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THEORY: minor quirks (was: S. Australian (was: Re: Gz^rod|in))

From:BP Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Friday, March 31, 2000, 10:34
At 03:40 31.3.2000 +0100, And Rosta wrote:

>I don't know -- my impression is that language is fairly tolerant of >minor quirks. Quite a lot of people have obligatory [x] in _loch_ and >no other words (Bach, maybe), for example.
But that's hardly a *rule*. If they learnt that _Bach_ is /bax/ in German they might easily enough begin to pronounce it /bA:x/ (or maybe /b^x/? BTW some varieties of Swedish has [a:] -- opposed to [a] and [A:] -- only in a few words of expletive or expressive character. It is hardly a matter of an extra phoneme; rather these words are marked as belonging to the class of expletive/expressive words where the long open-syllable allophone of /a/ is front rather than back -- a pragmatically/indexically conditioned allophone, if you will accept such a thing! Examples: if you say [gA:len] rather than [ga:len] you are gravely declaring that someone is clinically nuts rather than just wild or stupid, or if you say [fA:n] you are actually talking about the Devil rather than just swearing. I heard some Northern England accents have a similar distinction between ['fUkIn] and ['f^kIn]. /BP B.Philip Jonsson <mailto:bpj@...>bpj@netg.se <mailto:melroch@...>melroch@my-deja.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__ Anant' avanaute quettalmar! \ \ __ ____ ____ _____________ ___ __ __ __ / / \ \/___ \\__ \ /___ _____/\ \\__ \\ \ \ \\ \ / / / / / / / \ / /Melroch\ \_/ // / / // / / / / /___/ /_ / /\ \ / /Melarocco\_ // /__/ // /__/ / /_________//_/ \_\/ /Eowine__ / / \___/\_\\___/\_\ I neer Pityancalimeo\ \_____/ /ar/ /_atar Mercasso naan ~~~~~~~~~Cuinondil~~~\_______/~~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~ || Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda cuivie aiya! || "A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)