Re: Azurian phonology

Den 20. okt. 2008 kl. 13.48 skreiv Benct Philip Jonsson:

>>> Both Icelandic and Faroese have an aspiration
>>> contrast rather than a voicing contrast, as does
>>> Danish. It is disputable whether there was a
>>> shift from a true voiced--voiceless contrast
>>> since even in Swedish and Norwegian accents
>>> rather have a fortis vs. lenis stop opposition
>>> with lenis stops realizad as fully voiced stops
>>> only between two vowels or a vowel and a nasal
>>> or liquid.
Hm, this would disqualify the first d in Edvard and the b in Torbjørn
from being voiced in those dialects. I cannot say I have heard them
like this, but will keep my ears open for it.

> The dialects you mention as well as Swedish dialects
> on roughly the same latitude -- in general isoglosses
> in Scandinavia run east-west at more or less straight
> angles with th national border! -- differ from other
> dialects chiefly in that *phrase internal, word-initial*
> lenis stops are also voiceless,
Is this quite general or are small words like pronouns, such as "dæ"
or "det" excluded?

> but I daresay that there is
> no Swedish or Norwegian dialect where post-pausal and
> utterance-initial lenes are fully voiced;
I would assume that by "post-pausal" you mean either "after the pause
between words" or "after the pause between sentences", and by
"utterance-initial" you mean "at the start of a sentence". But then I
cannot make sense out of your statement, as it seems to oppose the
evidence I have before me.

> mind you
> voiced--voiceless is not in phone_t_ic an absolute opposition
> but an infinitely variable scale,
This I do not quite get. Voicing can be more or less pronounced, but
voicelessness cannot. There is still a simple opposition between
voicedness and voicelessness as far as I can see.

> with the opposition rather
> is in terms of relative distance between fortes and lenes
> in similar phonetic environments.
Rather than in terms of voicedness?

> Phoneticians speak of
> Voice Onset Time (VOT) with fully voiced at one end of the scale
> and heavdly aspirated at the other.
How do they speak of the aspirated voiced stops, then?

The rest of your message I think I can get somehow if I study it
carefully, which I do not have the time for now.

I must say phoneticians seem to be really fond of Latin, which I am
not. Phonetics to me is rather a bit of a wild, unmapped forest.
Perhaps I'll find my way through it some time.

> More seriously we know that in any slavery society
> the laves outnumber the masters, and on Iceland in
> viking times most slaves came from Ireland and
> Scotland...
Yes, indeed. And the plosive contrast isn't the only thing they
brought with them either. Well, i have to consider further what I
have to do with my Azurian stops. There were Gaelic settlers in the
south, but this is away from the main Azurian speaking area. However
there is no reason to think that this area would be empty of Gaelic-
speaking thralls. Perhaps the Gaelic-style contrast should be a
coastal feature, like it is (approximately) in Norway.

LEF

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