DS Eliot?

I don't feel like taking the time to go through and count every voiceless stop in the following reading by TS Eliot of his poem "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock". If I could I might figure out some sort of a pattern to his alternation of ±aspiration when /t/ /p/ and /k/ are word/syllable initial.



A quick listen reveals that the aspiration is a little stronger and more frequent on /k/. We hear "come" "coat" and "coller" pronounced [k^hʌm] and [k^həʊt] and [k^hɑlə]. Not heavy aspiration. He says "coffee" with much less. It's almost unaspirated.

There's also some evidence that when a /t/ is word final Eliot aspirates it. In the line "let us go and make our visit" the /t/ in "let" sounds slightly aspirated (there's not much flapping going on) and there's a clear aspirated release on "visit" at the end of the line instead of a glottal stop.

Of course there's also the phrase "of insidious intent to lead you" and the /t#/ of "intent" is clearly not aspirated -- which is expected because of the adjacent /#t/ of "to". It's the unaspirated word initial /t/ that sounds most conspicuous.

There's his pronunciation of "days" around 1:40. If an exceedingly intent speaker was to enunciate the consonants in "and days" it would likely come across as [ɛnd^h deɪz]. Normal speech would rarely separate the adjacent Ds. The pronunciation would typically delete the coda resulting in [ɛndeɪz]. Following "and" it's odd to hear a stop of voice. And that's probably what makes his pronunciation sound like [teɪz] to me: I don't expect to hear the break between an alveolar nasal and a voiced alveolar stop so I perceive the -voice as a feature of the stop.

Of course I wonder how specifically affected Eliot's phonology is. Pay attention around 3:00 when Eliot says "to spit out all the butt ends of my days and ways." The reading of a poem is a performance and it's not necessarily relevant to any questions of dialect or production. It's more relevant to questions of perception. The distinction between the aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stop onset is difficult to illustrate to students. I use a [t^h] and they recognize it easily. I get rid of the aspiration and they think it's a [d]. I alternate between [t⁼] and [d] as a minimal pair and they often can't even hear the difference. (Intervocalically it's easier.)

From now on I'll just play this clip for them. If they can't hear that it sounds odd I'll just give up and move on to the next topic.

Barnyard humor

I can't believe I sat through an entire 2 hours of The 100 Most Outrageous Moments of All-Time! last night. It was the same battery of TV clips and bloopers that NBC likes to play whenever they don't expect many viewers. Last night it was sort of a ratings tap-out opposite the Grammys.

There's no longer any surprise that the capstone of the show is going to be the witless newlywed's confused response to Bob Eubanks: "In the ass..."

Or at least that's what I figure is being bleeped. The first time I heard about this clip I was in high school and it was in the middle of its urban legendary mutation. It was supposedly a black man who responded quickly (because he was making an obvious joke according to my friend): That'd be up the butt Bob. For some reason Bob always makes it into the legend.

One of the funnier clips is one cameraman's reaction after a Space Shuttle countdown when the boosters aren't igniting and the there's nothing happening on the launchpad. He suddenly swears "Oh @#$% I'm in the wrong place!" and the camera pans frantically over to a shuttle that has already taken off from another launchpad.

And I saw a new one this time. New to me. It has been on YouTube for a while. An announcer calling a horse race almost 20 years ago gives an excited call as the announcers typically do.

But first:

(I don't give away the joke with this preamble. But you can just skip to the video if you don't want the phonological background information.)

There is a phonological rule in English that shortens lengthens a vowel before a voiceless voiced consonant or when word final. So the vowel in sweet is the same as the vowel in Swede -- just shorter. [Update: I absent-mindedly combined this prevoiced/no coda lengthening with the prevoiceless effect of Canadian Raising.]

sweet [swit]
Swede [swiːd]

There are some confusing possibilities. Consider the interaction with a rule that leads to a glottal stop instead of a voiceless alveolar stop at the end of a word. Changing the pronunciation of cute: [kjut] → [kjuʔ].

