Re: THEORY: free variation [was: Re: [OT] Re: Conlangea Dreaming]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, dirk elzinga wrote:

> On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > <bewildered look>  What's free variation?
>
> Relevant example from Shoshoni: in Shoshoni, the occurrence of the
> vowel [e] is marked by a couple of kinds of variation. First, there
> are words which may be pronounced with [e] only. Such words include:
[snip]

Neat!  I like.  Might use for Meep--it sounds like an appropriately
whimsical thing to include.  (Well, Meep's reasons for including the
feature would be whimsical, though it probably isn't "whimsical" in the
natlangs where it occurs.)

Toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe...<G>

YHL