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Re: Voiced Velar Fricative

From:And Rosta <a.rosta@...>
Date:Thursday, October 26, 2000, 20:44
John Cowan:
> And Rosta wrote: > > > Cool fact. How trustworthy/well-documented is it? > > It's in *The World's Major Languages_, which is generally reckoned reliable. > > > It's as though final > > /h/ (from /s/) transmogrifies into an autosegment that triggers ATR-ish > > harmony (with stressed vowels immune?), which suggests that H-ness > > and ATR-ness are phonologically the same thing. > > I think the historical sequence is that the fronting was associated with > /h/ in the coda, and when /h/ went away, the fronting remained.
Okay; but still an explanation is invited for why final /h/ triggers some sort of ATR-like effect on vowels. My very limited readings in phonology have not encountered anything that links /h/ and ATR-ness explicitly, though I'm hoping that Dirk will entertain us by disserting on this issue in due course.
> Why "stressed vowels immune?" The "s" in "casa" survives because it is in > the onset, not because the preceding vowel is stressed, IMHO.
Because your original message said:
> 'la casa' /lakasa/ 'las casas' /l&kas&/.
not /l&k&s&/. But I realize now that I apprehended the data too hastily and thought there was leftwards harmony, but in fact the /h/ has affected only the vowel in the syllable it is coda to. So it's not *quite* as cool as I thought, but still interesting. --And.