Re: Rotokas (was: California Cheeseburger)

"Mark P. Line" wrote:
> If you have a phonological analysis of Rotokas that shows how it's better
> to have separate phonemes for long vowels, I'm all ears. The only analysis
> I've seen posits 11 phonemes -- 6 consonants and 5 vowels.
I don't know much about Rotokas.  I only know that it has been analyzed
with far more syllables, and so have concluded that there must be some
reason.  I seem to recall that that page mentioned that long vowels were
phonemic.  Unfortunately, the page isn't coming up right now, so I can't
check.

> > I'd guess that [s] is an allophone of /t/ before /i/.
>
> It could also be an allophone of any other phoneme, if it's an allophone.
But /t/ (or /k/, come to think about it) is most probable, and many
other languages in that family have [s] as an allophone of /t/ before
[i]

> The question would still remain as to why it's written as 's' and not as
> 't'.
Why not?  The standard romanization of many languages includes
subphonemic distinctions.

> > I haven't looked
> > at the data carefully,
>
> What data?
The data on that page, the word lists and the like.  Admittedly there's
not much.

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