Re: Quantity shift (was: Re: Native grammatical terms)

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:

> At 03:31 22.11.2003, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> >Not that it falsifies the point that there are complications to either
> >interpretation, but in my 'lect, those both get a long vowel; [ho:d`] and
> >[ho:t`], respectively.
>
> Maybe there are really DEEP differences between our 'lects! :)
Perhaps ...

While in my 'lect both long and short vowels can go before the voiceless
retroflexes ([t`] and [s`]), only long ones are found before the voiced ones
([n´], [d`] and [l`]*). However, it seems the short vowel plus voiceless
retroflex combos invariably has a morpheme boundary in them, which makes the
phonemicity of the length distinction (whether we want to place it the vowel
or consonant) questionable in this position, apparent minimal pairs like
_fars_ [fas`:] "farce" and _fars_ [fA:s`] "father's" notwithstanding.

* I'm quite certain my ideolect didn't have [l`] only a few years ago, but
I've somewhy acquired it since.

                                                             Andreas

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