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

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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