Re: Brr (was: Re: A few questions about linguistics concerning my new project)

Philip Newton wrote:
> On 8/2/07, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
>> Mark J. Reed writes:
>>> in parts of Greenland the /u/ phoneme seems to be merging into /i/.
>> Fascinating.  Do you have some pointers for further reading?  A
>> two-vowel system of /1/ vs. /a/ would be very interesting.
>
> I read somewhere about a natlang whose (phonemic) vowels seemed to be
> distinguished only by height (and not by backness; don't remember
> about rounding). Such a lang could conceivably have phonemic /1/ vs
> /a/ (though phonetically, I don't know what the allophonic range could
> be -- conceivably rather wide).
>
> Unfortunately, I don't remember details.
Caucasian languages (which is, I think, a geographical and not genetic
classification). Ubykh is the standard example: the WP article on the
topic at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubykh_phonology observes that it
has the largest consonant inventory of any language that doesn't use
clicks, but has only two contrastive vowels: /ə/ and /a/ (and possibly
also /a:/, tho it is also analysable as /aa/). In practice, however, the
vowels [e i o u a: e: i: o: u:] also occur as allophones conditioned by
palatalised and labialised coarticulations in consonants or the platal
and labio-velar glides themselves.

Scary, huh?

--
Tristan.

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