Re: Phonetics vs. Phonemics (was: apparently bizarre 'A's)

[k] vs [G] doesn't seem at all odd to me.  English already has [g] as
an intervocalic allophone of /k/ in some circumstances; the step to
[G] from there is quite small.

On 2/24/06, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> Quoting John Vertical <johnvertical@...>:
>
> > >As to phonetic symbology, you're right that I overstated the
> > >precision.  Each symbol covers a spectrum of similar sounds.  But the
> > >difference between phonetics and phonemics is that in the latter case
> > >the sounds represented by a single symbol are identified by their
> > >equivalence within a given language, and need not even be phonetically
> > >similar at all.
> >
> > >Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
> >
> > That reminds me - what's the most different allophones of a single phoneme
> > you know of (either qualitively or quantitively)?
>
> An Argentinian I met some years ago appeared to have [h] and [C] in free
> variation as the realization of /x/ before front vowels. Can anyone familiar
> with Argentinian Spanish say whether that's normal down there, or just was
> some
> idiosyncrasy of his?
>
> I also seem to recall hearing of a language where /k/ had a [G] allophone
> between vowels, which, while easy to imaging diachronically, is a pretty
> stark
> difference synchronically.
>
>                                                          Andreas
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>