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Re: Voiced Velar Fricative

From:John Cowan <jcowan@...>
Date:Wednesday, October 25, 2000, 16:50
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. Why "stressed vowels immune?" The "s" in "casa" survives because it is in the onset, not because the preceding vowel is stressed, IMHO. -- There is / one art || John Cowan <jcowan@...> no more / no less || http://www.reutershealth.com to do / all things || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan with art- / lessness \\ -- Piet Hein