Re: laterals (was: Pharingials, /l/ vs. /r/ in Southeast Asia)

John Cowan eskribiw:

<<Well, in some dialects of Spanish [&] is the allophone of /a/ used
in
closed syllables, [a] in open ones.  This can become a phonemic
distinction
where syllable-final /s/ drops:  la casa /lakasa/ vs. las casas
/l&kas&/.
And this happens precisely in Andalusia.>>

Great! Your encyclopaedism is amazing and more than useful! I'm very
glad there are such precedents in real life. I'll do sth similar in
Rumean. Just need to decide how to show [&]~[A] difference in Latin
spelling; Arabic is easy: fatha for [&], alif for [A]. Arabic script
is official, anyway...

-------------------
Tristan McLeay eskribiw:

<<Heh :) I have to blame an American conlanger (specifically the guy
who
hosts my email/webpage) for it :) Dunno how he came upon it,
though.>>

Strange things may happen in show business world :)))

<<Okay. Russians seem more able to arbitrarily lengthen vowels when
singing
than Australians, then :)>>

Abyssolutely!!! As much you lengthen Russian vowel, it won't change
the meaning :)))

Eskribí:
> If that's about Russian, then /a/ indeed has [&] as an allophone
> between two palatalized consonants: /p;at;/ [p;&t;] 'five'. (;
> stands for _j here). But main variant is definitely central.
>
<<No-no, I meant the [a] in the various recordings. But yes, I did
notice
the fronted allophone, though I hadn't noticed where it was.>>

You have a good ear! Many Russian native speakers get shocked when
they learn about [&] existing in Russian. Anyway, this is learnt
only at Philology classes in universities...

<<Some English borrowings look like that from my pespective... Some
words
borrowed with an [a] have the [a] become /a:/ if it's got the
primary
stress by the English rules and either /&/ or /a/ if it's
not.[...]>>>

I don't think I understood you well, but anyway what you say gives
another good precedent for splitting Spanish /a/ into [&] and [A],
that already constitute a phonemic opposition in Arabic words
(though I haven't yet found a minimal pair: hunting through a
dictionary is pretty hurting).

-- Yitzik

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