Re: Putting the J in Sleep

Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Nov 10, 2004, at 5:46 PM, Arnt Richard Johansen wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Steg Belsky wrote:
>>
>>> So, has anyone ever come up with a conlang where the pronunciation of
>>> individual phonemes varies by some seemingly-arbitrary variable, like
>>> the time of day?  Or the dominant color of the speaker's surroundings?
>>> Or what the speaker ate for lunch?  Or...?
>
>
>> ANAD(EW).
>> In Chukchi, a possible language isolate spoken in Chokotka in Eastern
>> Siberia, the phoneme /k/ is pronounced differently depending on whether
>> the speaker is male or female.
>
>
> But for the vast majority of people, their gender/sex remains constant
> for their lifetime.  I'm talking about variable variables, things that
> are constantly changing based on environment or whatever else.  Like,
> for instance, if it's sunny you pronounce a word /gola/ but then if the
> sun disappears behind a cloud the word gets pronounced /doru/, or
> whatever :)
In Samoan [t] and [k] are "free" allophones of one phoneme.
The choice between them depends on perceived social intimacy
or distance between interlocutors.  Historically there was a
sound change -- I don't remember in what direction -- which
got frozen and re-deployed halfway.


--

/BP 8^)
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

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