Re: p <-> kw

Quoth Robert B Wilson:

> are there any natlangs that show a p > kw sound change (or a b > gw one)?
> i've noticed that a few people  sometimes pronounce /p/ as [k_w] and
> /kw/ as [p] when speaking english and don't realize that they do it.
It's funny that you should mention this--I actually just brought this up to
Michael Martin in our discussion about allophones. :)

You may already know this, but lip-rounding has the effect of lowering the
formant frequencies of the stop burst, which means that the difference
between, say, [p] and [k_w] is next to nothing, acoustically. I don't know
of any living languages that do this (except, apparently, English, given
your example), but PIE did: we have PIE "gwo:us" showing up as Latin "bo:s"
vs. English "cow," and the same distribution holds for the voiceless and
breathy-voiced stops as well.

Where have you observed this in English? Is there any chance of recording
it?

-Josh

----------
Josh Brandt-Young <vionau@...>
"After the tempest I behold, once more, the weasel."
(Mispronunciation of Ancient Greek)

Reply