Re: THEORY: Allophones

FFlores asked:

>Is there any natlang or conlang where an allophone
>of a certain phoneme is also an allophone (maybe the
>only one) of *another* phoneme? Do you think that's
>likely or probable?
Russian is one.  <a> and <o> have the same allophone, [@], when
unstressed, and so do <e>, <i> and <ja>, [I].  These phenomena is
called, respectively, _akan'je_ and _ikan'je_.  Also, <i> after <zh>,
<c> (<ts>) and <sh>, which are *always* hard consonants, becomes a high
central vowel, which normally is the Cyrillic letter bI (transliterated
<y>).

Danny
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com