So let's imagine that Gwyneth Paltrow's little daughter is adorable: we could call her a cute Apple. And 'cute Apple' would likely be pronounced without the [t] sound as a coda. The phrase [kjuʔ.æpl̩] might be confused with 'Cue Apple' a phrase a stage director might say when it's the little darling's turn to make her stage appearance. That possible confusion is because word with a vowel onset will often get a glottal stop onset if the preceding word doesn't end with a consonant: [æpl̩] → [ʔæpl̩]

So how can we tell if the uttered phrase is 'Cute Apple' or 'Cue Apple'? Well that vowel lengthening rule helps. If the vowel is short it would likely be perceived as part of a word with a voiceless stop coda. either [kjut] or [kjuʔ] would be pronounced with a short [u]. But if the vowel is perceptively longer [uː] it would likely be heard as part of a word that has no coda -- just like [kjuː].

So the glottal stop in [kjuʔ.æpl̩] gets syllabified as a coda because of the short vowel -- and in [kjuː.ʔæpl̩] it's syllabified as an onset because of the long vowel (since the syllabification would be in a feeding relationship with the vowel lengthening rule). Now watch this.



The onset [f] makes a clearer onset than does the [h] and might serve as a sort of maximizing segment so [hufˈhaɹɾəd] might give way to [huˈfarɾəd] -- especially when the announcer certainly gets the joke and is willing to play along -- and he really draws out that one [huːː] that sells the resyllabification.

For a pronunciation that is clearly working to avoid the joke just listen to Keith Olbermann's clearly syllabified [ˈhuf . haɹɾəd] here. Notice how short the vowel is in his pronunciation of hoof. And of course the long enough pause completely avoids a mishearing.

Lexical chop shop

I don't follow slang and coinages as closely as some others do, so I'm often pleasantly surprised to come across a word for the first time that has a fairly well-establish role in the lexicon.

So there's a Church of Stop Shopping out there and it's headed by the flailing and annoying Reverend Billy who says of his credentials as a minister: "Well I didn't go to the Yale divinity school...But we've got a church. And we do...perform weddings and baptisms and funerals". And like every good evangelist he's using fear to change minds and inspire souls. What is the catastrophe he warns against? Well this one is new to me: shopocalypse.

Okay so he's doing it tongue-in-cheek...I hope. You never know. It is a nice nod to the perils of consumerism that many acknowledge. But that discussion isn't so interesting to my linguistic self. The word has potential. That's somewhat interesting. Here's what else I notice.

I'd likely pronounce shop as either [ʃap] or [ʃɑp]. In the word shopocalypse the first syllable is unstressed. Vowels in unstressed syllables like to neutralize -- so instead of shop ([ʃap]) + apocalypse ([əpɑkəlɪps]) = [ʃaˈpɑkəlɪps] we get a neutralization of [a] to [ə] for [ʃəpɑkəlɪps].

And such a vowel change is predictable and expected. This might make the portmanteau sound less like shop+ocalypse and more like sh+apocalypse but the spelling (and some common sense) indicates that shop is intended.

Well I can still wonder if the [p] which has now become an onset consonant is the [p] taken from the coda of shop or if it's the [p] taken from the second syllable onset of apocalypse? I'll say it's the [p] of apocalypse only because it's aspirated.

Now the coda /p/ is certainly allowed to change and this could be simple allophonic variation. But I have this weird obsession with portmanteau balance. There's this tiny part of my brain that attaches theories of justice and equality to issues that make me seem crazy if I say too much about them. (Those of you who know my "balance and symmetry" issues might recognize this.) I don't like it when two words are combined and only one of them loses a segment.

I could write about 6 pages on what shopocalypse has going for it and against it in this regard. Phonemically there's some equality but phonetically apocalypse has an unfair advantage. The spelling favours shop because its entire bank is represented even if we grant that the [p] is 'taken' from apocalypse. It's not a great portmanteau on the 'balance' regard. A word like 'liger' (lion+tiger) is pretty good because neither word is completely present. But it's not perfect because lion loses at least 50% of it's letters--maybe 75%; and tiger loses at most 40% of its bank--as little as 20%.

Maybe I've said too much. And I can see some of you slowly backing away.

Getting your turds wisted

Some of the most offensive jokes I know use an implied spoonerism as the punchline. Certain answers to the question 'What's the different between X and Y' easily evoke the same phrase with some inverted onsets. Especially when the words in the punchline aren't too common or are similar to conspicuously offensive words.

And the relative frequency of spoonerisms as a speech error is good evidence that word sounds are organised in a manner that makes onset inversion one of the easier switches.

But similar sounds can easily invert even if one an onset and the other is a coda. Even if the syllable onset is word internal.

