Re: Unilang: the Phonotactics
| From: | Oskar Gudlaugsson <hr_oskar@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, April 20, 2001, 0:21 |
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On Thu, 19 Apr 2001 20:15:19 +0000, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
wrote:
>At 6:25 pm -0400 18/4/01, David Peterson wrote:
>>In a message dated 4/18/01 9:00:29 AM, hr_oskar@HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>>
>><< I don't actually know why we have some kind of antipathy to alveolar +
>>
>>lateral combinations; they exist (in my own natlang, for instance), but
>>
>>they're rare, so I disallow them here. Anybody here who has a sensible
>>
>>explanation? >>
>>
>> My guess (if guessing's allowed) is that with an ell (I'm just
calling it
>>that) you can't remove your tongue from the alveolar position. So, if you
>>try to pronounce [tl] or [dl] you'll probably end up with a
voiceless/voiced
>>lateral approximant, or an affricate with a [t] and a voiceless lateral
>>approximant, or something like it.
>
>Well, the Welsh manage to do neither!
So do we Icelanders. The old ON [ll] > Modern Icelandic [tl_0], in most
environments; there is also final/medial /tl/, which surfaces as [htl_0]
(the [h] there is preaspiration, and occurs only post-vocalic). I should
note that {ll} is very common in Icelandic, so we certainly don't have a
difficulty pronouncing this combination.
Óskar