Re: Is this a realistic phonology?

Nik Taylor wrote:

> > >> [c] [j] are affricates.  [c] is /tS/, but [j] can be /d3/ or /3/ (free
> > variation).
Is this variation the result of an ongoing sound change occurring in the speach
community?  (hypothetical or not)

William Labov showed some decades ago that most of the time
when we think there's free variation going on, social factors will
actually regulate when it's used when it's not.  Truely free variation
is quite rare (e.g., one of the only ones I can think of in English would
probably be, for me at least, the variation between /i/ and /E/ in
"economic").

Why not come up with some sort of social limiting factor for this
"variation"?  It's up to you.  :)

> > >> [bb] is an implosive bilabial stop /`b/.
> > >> [z] is a voiceless alveolar click /t!/ (occasionally nasalized in lazy
> > speech).  It is an implosive alveolar stop /`d/ in some traditional
> > dialects.
>
> Hmm, you have phonemic implosives for bilabial and sometimes alveolar,
> but it's allophonic for velar?  Unlikely.
I'm not sure about that -- I mean, if you take the simple case
of the history of English, we used to have only two phonemic
nasals, /m/ and /n/, where [N] was merely an allophone of
/n/ before velar stops.  Some sounds just tend not to be
phonemic in lots of languages (like [N]).   The point being,
of course, that just because there's a tendency for features to
spread to all places of articulation, that doesn't mean they
have to.

I find the whole idea of implosives unlikely, but hey, that's
just me. :)

> > There are 7 vowels:
> > [i]                     [u]
> > [e]=/E/    [eh]=/V/     [o]     [r]=/R/
> >            [a]
> > Main questions:
> > ! Is it naive to call [r] a vowel?  There is no consonant form in the
> > language.
>
> It's not a *true* vowel.  The proper term is syllabic r (assuming you
> mean the sound in some dialects in watER), but it acts like a vowel.
But doesn't he say about that /r/ = [R]?  Well, I favor the theory that
postvocalic /r/ in rhotic dialects of English, at least, is really not a consonant
at all, but really just the remnants of some former truly consonantal /r/ that has
left its mark on preceding vowels.  Much like the loss of truly consonantal
/n/ in French produced a whole series of phonemically nasalized vowels.


=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

There's nothing particularly wrong with the
proletariat. It's the hamburgers of the
proletariat that I have a problem with. - Alfred Wallace
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