Re: Futurese

Chris Wright wroght:


>And Rosta sekalge:
>>It is quite possible for a language to contrast (say) [l] and [r]
>>yet for no /l/:/r/ contrast to be reported. For instance, [l] or
>>[r] might be a realization of /d/.
>
>You've lost me with startling ease. Would you please explain the last
>sentence, using small words that I'll be sure to understand?

Tagalog (Philippines) has both phonetic [l] and [r] in native words.  [l] is
phonemic-- it contrasts in initial, medial and final position.
(Historically, it corresponds to both *l and *r, among others.)  [r] is not
phonemic-- it occurs only between vowels, and the phonotactics (and
correspondences in related langs.)  show that it is merely a variant
(allophone) of /d/:  e.g. Tag. harap, Malay hadap 'front'; Tag. dangál (n.)
'honor', ma/rangál 'honorable', ka/rangal/án 'dignity'. (Though in actual
fact, /r/ is _now_ phonemic, due to extensive borrowing of Span. and English
words.)

Similarly, Tag. has a phonemic glottal stop (even though it's contrastive
only in --standard-- final position; i.e there are possible forms like
halap, halak, halas, and hala?.  Indonesian, OTOH, only has [?] as an
allophone of final /k/:  /tusuk/ ['tusu?] 'poke, stab' ~/tusuk-an/
[tu'sukan] 'a skewer' (again, leaving aside loans from Arabic with glottal
stop in other positions, which results in /?/ being marginally phonemic in
modern Indonesian).

Or the situation in pre-Conquest English, where e.g. [v] was simply the
intervocalic variant of /f/ (still seen in "wife ~wives"); the massive
adoption of French words with initial and medial /v/ led to contrastive f/v
in all positions, i.e. a change in the phonemic system of English.