Re: Velarization

Andreas Johansson skrev:
> Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>:
>
>> Andreas Johansson skrev:
>>  > Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <conlang@...>:
>>  >
>>  >> BTW some varieties of Swedish have what boils down to a
>>  >> three-way distinction between /s`_G/~/s`/~/s\/.
>>  >>
>>  >
>>  > This doesn't sound like anything I'm familiar with ...
>>  > would you expand a bit on it?
>>
>> s`_G is merely an in context more revealing notation for x\.
>
> *headdesk* I should realized it was a realization of /x\/. I was speculating if
> it might be some bizarro reflex of *rD or the like.
>
>> You got minimal pairs
>>
>> - /x\/ - /s\/ stjärna - kärna
>> - /x\/ - /s`/ page - pars
>>
>> AFAIK there is no /s`/ - /s\/ minimal pair, due to the
>> distributional oddities of those phonemes, but most native
>> speakers would agree they're distinct.
>
> Indeed.
>
>
> To complicate matters, certain 'lects, notably my own, have what might be termed
> the "split sj" - /x\/ is realized with a dark (back) allophone at the beginning
> of a syllable and with a light (front) at the end of one, sometimes also at the
> end of a morpheme as in _krascha_.
>
> The catch is that the 'light sj' tends to assume the same pronunciation as the
> tj-sound. Using my own (not entirely typical) pronunciation as an example, your
> example words come out as:
>
> x&:n`a ~ S&:n`a
> pA:S   ~ pA:s`
>
> In fact, I see no strong reason that the light sj should be considered an
> allophone of dark sj rather than of tj in such 'lects.
Indeed.  There are also lects where _stjärna_ and _kärna_ are
distinct but _page_ and _pars_ are homophones, and of course
those with total /x\/ ~ /s`/ merger, so we have a situation
with a 'maximal set' of contrasts which are not always realized.
The same is true of vowels, where lects may have anything
between
eight and twelve contrasing short vowel phonemes. It only so
happens that there the prestige norm doesn't coincide with the
maximal set -- probably because the orthography has only nine
vowel glyphs.

--

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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