Re: Chinese Dialect Question
| From: | Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, October 2, 2003, 18:02 |
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On 2 Oct 2003 at 13:29, John Cowan wrote:
> Garth Wallace scripsit:
> > JS Bangs wrote:
> > >Mark J. Reed sikyal:
> > >
> > >Furthermore, most languages have exactly one rhotic
> >
> > Is this a universal, or are there some languages with more than one?
>
> Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese for sure.
>
And, of course, Basque. Intervocalically, Basque has a phonemic distinction
between an alveolar tap and an alveolar trill, as does Albanian.
On the question of different points of articulation, French distinguishes between a
voiced uvular fricative and an alveolar trill. German has alveolar trill, uvular trill,
uvular friactive and an asyllabic unrounded open central vowel. Norwegian has
alveolar trill and uvular trill. Welsh has a phonemic contrast between voiced and
voiceless {r} and {rh}. Upper Sorbian has /R/ and /S_j/ for {r} and {r-caron}. Lower
Sorbian has /R/ and /R_j/ for the same letters. Czech has two {r}s, which appear to
be complex to describe phonetically. Pre-Soviet Latvian has /r/ and /r_j/, but the
Post-Soviet reinstatement of /r_j/ with it's own character {r-undercomma} is still up
for debate.
All these examples are from Daniels & Bright "The World's Writing Systems".
Paul
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