Re: Phonetic question...
| From: | <kam@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, March 24, 2002, 22:00 |
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On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 11:44:29PM -0500, Roger Mills wrote:
> Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> >I agree that the difference is extremely thin, and I actually know of no
> >language that has phonemic distinction between palatalised alveolar
> consonants
> >and actual palatals (a distinction between [n_j] and [J] for instance).
>
Well it so happens that I was reading the phonetics section of a Polish
grammar the other day (as you do), and it seemed to be claiming that
exactly these type of distinctions were significant. Polish seems to
have undergone at least three rounds of palatalisation and not all the
resulting sounds have merged. It seems there are grammatical "soft/hard"
alternations that involve affricates that are no longer phonetically
palatal, plus palatals, plus consonants that seem to have palatalised
allophones in appropriate environments ...
Somebody on the list must understand Polish, I certainly don't, its
phonology makes Old Irish look downright elementary.
Keith Mylchreest
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