Re: Latin <h>

E fésto Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>:
> Muke Tever wrote:
>>
>> Don't forget the dialects that use [h] for syllable-final /s/.
>> In such a case you could actually have a new /h/ phoneme from the merger
>> of /x/ > [h] and /s/ > [h] (there's a rule somewhere that a single phone
>> cannot be an allophone of two different phonemes)
>
> Are you sure about that? What about neutralization?
I know I understated the rule there to avoid overcomplicating the
sentence.

IIRC, the rule is that if a phone occurs as an allophone of two different
phonemes, that phone must itself be a phoneme.  In such a case you have
alternation of phonemes and not just allophony, which is why we can
inherit paradigms like knife ~ knives, when there is nothing phonetically
unacceptable about *knifes (we can make do with _laughs_ after all).

As far as neutralization goes (if I understand correctly) /ra:d/ and
/ra:t/ realized as [ra:t] only has the rule telling us there must be a
phoneme /t/ (which in this case isnt very helpful).



        *Muke!
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