Re: YACL: Thylean (alternate-history)

On Tue, 7 Nov 2000 13:23:20 +0100, Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
wrote:

>Actually, some descriptions of Spanish regard <v> and <b> to be
orthographic
>representations of the single phoneme /B/. In these descriptions, <d> and
<g>
>are also phonemically /D/ and /G/. So you might perhaps want to consider
>having the same development where */b/ and */w/ merged into /B/?
I know, I had a Spanish speaking girlfriend who couldn't even *hear* the
difference between [v] and [b]; everything was just [B] to her, a sound that
I can only barely pronounce distinctively. I meant in my text that /v/ and
/b/ had merged in Spanish, though the merge had usually yielded [B], while
Thylean would have [v]. I'm not sure which to prefer yet, [v] or [B].

>>Kind of unusual, yes. Many Norwegian dialects and undoubtedly some Swedish
>>ones have the reflexes [j] and [j] (correct SAMPA?) from palatalized
>>velars. I wonder why it's not more common, it seems like a logical
>>development.
Seems my attempt at SAMPA <unvoiced [j]> failed. I used the little circle
sign (as in degrees) that represents devoicing, but it doesn't show on my
screen. I'll write [hj] from now on, though it's not strictly accurate.

>You could also go all the way. In Danish, many occurences of syllable final
>[j] are surface forms of /g/ after front vowels. Similarly, many occurences
>of syllable-final [w] are surface forms of /g/ after back vowels. If you go
>back a few generations, these /g/'s were all /G/ in syllable-final
position.
>Dialects even differ in pronounciations because of differing vowels, e.g.:
>
>     UNDERLYING   EASTERN   WESTERN   GLOSS
>     /dag/        [dEj]     [dAw]     "day"
>     /lag/        [lEj]     [lAw]     "layer"
>     /fag/        [fEj]     [fAw]     "subject, field, trade"
>
>Going all the way also seems more likely to me since Thylean /G/ is more
>lenited than /k/ in the first place.
Well, I would if I could, but no CL word had a final g, so...tak alligevel
:)

Óskar