Re: Vowel length near-minimal pairs in Tirelat

Sorry for this bobble..............


>From: ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
>Subject: Re: Vowel length near-minimal pairs in Tirelat
>Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2008 00:05:41 -0500
>
>Herman Miller wrote:
>
>(snip examples)
>>So it looks like vowel length (and not stress) is distinctive.
>
>Yes, from that data.
>
>But
>>there's a complication: an unwritten schwa sound in some words, which is
>>always unstressed. E.g.:
>>
>>dbaxa /d@'baxa/ "to resist" (not /'d@baxa/)
>>knagi /k@'nagi/ "brass" (not /'k@nagi/)
>>tezn /'tEz@n/ "transparent plastic ball for gerbils" (not /tE'z@n/)
>>zgaki /z@'gaki/ "similar" (not /'z@gaki/)
>
>That isn't phonemic, merely a phonetic/sub-phonemic transition sound in the
>surface structure, to facilitate the cluster. In my favorite generative
>terms, [@] would be a very late (maybe even the last) rule in the
>derivation, surely _after_ stress has been assigned.  Is penultimate stress
>the rule? no problem in that case; or is it "stress the first (phonemic)
>vowel of the word?" or maybe something else-- still no problem, since
>whenever stress is assiged, [@] "isn't there yet" in phonological terms.