Re: THEORY: phonemics (was: RE: [CONLANG] Optimum number of symbols

On Sun, 26 May 2002 16:59:17 +0100, And Rosta <a-rosta@...> wrote:

>Mike S:
>>
>> I believe I understand the criteria for establishing the phoneme
>> inventory for each single phonotactic environment.  What I meant by,
>> and was trying to point out by, the term 'invariant' is that it seems
>> to me that each positional-phoneme in a given set will be much more
>> precisely defined featurally than a phoneme in classical phonemics
>> --insofar as a phoneme in classical phonemics is truly defined at all.
>
>OK. I understand. In that case, you're half right and half wrong.
>Allophonic variations that are conditioned positionally (e.g.
>alternation between clear and dark realizations of /l/ in some
>Eng accents) would disappear. But that still leaves us with
>allophonic variation that is not conditioned positionally, which
>is why I gave the example of English /t/ in foot-internal
>intervocalic position, which can, inter alia, be [t] or tap [D].
>
>>
>> Getting back to your system, in the example you give below, fricative
>> + plosive clusters in English onsets, one would identify 3 positional-
>> phonemes here. These would be identifiable with neither /p, t, k/ nor
>> /b, d, g/, since these sets are defined by a voice contrast.  Fair
>> enough.  But certainly, each of these will be regularly rendered
>> in speech as a relatively well-defined segment.  For example, the
>> bilabial of the set can be described as [p]--a voiceless, unaspired,
>> bilabial plosive, and never otherwise.  This is what I meant by
>> 'invariant'.  A positional-phoneme in a given set will generally
>> be pronounced the same way each time;  it will not vary with any
>> feature.
>>
>> I better stop here to see if I am making any sense.
>
>You make complete sense. But as I say above, I don't think it
>is true that allophonic variation disappears in the positional-phoneme
>model, though it is true that there is less of it.
One of the reasons I was initially attracted to the idea of your
system was the possibility that we could scrap the allophone
altogether, but I am gathering we cannot.  I must say that I pretty
consistently use the tap [D] in my own idiolect, but I can think
of other examples of variance, e.g. the <p> of <stop> in which
the release can be either aspired or unaspired, or even unreleased
altogether (lips just close and stay closed).  There may be other
glitches too.

Another idea is to specify for each of your positional-phonemes
the minimum required features which are defined (invariant) and
ignore those which are variant.  Thus, for the simple /p/ before
a vowel, we could say -voice, +bilabial, +plosive, +aspired.
For the postvocalic word-final /p/ we could say -voice, +bilabial,
+plosive and leave the aspiration unspecified, or alternately
say +/-aspired.  In other words, there would always be a few
minimum features that would define the positional-phoneme. Some
positional-phonemes could be more defined than others, but in
general this system would serve as shorthand for a small number
of closely related allophones.

The only major glitch that comes to mind is if invervocalic /t/
does something unusual like vary between a glottal stop and a tap--
but I really wonder if this will normally vary in such a manner
within the speech of the same person or dialect imbetween the
same vowels.


Regards

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