Re: Unilang: the Phonotactics

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!

Welsh has, as probably everyone knows, a voiceless lateral fricative
spelled {ll} (SAMPA [K]).  But it also has initial /tl/ and /dl/ (e.g.
tlawd "poor", tlodi "poverty", tlws "jewel", tlysni "beauty" - /dl/ occurs
when these words undergo soft mutation) which are pronounced [tl_0] and
[dl] respectively, i.e. the initial plosives remain and there is no
shifting of the lateral from approximant to fricative.

In fact /dl/ is not uncommon in French, cf. /dlo/ "water" (de l'eau).
Ancient Greek certainly had initial /tl/, /dl/ and /thl/ and I'm pretty
sure these combos occur initially in several modern languages. But I do
agree they are far less common than combos of non-dental & non-alveolar
plosives + /l/.  In fact, they seem often to become velar+/l/, cf. Vulgar
Latin /vEklu/ <-- /wetlu-/ <-- uetulu(m).  In "sub-standard" English one
may hear 'bottle' promounced /bQkl=/ (tho /bQ?l=/ is now more common).

But the reverse change occasionly happens.  In certain Yorshire dialects,
apparently, /gl/ --> /dl/ so that e.g. _gloom_ was pronounced [dlu:m] (I
suspect universal education & mass media has now made such pronunciations
obsolete  :=(

Ray.





 The only other way to do it, as I see,
>would be to have a velar lateral rather than an alveolar lateral, because
>[tL] and [dL] are pretty easy for me.
>
>-David

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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