Re: Anomaly of the (apparent) Cebuano uvulars and Guarani info request

Trebor wrote:

> Apparently, Cebuano has uvulars-- or at least that's the impression I get
> from the spelling. I never knew Cebuano (or Austronesianlangs, for that
> matter) had such sounds...
>
> "(38) a. nag-tawag ang babayi nakuq.
> SUBJ.FOCUS,DUR-call TOPIC woman 1SG,NONTOPIC
> 'the woman was calling me'
> b. babayi ang nag-tawag nakuq.
> woman TOPIC SUBJ.FOCUS,DUR-call 1SG,NONTOPIC
> 'the one who was calling me was a woman'"
>
Sorry, I have to doubt that, though any familiarity I have with Cebuano
dates from way back, searching the dictionary. The phonology of Cebuano is
pretty much like Tagalog's and the other "major" Philippine languages, and
they don't have uvulars. My guess here is that the writer likely got the
example from some other writer, or a textbook, where "q" was being used to
indicate glottal stop-- that's common practice, since it isn't usually
indicated in the standard spelling systems.

There is a Proto-AN *q, assumed to have been a uvular stop-- several
Formosan languages indeed retain it as /q/, but outside of Formosa it's
reflected mostly as /?/ or /h/ or is simply lost. It's one of the major
divisions between the Formosan languages and all other Austronesian. I dimly
recall reading of some languages of New Caledonia that have a /q/ phoneme,
but that's due to shifting *k to the back.