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linguoboy wrote:Why is [w] written two different ways?
linguoboy wrote:It seems odd to have phonemic palatalisation only in coronal non-plosives.
linguoboy wrote:What happened to historically palatalised coronal stops? Did they develop into other sounds (such as affricates)?
Irusia wrote:G - [g] (Nd.; Sd.) or [ɣ] (Ed.)
Ģ - [gʲ] or [dʲ~dzʲ]
K - [k] (Nd.; Sd.) or [x] (Ed.)
Ķ - [kʲ] or [tʲ~tsʲ]
linguoboy wrote:It is extremely unusual for a language to have velar fricatives and no unvoiced velar stop.
Having [x] and [kʲ] but no [k] strikes me as even more odd. I can't think of any natural language with this sort of distribution of phonemes. (Maybe you aren't actually trying to be naturalistic with Lewami, but it looks to me like you are.)
linguoboy wrote:My suggestion is to keep /k/ as a phoneme in all dialects but have it surface as [x] in Eastern under particular conditions. (Intervocalic position would be the most common environment crosslinguistically, followed maybe by coda position.) Here's an example what this might look like:
suoki, kiare
Eastern: [suoxi], [kiare]
Elsewhere: [suoki], [kiare]
linguoboy wrote:Optionally, /kʲ/ could shift to [ç] under those same conditions.
linguoboy wrote:Also, if I'm understanding the transcriptions correctly, does this mean that Ģ and Ď merge completely in some varieties?
Irusia wrote:Good idea. I will consider it.
I have another variant:
[x] before front vowels
[k] before back vowels
What do you think about this?
Irusia wrote:linguoboy wrote:Also, if I'm understanding the transcriptions correctly, does this mean that Ģ and Ď merge completely in some varieties?
Not completely. It depends.
In Nd. and Ed.
Ď - [dzʲ];
Ģ - usually [dʲ], but when person speaks very fast it is pronounced [dzʲ].
It reminds me of the pronunciation of g in Spanish, with [x] before front vowels and [g] before back vowels.linguoboy wrote:Irusia wrote:Good idea. I will consider it.
I have another variant:
[x] before front vowels
[k] before back vowels
What do you think about this?
I've never seen a distribution like that. Since front vowels are far more likely than back vowels to cause affrication (which often become deaffricated to fricatives), if anything I would expect to see the opposite
h34 wrote:It reminds me of the pronunciation of g in Spanish, with [x] before front vowels and [g] before back vowels.linguoboy wrote:Irusia wrote:Good idea. I will consider it.
I have another variant:
[x] before front vowels
[k] before back vowels
What do you think about this?
I've never seen a distribution like that. Since front vowels are far more likely than back vowels to cause affrication (which often become deaffricated to fricatives), if anything I would expect to see the opposite
h34 wrote:(Wouldn't this development have been possible? Palatalized [k] > affrication > fricative [ç] > fricative [x])
It sounds like Irusia is suggesting what you describe here. /k/ is pronounced [x] before front vowels and [k] before back vowels, implying some sort of affrication/frication before front vowels, like you would expect.linguoboy wrote:I've never seen a distribution like that. Since front vowels are far more likely than back vowels to cause affrication (which often become deaffricated to fricatives), if anything I would expect to see the opposite
I didn't express it well. The sound alternation [k] > [x] in Lewami made me think of the [g] > [x] alternation in Spanish (i.e. [g] in ga-/go-/gu- vs. [x] in ge-/gi-) as it is described in a Wikipedia article on palatalization:linguoboy wrote: What variety of Spanish would that be? Because it's not any one that I'm familiar with.
Anyway, it's a bit off-topic...An extreme example occurs in Spanish, whose palatalized ('soft') g has ended up as [x] from a long process where Latin /ɡ/ became palatalized to [ɡʲ] (Late Latin) and then affricated to [dʒ] (Proto-Romance), deaffricated to [ʒ] (Old Spanish), devoiced to [ʃ] (16th century), and finally retracted to a velar, giving [x] (c. 1650)
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