Re: Chinese Dialect Question

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 5:18 PM
Subject: Re: Chinese Dialect Question


> On Fri, Oct 03, 2003 at 04:37:14PM +0100, Joe wrote:
> > Well, in a lot of S. English dialects, /T/ and /f/ have merged into [f].
>
> Really?  So "path" is [paf] in adult speech?   That sounds so much like
> a child's error to me that I have trouble imagining it as a dialectical
> variant.
[pA:f], I think. So, 'up the path' is [Vp_? v@ pA:f]

> But I don't know that you can claim  [T] is particularly difficult, since
> many children say [T] when trying to say [s].  It just depends on the
> child.
>
> Are there any dialects in which /l/ and /j/ have merged into [j]?  That's
> another common children's error.  ("Turn out the yight, Mommy!")
Not to my knowledge, but in the same dialects as the above change happens,
[l] changes to [M\] after vowels,  so, say 'at the table' is [&? v@
tEjb@M\].

> -Mark
>