In the office the other day Ed our renaissance scholar was admitting the daunting task of submitting writing to our esteemed professors. One professor--last name Ross--is known for speaking his mind and not suffering foolishness. "I definitely feel the presure...pressure with Ross. I do feel the presure."

Buffy looked over at me. I looked up at her. "You're going into his blog" she announced to Ed.

I've chosen "presure" to represent his pronunciation with the alveolar [s] instead of the postalveolar fricative [ʃ]. I was sad to hear that he didn't actually flip the [s] and [ʃ]. He caught himself before he completed the phrase--corrected the pronunciation of pressure--and proceeded to say "Ross" instead of "Rosh" as I was hoping to hear.

But when I told him that he paused and suggested that he might have in fact said "Rosh."

"No" I assured him. "I was hoping you would."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I was disappointed when I heard you pronounce the [s]."

But he did offer another interesting error. When he repeated pressure it flipped back to the alveolar fricative.

That leads me to the following mysteries:

It's not clear that the first [s] was a result of switched segments. He corrected himself and perhaps it was regressive assimilation (over a long distance) from the [s] in Ross. Maybe he was never going to say Rosh. That's not as fun.

The [s] in the last performance of pressure didn't precede an occurrence of Ross--so progressive assimilation from the already pronounced "Ross" is likely. But it's more exciting to think that it was a partially realized inversion--the other half of which was never going to be pronounced. If so then even tho the second "Ross" wasn't going to make it to performance it was still part of the organization and structure of his sentence. And we saw its ghost by the appearance of the coda [s] in the 2nd syllable onset when he said "presure" [pɻɛsɹ̩ ] instead of "pressure" [pɻɛʃɹ̩ ].

An inversion through phonemic haunting perhaps?

_

Approximating season

In a comment a while back Nancy Friedman mentioned some voting options she found on the Overheard in New York site. She wrote

Also note that you can vote for the Overheard quotes. Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, and WTF? need no explanation. But I had to Google "Alsome," which turns out to be the way the REALLY cool folks say and spell "awesome." (Well, spell it anyway. I'm not sure the two words are pronounced very differently. Hey, Linguist Guy, whaddya think?)

I think some people might pronounce it with an [l] or more likely one of the darker L's--either a velarized alveolar lateral approximant [ɫ] or the velar lateral approximant [ʟ].

English commonly uses the dark-l in a coda position and the light-l in an onset. The usual transcription of the dark-l indicates that velarization is a secondary articulation. [l] is an alveolar consonant and is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge. Velarization means that in a secondary articulation the back of the tongue is also raised giving it a 'dark' sound. Compare the first and second L in little. Or the L in light with the L in call. The difference is indicated by the tilde that runs through the symbol [ɫ]. [liɾɫ̩] [lait] [kaɫ]

The velar lateral approximant is primarily velar and so the raised back of the tongue (the dorsum, think the dorsal fin on the back of a fish) is the primary articulation. The tip of the tongue isn't the main indicator of place. Although this is not a standard phone in English it does occur in some accents and some pronunciations as when a coda L is left markedly open. In fast speech the L in a phrase like 'all of them' might remain completely dorsal without any alveolar articulation.

Consider how close to 'awvem' that can sound. Now consider that some dialects will pronounce L's like W's. Ever heard someone say 'widow' instead of 'little'? It's a common early pronunciation among children because the sounds are similar acoustically. I know one child who pronounced 'flower' like 'wallow'--a complete reversal of the [l] and [w] approximants. Tho this might have been metathesis instead of an articulation issue.

Just earlier today I heard 'saw' pronounced before a vowel like 'sawl'. It was overheard only once so I'm not sure if it was a velar lateral or a velarized alveolar lateral, but it was definitely an approximant. I've heard it before. I asked a friend if she hears this a lot around here in Nebraska. She rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated "Ugh. Yes."

Before a vowel it's very much like I sawr 'im leaving which we would expect to hear in some northeastern American dialects. The approximant makes a nice onset for the following syllable.

I imagine also that to those who are used to hearing [ɑ] in 'awesome' the northeastern closing and rounding and raising to [ɔ] could be interpreted the same as a velar approximation.

Whatever the process there are plenty of likely explanations for the awesome/alsome alternation.

A yes no question.

My latest observation about Buffy's language quirks.

When indicating no or a negative without a word it's very common for most speakers to use the phonetic head-shake: "uh-uh" ['ʔʌʔʌ].

