Re: THEORY: Ray on ambisyllabicity

On Sun, 29 Oct 2000, Adrian Morgan wrote:

> Thanks for the corrections WRT my understanding of phonetics/phonemics -
> the three way division into phonemics, broad phonetics and narrow
> phonetics is new to me.
I thought of an *excellent* example of the contrast between a phonetic
and a phonemic transcription, and even handy to Adrian (or relatively
so).  In ordinary colloquial Samoan, the sound [t] does not exist;
it has been completely replaced by [k].  But (as of 1970 or so, at least,
when I was there), [t] was used when speaking to chiefs, reading from
the Bible, and other non-ordinary uses.  Even more to the point, [k]
still patterned as a coronal (but I forget the exact details).

So it would be quite plausible in a phonemic transcription to represent
the phoneme that surfaces as [k] using the notation /t/.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
One art/there is/no less/no more/All things/to do/with sparks/galore
        --Douglas Hofstadter