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
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