Re: the sound [a]

Nik Taylor said:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>> Assuming that having [i] and [u] in non-final position would be
>> perceived as
>> odd, wrong or accented, certainly.
>>
>> I notice that your hypothetical example language appears to use fairly
>> long
>> words or alot of coda consonants.
>
> Eh, so make it 2:1, then.  Or even 1.5:1, the ratio isn't important.
> :-)  I just meant, whichever is more common, or can be analyzed as the
> default (that is, it's simpler to say "use [i] in case X, [e] otherwise"
> than to say "use [e] in case X, Y, or Z, [i] otherwise", should be
> considered the phoneme.
So, when we're studying the basic color terms of a language, we believe
that we can ascertain what a speaker's perceptual prototypes are.

But in the case of phonemes, we can't...?

Maybe we could just ask native speakers which sound they hear.

(We ask them everything else: Is this sentence grammatical (and don't
forget what I explained to you about LFG)? Is this sentence ungrammatical
( and don't forget what I explained to you about Montague Grammar)? Does
your language use ternary logic? Can I use lambda calculus to represent
the lexical semantics of your adjectives? ...)


-- Mark

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