Re: Phonological questions, bunch 2

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, R A Brown wrote:
> > Now, creation of nasal stops from nasal vowels would be more like it...
>
>It happens, of course, when a language without nasal vowels borrows from
>one that has them. Altho some Brits carefully pronounce the French nasal
>vowels, most do not in borrowings. So 'envelope' is commonly /'Qnv@l@wp/
>(except by people like me that fully anglicize to /'Env@l@wp/), and 'raison
>d'être' becomes /rEz@n'dEtr@/ (with English /r/), etc.
By "creation" I meant the creation of a phoneme, not that of a phone. Tho
your example is still interesting too. Was the word really borrowed after
the elision of the original /n/?

Yet another side question ... where does it stem to analyze English
diphthongs phonemically as vowel + glide? Isn't <oy> the only one which is
historically not descended from a long vowel? And since not all vowel +
glide combinations are even possible - /ew/ strikes me as the primary
asymmetry - I'd think analyzing them as nuclei was more logical than as
rimes.
I used the transcription /aI eI oI aU oU/ until I was pointed out that plain
/I U/ are phonemically lax and thus /ai ei oi au ou/ matches the phonemic
structure better.

Now, _Finnish_ rising diphthongs are more clearly analyzeable as
vowel+glide... the system is completely symmetrical, and syllabe structure
also supports this analysis (CVCC and CVVC are allowed, but CVVCC occurs
only in loan words.)

John Vertical

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