Re: p <-> kw

On Tuesday 17 December 2002 01:41 pm, you wrote:
> 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.
And I thought to myself, how about the African sound represented by "gb" and
"kp"?

Wesley Parish

 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)
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."