Re: Rotokas (was: California Cheeseburger)

Ray Brown wrote:

> On Sunday, June 20, 2004, at 04:04 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
>> From:    "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>
>>
>>> I don't think we have any evidence that Rotokas has ever been analyzed
>>> with so many syllables. Seeing the number '350' in a single *secondary*
>>> source is not a good data point when we can find in a primary source
>>> that
>>> Rotokas has 11 phonemes and that its syllable structure is only (C)V.
>>
>>
>> I'm jumping in here, and don't much of anything about Rotokas, but
>> how can it have a (C)V syllable structure when the name of the
>> language itself has a coda? Is there some constraint allowing word
>> final codas but not word internal ones?
>
>
> Eh? I thought it had been stated somewhere in this thread (about a week
> back IIRC) that 'Rotokas' was *not* the native name of the language.
>
> Basing an argument on a single item is a bit dodgy IMO, and names are
> ever
> less secure. Isn't this a bit like asking how can French not have the
> phoneme [tS] when the name of the language ends in [tS]?

YAEPTing, I know, but I couldn't resist.  In my ideolect, French is
[frEnS].

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