I'm not sure I've ever heard Buffy use that exact sequence. It's close tho. The metric foot she uses is identical: a trochee. But Buffy eases into the sound with a nice soft glottal fricative [h]. I guess it would be ['hʌʔʌ]. This reminds me of the kid in my high school choir who I mentioned a long time ago because he sang his solo line "ever more and ever more" as "ever more hand ever more." He always cut the note short after the first "more." In normal speech after such a pause the following vowel would likely have a glottal stop onset. But that can sound awful when singing. So he tried to ease into the vowel.

I've been assuming that Buffy must have a similar aversion to the abrupt onset of a glottal stop. But if you've ever heard her speak you know that abrupt starts and forceful interruptions are not a problem for her. Her reactions seldom hold back or ease into their intensity.

So why the "huh-uh" instead of "uh-uh"? I have a new theory.

Before she took her lofty perch amongst the renaissance scholars Buffy was a mathematician. She believes in inverses and reciprocals as types of opposites and complements and so has a chiastic view of opposed expressions. What is the affirmative phonetic head nod? It's "uh-huh" [ʔʌ'hʌ]. Note that the affirmative is an iamb. The negative is a trochee. Most speakers invert the tonal contour and change the onset of the second syllable but Buffy did enough algebra to know that you can't just split up an expression haphazardly. So she brought the entire syllable along with the tonal shift. Buffy's negative is a more complete inverse of the affirmative.

Yes: [ʔʌ 'hʌ]
No: ['hʌ ʔʌ]

This could be the new productive thesis/antithesis construction.

Aspiration. It's all about persbective.

A friend of mine recently told the story (on her own web log) about teaching her ESL class. For some reason she thought it appropriate to teach them the word "supercalifragilisticexbealidocious." At the very least this word can generate an interesting discussion of what makes a word a word. Would we consider this a lexeme? What is semantic content to this word? I'm pretty sure it's an adjective. And it probably means something like "super." I can't remember the lyrics of that part of Mary Poppins but I remember the tune clearly. It gives me headache. Is there a lyric something like 'lumdiddle-iddle' in there?

So what makes this of interest to me is my friend's admission that she doesn't know how the word is spelled but when her students asked her to write it out for them she chose to spell it "supercalifragilisticexbealidocious." And sure. It works. I knew what word she meant when I read it.

But it's not the spelling I would have used. There's a letter sequence in there that I noticed when I read it: the "xbe". My guess would have chosen "kspi" for that sequence. Why do she and I see that sequence differently? Because I'm a big believer in onset maximization. To say it as simply as I know how...

In English, when stops are the initial sound in a word, they are aspirated. There's a slight puff of air audible right after the release. When an 's' comes before the stop there is no puff of air. (Well -- it's less audible.) Compare the following:

The /p/ in pin and spin
The /k/ in kit and skit
The /t/ in tab and stab

Since English does not differentiate between an aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stop the +/- aspiration alternation is more likely seen as a voiceless/voiced alternation. That is, since voiced stops are not aspirated, an initial unaspirated voiceless stop sounds like a voiced stop.

Now consider the two spellings I suggested for our long word above. Her use of 'x' makes me think that she syllabified the 'ks' as a coda cluster. So her unaspirated bilabial stop sounded like a voiced bilabial stop because she analyzed the onset as a single consonant [...eks.bi.æ.lə...]. Analyzing the [s] as part of the coda she would have expected a [p] to be aspirated [...eks.p^hi.æ.lə...].

Because I love onset maximization I have just assumed that the syllabification is [...ek.spi.æ.lə...]. After the [s] an unaspirated [p] is what I'd expect.

After searching around I find that "xp" is probably the correct spelling. Even so...I syllabify "expert" with a maximized onset and an unaspirated [p].

A while ago on the ADS listserve there was discussion of a local pronunciation of "Wisconsin" heard by some as "Wisgonsin." Several people called attention to the aspiration alternation and suggested that it's primarily an alternation of syllabification. Where most will syllabify the word [wis.k^han.sən] some locals (and surely some non-locals as well) will syllabify it [wi.skan.sən]. Note the difference in aspiration.

I never said that!

***Please forgive the increasingly dry and technical cant of my posts. School is coming up and I have to get back in the mode of writing like a textbook. My contributions will likely become reflections on my studies - I certainly hope that doesn't shatter the interest of those few of you who do me the favour of checking in to see if you care about what I write.***

Abstract forms are a controversial topic in linguistics. In syntax there are schools of thought that claim our minds work with un-pronounced (un-expressed? un-said?) items all the time.

