6 - Partial Nasality in Maxakalí and Kaingang

Summary

This chapter explores the contributions of two minoritized indigenous languages of Brazil, Maxakalí and Kaingang, to representations of nasality gestures akin to musical scores, as well as the right way to frame the universality of the kinship terms (and ideal universal syllables)' mama’ and ‘papa’ in light of a phonetic model called Enhancement Theory. These languages have either the consonants /m/ and /p/, but not /b/, or /b/ and /p/, but not /m/, and the allophonic environments in which this available phonetic space is used are organized around perceptual and articulatory optimization.