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Re: Rare phonemes (was Re: Using word generators)

From:Roger Mills <rfmilly@...>
Date:Monday, January 15, 2007, 22:17
Philip Newton wrote:

> On 1/15/07, Jonathan Knibb <jonathan_knibb@...> wrote: > > I wrote: > > > maybe German /tS/ > > > in 'Deutsch' is sufficiently unusual in the rest of the > > > lexicon to count [as an example of a very rare phoneme] > > > > and Carsten wrote: > > > Some more words with /tS/: Quatsch, Tschüss, Matsch, > > > Ratsche; futsch; patschen, lutschen... > > NB a number of those sound colloquial and/or onomatopoetic to me; I'd > say the sound is moderately rare in "proper" German words. > > > Off-topic, and at the risk of waking an old controversy about the > > phonemic status of affricates, do you (calling all native German > > speakers) feel that the last of these is /lU.tS@n/ or /lUt.S@n/? It > > makes a major timing difference in my variety of English (pardon the > > example, but "catch it" has a much briefer closure than "cat shit"), I > > don't know whether the same is true for German. > > Phonemically, I'd be inclined to analyse it as /lU.tS@n/.
That would imply that [tS] is a unit phoneme, call it /c-caron/. But doesn't Germ. /S/ usually derive from *-sk- or *-sj-? that would imply that [tS] is (or originally was) a cluster, thus the syllable division would be [lUt.S@n]. Is the vowel in such cases short/lax (implying /-VCC(V)-/ or can it be long/tense /-VC(V)-/? Your writing "/U/" suggests the former; ergo, the first syl. is closed /lut-/. Admittedly, my knowledge of Germ. phonology is minimal :-(((

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Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>