>At 3:48 pm -0600 7/3/99, Nik Taylor wrote:
>>Daniel Andreasson wrote:
>>> I'm sorry that I ask, and it's possible that there's something here =
that
>>>I don't
>>> quite get, but what's bizarre about having more nasals than voiced =
stops?
>>> Swedish has six nasals (bilabial, labiodental, dental, retroflex,
>>>palatal and velar)
>>> and only four voiced stops (blb, dental, retroflex and velar).
>>
>>Well, only that, up to this point, I didn't realize that there *were*
>>langs with more nasals than stops.
>
>And are all the six Swedish nasals noted above six distinct _phonemes_?
Well...no...=20
>For example, English has a labiodental nasal but not it doesn't have
>phonemic status; it's merely an allophone of /m/ (or /n/ according to =
some
>analyses) before /f/ or /v/. English has only three nasal phonemes =
(some
>Brit. English dialects still have only two), though other nasals occur =
as
>allophones.
The labiodental and palatal nasals are just allophones of /n/.=20
Ok, then. Swedish has four nasals and four voiced stops as phonemes.=20
I must have misinterpreted the word 'phonematic' in the beginning of=20
this discussion.
>As post-vocalic nasals are more subject to modification by a following
>consonant than post-vocalic plosives are, I suspect it's not at all
>uncommon to find more nasal sounds than voiced plosives in very many
>languages. But I'm still with Nik when it comes to actual _phonemes_.
And now I am too.
Daniel Andreasson
da@mensa.se
http://dalang.cjb.net