Re: Revising my consonant inventory
| From: | Eric Christopherson <rakko@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, August 15, 2007, 5:14 |
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On Aug 13, 2007, at 10:00 AM, R A Brown wrote:
> John Vertical wrote:
> [snip]
>>> I have one more question, is /?_h/ possible, or would that
>>> become /h/ within
>>> minutes?
>> Theoretically possible, but just as rare as an aspirated ejectiv
>> (ie. not attested at all in the wild AFAIK.)
>
> According to the Chinese linguist, Yuen Ren Chao, it occurs in the
> Yunnan dialect of Mandarin. In that dialect Mandarin /k/ (Pinyin
> _g_) is pronounced [?], and /k_h/ (Pinyin _k_) is pronounced [?_h]
Cool. I wonder if it's also had a change of /t/ > /k/ -- that's
supposed to be common when /k/ is lost.
I haven't found much about it online, but incidentally, this paper
( http://www.nytud.hu/cescl/proceedings/Daniel_Huber_CESCL.pdf )
mentions it (or at least the Kunming variety of it) has a change of
retroflex to dental, which is a change I wondered about the existence
of.
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