Re: another silly phonology question

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:


> I've been trying to look at phonologies and how symmetry tends to
operate
> in them.  I'm probably noticing out of a weird sample, but there
seem to
> be a number of languages that just have /h/ as a glottal.  Is there
a
> reason for this?  I was almost going to delete /h/ from Chevraqis
because
> I didn't like just having *one* glottal, but looked at some actual
> languages and got confused.  Are there certain tendencies for *how*
> language phonologies violate symmetry, when they do?
AFMNL: I could draw the series for my dialect of Spanish this way:
  voiceless stops: p t k
  voiced "stops": b d g
  voiceless fricatives: f s h
  voiced fricatives: j\
  voiceless affricates: tS (actually tC or cC).
  nasals: m n J
  others: l rr 4

Note that voiced stops are stops only after a nasal or a breath pause,
they are fricatives or approximants otherways.  But p/b, t/d and k/g
are the same point of articulation each pair.
/f/ is the only labiodental and /h/ the only glotal.  /s/ is not quite
the same PoA than /t/, /d/.  At least there is a difference between
the fricative realization of /d/ (which is not dental [D] in my
dialect), and the voiced realization of /s/, a word like "desde" shows
both sounds: [dezDe].
Palatals are represented by a voiced fricative (well, could be
aproximant and I wonder if it could be a stop... well an affricate
actually), a voiceless fricative and a nasal, quite different than the
other PoA.
No velar nasal except as allophone before velar stops.  Two degrees of
rhotics which are only noticed intervocalically.

In other words I wouldn't call Spanish consonant system as symmetric.
Vowel system, by the other hand, is quite symmetric:
  i   u
   e o
    a
with high vowels allowing both falling and raising diphthongs: ai au
ei eu oi *ou, ia ie io iu ua ue uo ui.

AFMCL:
Biwa has a symmetric series of fortis (voiceless) and lenis (voiced)
stops: p/b, t/d, k/g, and a glotal stop which is voiceless.  Voiceless
fricatives in the same PoV: p\, s, x.  Postalveolars and retroflexes
could be thought as allophones of -/j/ and /r`/- series of alveolars.
It is not a 100% symmetry but close.  ITOH, vowels are not as
symmetric: i e a 3 } 1 E V 9 U y O I @ M 9Y ow.

Chleweyish is almost as symmetric in the consontants and is much more
symetric in the vowels, except for a few diphthongs.

Hangkerimce is not symmetric in either consonants nor vowels.
Cardinal sounds are: /p d k ? v T m n r l w j/ and /i E A u/.

-- Carlos Th