Labiodental nasal ɱ in the Angami area

Abstract

The labiodental nasal stop is almost never contrastive in the world's languages and is typically only found as a predictable nasal consonant allophone before labiodentals /f v/. Here we present the results of a detailed survey of so called Angami Naga languages spoken in northeast India and show that the presence of a labiodental nasal is characteristic of these—both as an allophone with an unusual distribution but also in some cases as a phoneme. There is also detailed discussion of the labiodental nasal's historical development and evolution.