Re: Velarization

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\.

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.

Of course the sj-sound is the one Swedish phoneme with the
greatest cross-lectal variation. You might even say that any
voiceless fricative phone which isn't an allophone of
another voiceless fricative phoneme might be used to realize
/x\/, but that's admittedly a tad too strong a formulation.
My favorite is the [xP)] which my father used. It is very
hard to get the right amount of [P] so that it doesn't come
out as /f/! :-)

FWIW the two strangest phenomena I know of in this area are
the Tjörn dialect which has (or had) [S] for /s\/ and [s\]
for /x/ -- i.e. essentially a reversal --, and some Dalarna
varieties which borrow other dialects' [x]-like realizations
as /f/ in words like /sta'fu:n/ 'station'.

(For those wondering how a sound called sj-sound can be
spelled _stj_ or _ti_, there are about 22 spellings
corresponding to /x\/, not all of which are equally common.
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_alphabet>!)

--

/BP 8^)
--
   B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk,
and so they are gone to milk the bull."
                                     -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

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