Re: USAGE: minimum number of vowels?
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 8, 2004, 14:51 |
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On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 09:23:59 -0400, Daniel Baisden
<derelictdan@...> wrote:
> I wonder if any natural languages actually have fewer than three? I know
> some of them have /a/, /i/,/u/
Er, yes. See further up in this discussion thread. Abkhaz was brought
up, for example.
There are languages that have two phonemic vowels, and apparently
dialects that have one phonemic vowel.
However, that one vowel has a lot of phonetic realisations depending
on the environment; those languages typically have upwards of 50
consonant phonemes to make up for the paucity of vowels.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>