Re: Marked and Unmarked

On Sun, 8 Apr 2001 11:13:19 -0700, jesse stephen bangs
<jaspax@...> wrote:

>Oskar Gudlaugsson sikayal:
>
>See!  I renamed the thread.
:) :)

>Hmmm.  I can't remember which languages you mentioned, but I've heard
>that rounded front vowels are virtually unknown outside of the
>"Franco-Germanic language area," where they can be seen as a
>Sprachbund. I suppose that should be expanded to include Hungarian and
Turkish (and other Finno-Ugric languages), but the point remains that any
speaker of European languages would be vastly overexposed to rounded front
vowels on the global scale.

Well, this is what I used to think, and what I'd have accepted back when my
linguistic knowledge was mostly constrained to European langs. But then I
went and learnt a non-Western lang, Cantonese, which I think we can agree
to be a fairly random, completely unrelated language. And Cantonese has
front-rounded vowels in plenty (/y/, /9/, and a diphthong /9y/)! That's not
evidence per se; I don't claim to have evidence for front-rounded vowels
being common. I've just still not seen the evidence to the contrary... can
anybody make some sweeping generalizations about, say, Amerindian langs,
African langs, Semitic, etc. Okay, you say they're "virtually unknown
outside of the Franco-Germanic language area", but with the data I have,
I'm unconvinced (with a smiley, for good measure :) - considering Altaic,
and Chinese (more Chinese langs than Cantonese have f-r, e.g. Mandarin,
with /y/); perhaps we're looking at a Eurasian sprachbund? ;)

Óskar