word-medially before velar oral stops. It is proposed here somewhat arbitrarily that n be considered the underlying phoneme in these cases. The issue of the difference between an oral vowel followed by [ N] plus a velar stop and a nasal vowel followed by a velar stop will be discussed below in section 5.3.

2.1.4 Fricatives