Re: Emphasis allophonies?

Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> wrote:
> FFlores wrote:
> > Nice example:
> >
> >         Nos fuimos.     [noh'fwimoh]    'We went.'
> >         No fuimos.      [no 'fuimoh]    'We didn't go.'
> >
> > In a particular tone, those two are virtually indistinguishable!
>
> Does your dialect not use the allophone [O]?  I know I've read that some
> dialects of Spanish have made that into a phoneme by losing the /s/,
> making <nos> into /nO/ (from [nOs] > [nOh] > [nO])
Come to think of it, I don't know! As Boudewijn once said, it's
difficult to carefully analyze the sounds of your own language.
I think there's definitely a phonetic contrast in normal speech,
but whether it remains depends on intonation. Usually in
_nos fuimos_ the pronoun is clitic and unstressed, but in _no
fuimos_ the negative _no_ has a clear secondary stress. However,
in certain environments, some people will cliticize _no_. This
must be happening since a long time ago; by this time, /s/ > [h]
has been lost altogether like you mention, and the [O] has
become [o] since it stood in a now-open syllable.

--Pablo Flores