Re: Language Sketch: Gogido

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 6:03 PM, Logan Kearsley <chronosurfer@...>
> wrote:
> > It implies that my default pronunciation in most cases is voiced,
> > although there's free variation between the voiced and unvoiced
> > allophones.
>
> In the case of Okaikiar, I'm not consistent.  It has [t] and [d]  in
> allophonic variation, likewise  [s] and [z], but there's no [g], only
> [k].  I suspect this is massively unrealistic.
There are languages, most famously perhaps varieties of Arabic, that have /t d
k/ but no /g/ or [g]*. Given this, having a voiced allophone of /t/ but not of
/k/ doesn't seem surprising in a language that doesn't distinguish phonemic
voice.


* Having /t d g/ but no /k/ is apparently less common - the explanation is
supposed to be that modal voicing is relatively hard to sustain for back stops
(pressure builds up faster due to less space between the glottis and the closure
of the vocal track) so that if there's only back stop it tends to "default" to
voicelessness.

--
Andreas Johansson

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