Re: Linguistic Terminology

In message <6494.981231@...>, lucasso
<lucasso@...> writes
>>>allophone
>
>KJ> These are the alternative pronounciations of phonemes in a
>KJ> particular language that never affect the meaning, usually
>KJ> predictable from their environment. For example, English /t/ is
>KJ> normally aspirated but is unaspirated after an /s/ in a consonant
>KJ> cluster.
It's an old question, but a good one: why do we call this an allophone
of /t/, and not of /d/?  After all, in my accent at least, an initial
/d/, in 'duck' for example, is barely voiced, if at all.  The main
salient difference acoustically is in the aspiration.  So why shouldn't
we say that that 'still', for example, is /sdIl/ rather than /stIl/?

> Similarly, English /l/ is normally velarized at the end of
>KJ> words; compare "lick" with "kill". In Polish, velarized and
>KJ> unvelarized /l/ are different phonemes.
>
>polish is not very good example here becouse nowadays 'velarized l'
>is pronounced similar to english 'w'...
In English this is increasingly so as well.  It's characteristic of the
accent known as "Estuary English" to pronounce post-vocalic /l/ as [w].

--
John Fisher   john@drummond.demon.co.uk   johnf@epcc.ed.ac.uk
Elet Anta website: http://www.drummond.demon.co.uk/anta/
Drummond ro cleshfan merec; fanye litoc, inye litoc