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

Dirk Elzinga skrev:
> On 2/24/06, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
>>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.
>
>
> Perhaps you recall reading one of my earlier posts on Shoshoni; it has
> just this kind of  allophony.
One rather well-known language which has this allophony
is Tamil. /k/ is [k] word initially and in gemination,
[g] after /n/ (which becomes [N] in this position) and
[G] when ungeminated between vowels.  Obviously it is
nonsense to speak of a main allophone -- what we have is
a velar obstruent phoneme with different realizations in
different positions.  Other obstruents in Tamil have
similar allophony.

--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

Reply