Re: A question on palatalization.

Muke Tever wrote:

>From: "Tristan" <kesuari@...>
>
>
>>>Well, I answered the point about Old English. In that case, /dZ/ is not
>>>
>>>
>really
>
>
>>>orphan. As for the vowel inventory, on the other hand, I heartily agree with
>>>you. But it's not for nothing that the English vowel inventory is considered
>>>exceptional ;))) .
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>So what other examples of English's vowels' oddities are there? I
>>realise it's hard/impossible to generalise, but this is probably because
>>of the oddities. Speak of dialects you know! :)
>>
>>
>
>My favorite English vowel oddity is that (at least in Genam) only two or three
>vowels are able to cleanly end syllables or words: /A @ @`/.  The rest all take
>offglides or ambisyllabicity.
>
What's Genam? My dialect doesn't suffer that 'oddity' (is it really that
odd?) with all the long vowels, /0;/ (the only pure 'tense' vowel) and
/i;/ (which doesn't so much have an offglide as an onglide [@i;]) and
/@/ able to...

I guess an oddity of my English might be it has three unrounded high
vowels---/I/, /i;/ and /I:~I:@/ (bid, bead, beard), or perhapsfully the
fact that there's no/little front-centre-back symmetry. Is that odd?

>That has to be breaking a rule of some kind... >_<
>
Of course it isn't! There's no rules languages have to abide by!

Tristan

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