Re: THEORY: NATLANGS: Phonology and Phonetics: Tetraphthongs, Triphthongs, Diphthongs

On 26/05/06, Eldin Raigmore <eldin_raigmore@...> wrote:

> [QUESTIONS 1]
>
> Questions;
>
> Aren't most diphthongs either
> pre-palatalizations (rising diphthong with a [i] or [j] on-glide), or
> pre-labializations (rising dipththong with a [u] or [w] on-glide), or
> post-palatalizations (falling diphthong with a [i] or [j] off-glide), or
> post-labializations (falling diphthong with a [u] or [w] off-glide)?
>
> What are some examples of level diphthongs?  What languages are they in?
>
> What are some examples of diphthongs in which neither vowel is [i] or [u]
> (or [j] or [u])?  (I guess the non-rhotic dialects of English have a lot of
> falling diphtghongs with a center-mid [@] off-glide -- if I wrote that
> right.)
As you say, there's the centring diphthongs. AuE and Latin have a
diphthong like [Ae] or [ae]; Latin has [oe] (and the AusE diphthong I
think is [oi] has been called [oe] by others). AuE have diphthongs
/&O/ with varying allophones including [&@] and [&u]; and /@u\/ (which
may be more like [6u\] or [Ou\] and the offset ranges from [y] to [u].
Old English had [eo] and [&A].

Of course, you could analyse the Australian diphthongs as ending with
/u/ or /i/ if you really wanted to, but to me any such argument seems
based on an unsatisfying circular argument: Why do we say they end in
/u/ or /i/? Because in hiatus they get epenthetic [w] or [j], not
[r\]. Why do they get those segments? Because they end in high vowels.
But then why does [I:] get epenthetic [r\]---after all, it's high?
Because it's not high, it's really /I@/. (OTOH, I have not worked out
what non-circular way you can have of distinguishing the set of vowels
that receive [r\] and the others.)

I think Japanese and Finnish are also rife with vowel combinations
that either are or could be analysed as diphthongs that don't contain
high vowels (and contrast with ones that do).

--
Tristan

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