Re: Language Sketch: Gogido

On 26/08/08 09:00:04, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> 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.
Worth noting that Australian Aboriginal languages are frequently but
not universally (and probably not mostly) written with "b dh d rd dj g"
for their undifferentiated stops (bilabial dental alveolar post-
alveolar palatal velar, respectively). This is at least partly because
the undifferentiated stops are voiced in certain contexts (similar to
OE's undifferentiated fricatives, or English flapping), and partly
because the voiceless stops frequently sound like AusE voiced stops due
to common devoicing in the latter.

> 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.
Not at all. [g] is one of the harder voiced stops to produce and
frequently missing. You can only maintain voicing as long as there's
lower pressure above your vocal chords than below (i.e. lower in your
oral cavity than in your lungs). If you're shrinking the oral cavity by
blocking it off close to the vocal chords, then the pressure builds up
faster and voicing stops sooner. (This actually predicts that geminate
voiced stops should be significantly less common than geminate
voiceless ones, but I'm not aware of any language which has geminate
consonants and a voicing distinction that lacks voiced geminates. I've
never looked mind --- but I would've thought it'd be common enough I'd
bump into one without trying.)

> The variation is reflected in my Roman transcription.  I write
> "Dankar" and "T'sor" rather than "Tankar" and "D'zor" or any of the
> other two possibilities for the latter, even though the native script
> doesn't distinguish.   In that sense my Romanization is similar to
> the
> transcription system for Japanese that uses phonetic |chi| rather
> than
> phonemic |ti| for the syllable ち.
Does anyone know of any languages which include an allophonic
distinction in their native orthography? Icelandic þ vs ð? ME h vs gh?

Please CC any replies directly --- I'm about to go NOMAIL.

--
Tristan.