Re: Linguistics: Final /?/ and /h/

On Monday, June 20, 2005, at 12:04 , Joe wrote:

> Roger Mills wrote:
>
>> Rob Haden wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Recently I discussed word-final /?/ and /h/ with someone on another
>>> list.
>>> We were talking about how common those phonemes are in word-final
>>> position.  I argued that they are not very common cross-linguistically,
>>> but
>>> the other person said that they are.  Does anyone know here?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> My gut feeling would be that /?/ is probably "fairly common", /h/ much
>> less
>> so, but I couldn't really cite any statistics.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> In most colloquial English dialects in England, word-final [?] is quite
> common (though it is only an allophone of /t/).
This is very true - I was going to mention that, till I noticed the
question about phonemic /?/. But Joe's observation does seem relevant to
me. If in are commonly spoken language - Brit English - [?] occurs in
final positions as an allophone of /t/, then surely it suggests that there
is no reason at all for a language that actually has /?/ not to pronounce
it in final position (assuming it allows consonants to be used at the end
of syllables).
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On Monday, June 20, 2005, at 02:12 , Steven Williams wrote:
[snip]
> Don't many dialects of Arabic have final [?] and [h]?
Yes - in fact, I thought they all did.

> I know with reasonable certainty that the final [h] is
> pronounced, however weakly, in standard Arabic, and I
> don't see why any dialect with hamza shouldn't
> pronounce it syllable-finally...
There is no reason and AFAIK they all do.
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On Monday, June 20, 2005, at 04:42 , Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
> My gut feeling would be that /?/ is probably "fairly common", /h/ much
> less
> so, but I couldn't really cite any statistics.
That is my gut feeling also. I know of languages such as English & german
that restrict /h/ to syllable initial position only, altho they allow most
other consonants in syllable final & word final position. But none of the
languages I can think of that have /?/ _and_ allow consonants in syllable
final position make an exception for /?/.

Languages like Somoan of course are not relevant here, since altho it does
have /?/, it does not allow _any_ consonant at the of syllables.

Ray
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