Re: the sound [a]

Quoting Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Actual judgment would, of course, be postponed till having seen some real
> > phonetic data on the language - if it turns out that /e/ and /o/ simply
> never
> > have high allophones ever, well, typology be damned. But languages with
> small
> > vocalic sets often allow their vowel phonemes to cover alot of space in the
> ol'
> > tetragon, and if [i] and [u] are valid realizations of /e/ and /o/, there
> would
> > seem to be little reason not to reanalyze them as /i/ and /u/.
>
> What if [i] and [u] are only used in specific, relatively uncommon,
> situations, say, when word-final?  Such that occurrences of [e] might
> outnumber [i] by, say, 3:1?  Wouldn't it be more sensible to call it by
> the more common allophone, in this case, /e/?
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.

                                                    Andreas

Reply