Re: Hinession Dialect Continuums

At 3:07 PM +0100 3/21/03, Christian Thalmann wrote:
>--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Danny Wier <dawier@H...> wrote:
>> From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@F...>
>>
>> > I don't off-hand think of any language I know to have /ht/, but I
>used to
>> think
>> > that a Persian girl I know pronounced the word "Ohm" very odd, till I
>> realized
>> > she was simply pronouncing it as written: [o:hm]. Persian, at least in
>> Roman
>> > transliteration, does seem to have odd clusters in h-; I'm thinking of
>> names
>> > like "Shahrazad" or "Pehlevi".
>>
>> /ht/ can be found in some Native American languages, at least Algonquian
>> ones. Icelandic realizes voiceless stops as preaspirated when
>doubled, IIRC.
>
>Finnish has /ht/ too.
I believe Finnish /ht/ is realized as [xt]. Someone will probably already have
said this by the time my email gets around.

Shoshoni also has underlying /hC/, where /C/ is any voiceless stop (including /ts/) or
nasal. The /hC/ clusters with voiceless stops are realized as voiceless
fricatives; thus, /hp/ -> [p\]; /ht/ -> [T] following front vowels, and [T_-]
elsewhere; /hk/ -> [x]; and /hk_w/ -> [x_w]. (/hts/ presents an interesting
problem; it should be realized as [s], but there are no unambiguous examples of
it anywhere. The analysis of this problem is on my to-do list for Shoshoni
phonological description in RL.)

The /hC/ clusters involving nasals: /hm/ -> [hw~], /hn/ -> [hj~] following front
vowels, and [hn] elsewhere.

Southern Paiute also has [hC] clusters. These arise predictably from geminates when the
preceding vowel is unstressed. Shoshoni had the same thing historically, but
then stress shifted and stranded the preaspirated stops, which later changed to
voiceless fricatives.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                               Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"It is important not to let one's aesthetics interfere with the appreciation of
fact." - Stephen Anderson