One simple example of this is the phrase: "I want to eat." According to the minimalist camp there are no fewer than 2 words that are nullified in this phrase. The underlying representation (or the grammatical form that our mind knows but our mouth doesn't express) is closer to this: "I want (for me) to eat."

One argument is that every verb needs to be done by a noun. So the first "I" does the "wanting." Something else needs to do the "eating." So we put a form of "I" in there to do the eating (but because it's an object of the first clause it takes the "me" form). So apparently it's true - "You" can't have your cake and eat it too...

The suggestion is that we know these things and they shape the grammar of the words we utter - even if we never pronounce the null constituents or realize that they're in that crazy little brain of ours. The inevitable argument against such abstractions is countered with the following: Being proficient does not mean that we are able to analyse our proficiency.

In phonology there are some proposed abstract forms that may change our phonemic inventory if we believe they exist. It's a very technical argument and I apologize that I don't have the skill to explain it in an interesting manner. Let's start with a question and just hope that you care to find the answer. Here's the setup to the question. Of all the sounds in the English inventory there is only one that never occurs at the beginning of a word: the eng. This is that nasal sound that we put at the end of sing thing ring wing and just before the /k/ in sink think rink and wink. Every other consonant is possible at the beginning of a word. Why does this never occur initially? Some propose an abstract representation of all those -ing words.

The argument goes like this. The nasal in those words is underlyingly the same as the /n/ in sin thin or win. But because it comes before a /g/ it moves back to assimilate in place (just like the /n/ moves forward to assimilate to a /p/ in a phrase such as "ten people." Trust me - in normal speech you say "tem people." No one ever believes us when we tell them this). After the assimilation the /g/ is deleted - perhaps due to some special rule that deletes a voiced velar /g/ after a nasal /n/. And we see some evidence that this rule is not applied all the time. You may have heard someone from New York talk about "Long-Gisland." This is not proof - just evidence. So perhaps the eng never occurs at the beginning of a word because it's not an actual phoneme of the English language - it's just an allophone. There are no words that begin with ng- or nk-. Those would be the only clusters that would create the eng consonant.

(The real controversy in this is the distinction between dynamic and static phonological data - are we talking about language just as it is today or are we talking about language as it changes over years and years?)

And then we come to the /h/. This sound never occurs at the end of a word.¹ But this isn't so strange because the /h/ is a fickle sound that has disappeared in many places.² take for instance the common pronunciations of vehicle and vehement. Consider also the /h/ sound that used to be found at the beginning of which and whether. And then we have the fast-speech habit of dropping initially.

Tell 'im we're leaving?
Does 'e care?
Well 'e said 'e wanted to see 'er...

(Calling attention to such habits is why Eliza Doolittle was trained with the phrase "In Hartford, Hereford, and Hampshire Hurricanes hardly happen.")

Here is the most startling discovery about English I've made in the last several years (I didn't actually discover this - I merely learned it while doing some research). When we say "'em" for the plural third person (e.g. "Those people look hungry. Give 'em some pickles.") we are not deleting the initial th- of them. The evidence? There is no other word that begins with th- that we pronounce without that onset. We never say -

Where are 'ey going?
Is 'is the right place?
I'd like some of 'ose over 'ere?

By observation of the lack of this process we conclude that the 'em we say is not a shortened form of them. We are in fact deleting the initial /h/ of an older form hem that was more common in Middle English. So for most of our lives we've been using the shortened form of a word we had no idea we knew.

Again - analysis must reveal those things that proficiency hides even from the proficient.

---

An allophone is an alternation of a single phoneme that is not recognized as a distinctive part of the phonemic inventory - i.e. the hear interprets the two sounds as the same sound. The clearest class of allophonic alternation is the difference change in the /t/ in tack and stack. In tack there is a puff of air after the /t/ that we call aspiration. In stack there is no similar puff of air. But the ear does not consider these two different sounds because they are merely allophonic. Two distinct phonemes would change the meaning of the word and be heard as different. So "lock" and "rock" begin with different phonemes in English. But not every language hears the difference. In some Asian languages these would merely be allophonic and be heard as the same word. --Go back to reading--

1. Well this isn't completely true. Loch is sometimes pronounced with the final /h/. This word comes from the Old Irish and into the Scottish Gaelic and has preserved a phoneme that is for all intents and purposes obsolete in the U.S. We can see this effect in the American use of the word - homophonic with lock. To our phonological ear the heavy /h/ is merely the product of a brogue. We would no more likely use that sound than we would rrroll our arrrs. Most Americans only know these sounds as the tricks to sounding like groundskeeper Willie.

