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W. S Karunatılleke
nasal in such instances. In the word-final position N had two articulations, a tense articulation which marked the final syllable to be heavy and a lax articulation marked by the nasalization of the preceding vowel which marked the final syllable to be light Orthography uses a separate symbol (transliterated here as w) to mark this lax articulation of the woid-final N. However, the syllabic-quantitative contrast re. sulting from the tense verses lax articulation of the wordfinal N was metrically conditioned and no phonemic contrast between N and i ensued Thus we find the same item written both ways depending on the specific metric situation The thiee nasal segments m, n and N are contrastive Of these m and n contrast both word-initially and intervocally, whereas all the three segments m, n and N contrast only in the environment of -h Their allophonic assignment is as follows: m/-has the allophone [m] bilabial nasal in all of its
occurrences, in has two allophones,
a dental nasal and [n] before dental stops, and
a retroflex pasal [n] elsewhere; N/ has two allophanes,
a palatal nasal [ñ] before palatal stops,
and a velar nasal IN) elsewhere 1.22 sy'
'y' is orthographically represented in Kch It generally occurs intervocally singly, and there is only one form that shows its occurence in the initial position The form concerned is 'ya' meaning and which is an enclitic and can be there. fore considered as forming part of the preceding word. In its intervocalic occurrence 'y' can be treated as a phoneticglide, having no phonemic relevance (cf. 1 152)'8. Hence, in our phonemic transcription 'y' will never be written. 1 23 Consonant Contrasts 1 23.1 Examples for consonant contrasts are given below. However, instances for the single occurrences of stops intervocally other than the retroflex are rare.
