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The apicolabial shift in Nese

Lynch, John D. (2005) The apicolabial shift in Nese. Oceanic Linguistics, 44 (2). pp. 389-403. ISSN 0029-8115

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Abstract

Nese is one of a dozen or so languages/dialects spoken in the south Santo—north Malakula area of Vanuatu that reflect original simple bilabials before nonround vowels as apicolabials. In some of these languages, the apicolabials subsequently became dentals/alveolars. Nese is unusual, however, in the inconsistency of its reflexes: the most frequent reflex of Proto-Oceanic *b in this environment is indeed the apicolabial stop b, but the most common reflex of *m is alveolar n, while with *p both apicolabial v and labiodental v occur with roughly equal frequency. This paper attempts to explain this variation, and also attempts to explain why *p behaved far less consistently across a range of languages in this area than did *b and *m.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PL Languages and literatures of Eastern Asia, Africa, Oceania
Divisions: Faculty of Arts, Law and Education (FALE) > Pacific Languages Unit
Depositing User: Ms Shalni Sanjana
Date Deposited: 29 Aug 2005 04:27
Last Modified: 29 Aug 2012 04:27
URI: http://repository.usp.ac.fj/id/eprint/5243
UNSPECIFIED

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