Re: another silly phonology question

On Mon, Nov 27, 2000 at 10:24:27PM -0500, 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?
I'll let better-clued list members answer that, but I'd like to say that
symmetry in languages is not 100%. For example, English has [h] but no
other glottals (at least not that I'm aware of). Ditto for Malay, which
also has [h] but no other glottals that I'm aware of (unless what I think
is a velar/uvular fricative is actually a glottal? -- i.e., the [x] or [X]
sound in {akhir}).

On that note, the /kh/ in Malay seems like an asymmetric sound -- there is
no voiced version of it, unlike /s/ and /z/. The /sy/ or /sh/ (pronounced
either [S] or [C]) also seems rather odd, since there are no other
palatals in Malay (that I'm aware of).

Hmm, why do I keep getting the feeling that I'm making an utter fool of
myself here? :-P

> P.S.  After missing bunches of messages I now realize that OT probably
> means optimality theory.  I kept thinking, "It can't be 'Old Testament,'
> but what *could* it be?"  <Wry g>  Thanks to Roger (was it you?) for
[snip]

And it can't be "offtopic" either, since nobody complained about it. :-P


T

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