Morning 1
This interview segment is from very early in the interview when Lolly was just getting used to speaking for the tape recorder.
Other Variation: We detect two other kinds of phonetic variation in this interview segment which we do not put into our table of transcriptions, but comment on here.
Light Glottal Stop: In her second time saying the word in this interview segment, the glottal stop [ ʔ ] is reduced to just laryngeal constriction, called voiced h, without an actual glottal stop. That is a normal thing in languages where glottal stop is a distinctive speech sound.
[ ɪ ] versus [ ə ]: The vowel in the last syllable of the word is more like the phonetic vowel [ ɪ ] in the English word ‘miss’ for the first time that she says the word and more like a schwa [ ə ] for the second time that she says the word. Jacobs transcribed Mrs. Peterson as saying this word as both | qʼɛɫí·ʔmis | and | qʼɛɫí·ʔməs |, which represents this same variation in the shape of the vowel in the final syllable of this word.
Instant Phonetic Englishization: k!eh_hlee’_miss, for Lolly’s Coos Bay Milluk version of the word, beginning with a velar consonant, and q!eh_hlee’_miss for Annie’s version of the word beginning with a uvular consonant.
Light Ejective Release: In our table of transcriptions here, we give Lolly credit for pronouncing the first consonant of this word as an ejective, but the ejective release of that first consonant is very slight for either of the two times that she says this word in this interview segment. They might qualify as what we refer to in the interview segment “Moon” as a ‘zero-grade light pronunciation’ of an ejective, especially the second time that she says the word meaning ‘morning’ in this interview segment. For her second pronunciation, we think that we hear that first consonant as a voiceless un-aspirated stop consonant, like the the k sound spelled with the letter c in the English word ‘scatter’. In the case of other Milluk words, Lolly variously has ejectives which are emphatically ejective or lightly ejective, but there are cases like this where the ejective release is at about the vanishing point.