Re: A question on palatalization.

Quoting Muke Tever <mktvr@...>:

> From: "Tristan" <kesuari@...>
> > 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.
>
> That has to be breaking a rule of some kind... >_<
I seem to remember reading that there is a crosslinguistic
tendency for bimoraic segments to have a [+high] element.
If so, it should not be surprising that (depending on how
you analyze it) /e:/ is [ei(] and /o:/ is [ou(] in most dialects.
Some dialects violate this principle, however:  Minnesotan dialect
is wellknown for its "pure" back vowel [o:].

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