Re: my phonology

Hi!

"J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...> writes:
> On Thu, 6 Jan 2005 04:52:56 +0100, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>
> >Why no palatals?  (I mean, I don't especially like their sound, but my
> >L1 contains a few, and Icelandic, which I like a lot, so why not?).
>
> To me it's not surpruising that a language with a velar-uvular contrast and
> with a alveolar-postalveolar contrast lacks palatal sounds. The palate would
> result exceedingly crowded.
Hehe.  But in English, the /T/-/s/-/S/ contrast also occurs in a
crowded area of the mouth.  As Basque's /s_a/-/s_m/-/S/.  I think /C/
is so much different from /x/ that a contrast would be feasible.
Also /s/-/x/ and /s/-/C/ and /s`/-/C/.
/S/-/C/ is also easily distinguishable for me, but my L1 is German, so
that's not so much of a surprise -- still even German dialects collapse
them.

However, I mainly asked for the palatals, because the column was there
and it seemed like the number of points of articulation was to be
maximised, so I wondered why exactly palatals would not occur.

**Henrik