Re: back-working phonemic inventories

Nic Walker wrote:
> Could anyone "back-work" (i.e. relate) these two phonemic inventories,
Without examples, or some text, to see where/how the various phones occur, I
don't think it's possible.  Clearly, in the stops and fricatives, for ex.,
there appear to have been some splits, voiced > voiced/voiceless, but are
the voiceless sounds in B actually phonemic (contrastive) or just allophonic
(perhaps only in final position or other predictable environments)??

Your systems are quite similar to one of the exercises in K. Pike's old
manual "Phonemics"-- where he presented 2 langs. with identical _phonetic_
inventories, but, from the examples given, very different _phonemic_
inventories.

(I've assumed the inventories below are phonetic, since you use [ ]; if
they're meant to be phonemic (should be /../) it would still be difficult to
say _why_ e.g. voiced stops split into vd/vl-- there must be some kind of
conditioning factor(s), it wouldn't just happen randomly IMO.)

>
> LANG. A.
>
> Stops: [b] , [d] , [g]
> Nasals: [n] , [m] , [N] , [n'] , [m']
> Trill: [r]
> Fricative: [v] , [z] , [Z] , [x] , [G]
> Approx. : [w] , [l] , [j]
> Vowels: [a] , [i] ,[e] , [3] , [O] , [u]
> Diphth: [aI] , [eI] , [OI]
>
> LANG. B.
>
> Stops: [p] , [b] , [t] , [d] , [k] , [g]
> Nasals: [n] , [m] , [N] , [n']
> Trill: [r]
> Fricative: [f] , [v] , [z] , [S] , [x] , [G]
> Approx. : [w] , [l] , [j]
> Vowels: [a] , [1/I] ,[e] , [O] , [u] , [Q]
> Diphth: [aI] , [eI] , [aU]
>

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