Re: The Monovocalic PIE Myth (was Germans have no /w/, ...)

william drewery wrote:
> Thanks for the description of historical Japanese
> phonetics. I've often wondred why Japanese seems to
> have such an 'off-kilter' phonology. It has /p/ but no
> /b/
Eh?  It has plenty of /b/'s!  Banzai being a famous example.  Other
words, even excluding Sino-Japanese and loan words: oboeru (learn) and
boku (I).   /p/, however, *is* limited.  In native words, it exists only
in geminates and after the nasal, due to the fact that there was a sound
change /p/ -> /P/ (and later -> /w/ or null word-medially or /h/
elsewhere) except when geminated or preceded by a syllabic /n/, hence
pairs like Nihon/Nippon or Sempai/Kouhai (Senior/Junior; -pai/-hai
represents the same morpheme).  This is also why /p/ and /b/ are written
in kana as modifications of /h/.

Incidentally, Old Japanese had a "one voiced obstruent per word"
restriction, which is why words that contain voicd obstruents are never
subject to sequential voicing, and why voiced consonants are generally
somewhat rare in native vocabulary.

> s and z but then an 'f' without a 'v'
It doesn't really have /f/, tho.  [P] is an allophone of /h/

> Arabic is a bit odd too. It has 'b', but no 'p'
For a similar reason to Japanese's limitation on /p/, sound changes,
specifically /p/ -> /f/

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