Re: Describing the Welsh LL to non-linguists

Paul Roser skrev:
> In his book on African phonetics from the 60s Ladefoged described Bura as
> having palatal lateral fricatives, and that is also how they're described in
> the UCLA language materials (and also in L & M's Sounds of the Worlds
> languages) - but I found a pdf dictionary of Bura online
> <www.geocities.com/Athens/6060/Buradictionary.pdf>
> and that seems to list the second pair of lateral fricatives as compounds of
> velar fricatives plus the alveolar laterals /xK, GK\/. From the dictionary I
> gather that the alveolar laterals are written <tl, dl>, and the velars are
> written <h, gh>, so the velar/compound laterals should be <htl, ghdl>,
> though there is at least one incidence of <tly> in the dictionary, but I'm
> unclear what it indicates...
>
> Besides the other examples of multiple lateral fricatives, Toda in SW India
> has dental/alveolar and retroflex and A-Hmao in also has alveolar and
> retroflex lateral fricatives.
Icelandic gets [C_l] from /Kj/ as in _hljóð_
[C_lo:wD_0] and probably [x_l] for /K/ when
it ends up next to an [x] <- /k/ or /G/.
Only one phoneme /K/, or arguably even
/hl/ or /lh/ though.

AFMOC Southern Sohlob, which still lacks a
name *in* Sohlob has /s\_l/ and /z\_l/
beside /K/ and /K\/ and Kidilib aka
Northern Sohlob probably has [s\_l]
allophonically too.  I guess the
/K\ z\_l l/ contrast in Southern
would be kinda remarkable in a natlang.
All the Sohlob languages have /K/ of
course. Kidilib has a five-way contrast
/f s s\ s` x/ and /v z z\ z` G/ in
non-lateral fricatives, and probably
/K/ would take on appropriate allophones
when colliding with these.
The latinizations and corresponding
native-alphabet graphies are quite
unimaginative:

/K/     = hl
/K\/    = zl
/s\_l/  = hly
/z\_l/  = ly
/s\/    = ç/sj
/z\/    = y
/s`/    = hr
/z`/    = r
/x/     = x
/G/     = q


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
  à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
  ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
  c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)