Re: YACL: Thylean (alternate-history)

Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:

>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].
It was just a suggestion. Personally, I'd go for /v/ like you had. There
is something about langs with only one series of stops that I like. A /v/
would seem to emphasize that better than a /B/. It would also sound more
Icelandic, methinks.

-----<snip>-----
>>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
>:)
No no no! It doesn't have to be final g. I was just using Danish as an
example. I'm sure it'll work for initial g as well. In Swedish, for
instance, some words I have heard with initial g in Danish start with [j].
Like Danish [gi?] for Swedish [ji] "give" (or something like that).

-kristian- 8)