David S. Rood

Phonetic and phonological patterns of nasality in Lakota vowels

Lakota (Siouan) has both contrastive and coarticulatory vowel nasality, and both nasal and oral vowels can occur before or after a nasal consonant. This study examines the timing and degree patterns of acoustic vowel nasality across contrastive and coarticulatory contexts in Lakota, based on data from six Lakota native speakers. There is clear evidence of both anticipatory and carryover nasal coarticulation across oral and nasal vowels, with a greater degree of carryover than anticipatory nasalization. Nasality in carryover contexts is nonetheless restricted: the oral–nasal contrast is neutralized for high back vowels in this context and realized for three of the six speakers in low vowels. In the absence of nasal consonant context, contrastive vowel nasalization is generally greatest late in the vowel. Low nasal vowels in carryover contexts parallel this pattern (despite the location of the nasal consonant before the vowel), and low nasal vowels in anticipatory contexts are most nasal at the start of the vowel. We relate the synchronic patterns of coarticulation in Lakota to both its system of contrast and diachronic processes in the evolution of nasality in Lakota. These data reflect that coarticulatory patterns, as well as contrastive patterns, are grammatical and controlled by speakers.

IJAL Continued: An Editorial

For the third time in its history, IJAL is publishing an introductory statement by a new editor. When Boas (1917) launched the Journal, he expressed his goals for it and described the condition of the field, and when Voegelin (1944) initiated regular publication, he compared his goals and perceptions with those of Boas. The thirtyseven years in which Voegelin guided the Journal have seen the firm establishment of anthropology and linguistics as accepted and normal parts of most North American university offerings, and the rise (and fall) of several approaches to linguistic theory. There is little use trying to summarize here the history of Native American linguistics over the past sixty-four or even thirty-seven years; instead of looking back, I prefer to look forward. The primary goal of the field of linguistics continues to be the understanding of human language, and one important method of obtaining that understanding remains the inductive one of examining what languages actually do. IJAL will strive to be a source for language facts as well as for the arguments that surround the interpretation of those facts, while also serving those whose interest is not language itself, but psychological or cultural phenomena revealed by language. Thus the role that IJAL has been playing in anthropology and linguistics is the one I hope to continue: to