Re: Phonemic vowel and consonant length.
| From: | Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, February 2, 2003, 16:08 |
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In a message dated 2/1/2003 11:52:08 PM Eastern Standard Time,
feurieaux@YAHOO.COM writes:
> 2. I heard tell that Old Japanese lacked a phonemic vowel length
> distinction, but modern Japanese does--I may be wrong, but I'm sure there's
> a language somewhere that's gained the contrast somehow, where there was
> none before. How would this come about?
>
>
I read somewhere (can't recall the reference) that some varieties of American
English have developed a new vowel length contrast as a result of (1)
orginally non-phonemic length differences before voiced vs. voiceless
consonants and (2) final consonant devoicing, so that "hit" and "hid" wind up
as [hIt] and [hI:t] respectively. Since these contrast there is a phonemic
distinction /hIt/ vs. /hI:t/.
Doug