Japanese phonemes (was Re: The Monovocalic PIE Myth (was Germans have no /w/, ...))

william drewery wrote:
> True. But I can't think of any voiced equivalent to
> it. I'm guessing it's that restriction again.
The reason is that there's no voiced /h/, and voiced /h/ is very rare
anyways.  "f" simply DOES NOT EXIST in Japanese on a PHONEMIC level.

Japanese has a pretty symmetrical *phonemic* inventory:

p   t   k
b   d   g
    s   h
    z
m   n
    r
w     j

With some degree of asymmetry in *distribution* in native roots:
/p/ only occurs geminated or post-nasal
/r/ never occurs word-initially
/h/ never geminated or after a nasal in the same morpheme, almost
    never morpheme-medial (Sino-Japanese as well), there are a few
    exceptions to that last restriction
/w/ only occurs before /a/ (ban on /wi/ and /we/ is moderately
    unusual, ban on /wo/ and /wu/ is pretty typical)
/j/ does not occur before front vowels (hardly an unusual
    restriction), cannot occur after /w/ (again, not unusual
    at all)
Only voiceless obstruents can be geminated
/d/ and /z/ merge before /i/ and /j/ (in the standard dialect,
    some dialects preserve the distinction)
No /au/, /ou/, /eu/, /iu/ within a single morpheme

> Interesting. Did tis happen in Spanish as well?
In initial position, something like that, yeah.  /p/ -> /h/ -> null
except before /w/ and /r/ (thus, fuego and Francia rather than *huego
and *Hrancia)

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