Re: A bunch of phonological questions

Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>Some Deep South have (used to have?)
>[a] in Mike [ma:k]
>[a_"] in Mark [ma_":k]
>[A] in mock [mA:k]
>The vowel in pack is, of course, a phonetic diphthong for those speakers.
Neat! Does that dialect have the cot-caught merger? Then all three could
occur stressed and word-finally (tie tar tau), proving that there's no
lax-tense pairs there, so the difference would indeed be that of
front/backness. :)
(tho perhaps the [A] would be better analyzed as /O/ then, but let's not
spoil the joy...)

Any takers on the implosives and laterals then? I managed to find a mention
that implosive affricates have been found in some African languages, but the
inversion question remains.

John Vertical