"Eef elected merrr, mi fairst act wull be tuh kill theh whole lot of yuh - and boorrn yer toon to cindairs!"
--Go back to reading--

2. And sometimes we throw it in somewhere just to clarify borders. I remember in high school choir one kid had to sing the phrase "ever more and ever more." He always took a breath before the "and." This left him thinking that he had to accentuate the beginning of "and." So it always sounded like "hand." With a little choral training he would have learned that the proper syllabification could best be written "ever mo -ran -dever more."--Go back to reading--

Rain in Espain Estays Mainly in the Plain

To answer my own question - my niece (not the youngest, Olivia; the second youngest, Calen) used to say tutumber instead of cucumber. and instead of saying Buffy she says Bussy. In fact I've noticed that she always switches the /f/ to /s/.

This switch from /k/ to /t/ and /f/ to /s/ seems almost random. but let's note the obvious methodology first. All these sounds are voiceless. The voiceless /k/ remains voiceless (the voiced /k/ would be /g/ the voiced /t/ would be /d/). The f remains likewise (voiced it would be /v/ and the /s/ would be /z/). The stop /k/ remains a stop. The fricative /f/ remains a fricative.

Here's the interesting similarity. /t/ and /s/ belong to a very powerful class of sounds: coronals. A coronal is articulated using the tip of the tongue. in our english language the coronals are /t/ /d/ /s/ /z/ /sh/ /zh/ /ch/ /j/ /n/ (and depending on your analysis /l/ /r/). These are powerful sounds because of the rules they seem to ignore. Basically coronals often occur where other sounds just like them - with the excepetion of coronality - would not. Such as before another consonant at the beginning of a word.

E.g. - in English we never begin a word /fk/. fkit is difficult to say and many would argue it's impossible to say it (it's not of course - it's just outside the bounds of English phonological grammar). But skit is perfectly acceptable. What is the difference between /f/ and /s/? All we need in order to explain this pattern the coronal distinction. /s/ is coronal and /f/ is labial.

Further evidence of the same characteristics: flip the letters around at the end of a word. Kicks is easy to say - kickf is not so natural (though not so difficult as fkit is it? - more on that in another post). Mixing the data around - rats: easy. ratf: not so easy. And let's look beyond /s/ and /f/.

act - pact/packed - stacked - tact/tacked: all these allow the /kt/ ending. Can anyone think of a word that ends /kp/? how about /kf/? I can't.

Simply put: in most languages coronals show up in a greater variety of places than other classes. Note: they don't have a complete pass. For instance Spanish does not allow the sp- st- sk- onsets like English does. That's why an accented speaker will often throw an e- before that cluster. So stop becomes estop.

But compare languages that have more flexibility than does English - German allows sht- very easily at the beginning of a word while there are only a few words in English that use the cluster - all recently borrowed; Russian allows fs- at the beginning of words - English does not. And the fascinating Imdlawn Tashlhiyt dialect of Berber (ITB) allows such odd words as txznt tmsxt and tftkt. All 2 syllable words. Why are examples like this so rare?

There is plenty of evidence that this has to do with a naturally articulate tongue tip in all humans. So while mama is a very common first word - dada is also common. And all this probably led to these neonatal phonetic hobbyhorses becoming our words for mothers and fathers - or grandmothers and grandfathers. These words - or very similar ones - are universally associated with these same concepts. And although the /m/ and /p/ sounds are so common in early speech they are not found as ubiquitously as these peregrine coronals.

Why? Probably because ease of articulation does not translate directly to flexibility of articulation. Babies can say mama and papa easily enough - but the lips don't move far. It's hard to imagine the lips moving up or down or forwards or backwards to fit easily alongside other sounds. But the tip of the tongue is as agile and nimble as a fingertip. People can curl their tongue - they can twist it - they can make a cloverleaf (my latest trick) - they can touch the front of their incisors and the back of their wisdom teeth.

I like to brag that i can even touch my uvula. I've been able to ever since I was in junior high.

Now try doing all that with the side or the back of your tongue. With your lips.

Try saying pkat.