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Re: Critique sought

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Thursday, November 18, 1999, 6:41
"Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
> But if you don't, it won't be very naturalistic.
But there are natural langs that are exceptions to those. Some language (Navajo?) I read about has /i e a u/, for example. Russian, IIRC, has /i -i u e o a/. I've heard of /e a o/, but I wonder if /e/ and /o/ have allophones [i] and [u] (in which case, you could arguably call them /i a u/) or if it's an analysis that considers /i/ and /u/ to be allophones of /j/ and /w/
> Practically speaking, that means it's weird to have vowels > bunched up in the lower-fronter vowel space as you have (with an > unusually high 14 vowels, no dialect of English even does that). You also > have a distinction between lax vowels and tense vowels for the front > high unrounded vowels ([i I]) but not for any of the others -- if the > language were actually used in regular speech, that would almost certainly > change quickly; either the other vowels would acquire tense/lax variations > of themselves, or (what's more likely) the one distinction made here would > be dropped, most likely in favor of some vowel which approximates [i].
Or perhaps /I/ to /e/, /&/ merging with /a/ or /E/, /3/ to /O/ and /o/ to /u/, creating the not-too-odd i u e E @ O a A
> If it has 1 nasal, it'll probably have [n] or [m];
Most likely /n/
> The latter is almost > certainly not going to be the case -- language changes most easily > by applying rules, and while allophones may be in freevariation, > (a) they usually aren't, and (b) a full phoneme almost certainly wouldn't > be (otherwise, why would people distinguish it in the first place?).
But consider the /r/ in many dialects, where both something like /kA/ and /kAr/ (I'm not sure of the vowel) are possible, and in free variation (tho admittedly sociologically conditioned) variation. -- "Old linguists never die - they just come to voiceless stops." - anonymous http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/Books.html ICQ: 18656696 AIM Screen-Name: NikTailor