Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Question about Coda Restrictions

From:John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Date:Friday, April 25, 2008, 19:49
>> > b) Is there a natlang analogous to my system: any of /n S l/ in all codas >> > and any of /n S l x/ in word-final codas?
Reminds me of a thing I read of Ainu - /p t k r/ all reducing to [x] in coda (no onset /x/, however). Wait, except that's not really the same thing at all. Nevermind...
>The phoneme inventory is > >/b d g ?/ >/s S x/ (I have thought about replacing /s/ with /T/) >(sonorants)
That looks decidedly odd, but I don't believe this comes as news to you :)
>Are coronals inherently more likely to appear as codas for some reason? > >-- >Veoler
This seems to be the case. Would be due to their phonological unmarkedness (which, in turn, is due to their articulatory ease). Greek, Spanish & Finnish are all examples of languages with only coronals as word-final codas. Greek & Finnish both have changed *m > n / _#, even... All, however, allow other codas word-internally. (I've wondered if there are any "official" further tiers to this. My gut feeling says eg. dorsal > labial, stop > affricate, but this could be nativ bias for all I kno.) OTOH, as mentioned, there are also languages preferring a CVCVC syllable structure, one I just read of is Pazeh (Taiwanese Austronesian). Might this be a question of apocope vs syncope having occurred more recently rather than of any universal word-shape preference? John Vertical

Replies

ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...>
Mr Veoler <veoler@...>