Re: A guide to small consonant inventories
Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2014 9:18 am
I see what you did there.Nortaneous wrote:dental thibilant allophones
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I see what you did there.Nortaneous wrote:dental thibilant allophones
I mean in terms of an abstract set of plosives, you could analyze it as having a two-way phonation contrast in dentals and alveo-palatals. /t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ are really just symbols here for the two contrastive elements of the two sets. That the phonation contrast is realized as "voiceless vs. voiced" for alveo-palatals but "voiced explosive vs. implosive" for dentals. This is really an issue about abstract versus surface representation.cromulant wrote:/b t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k/ is indeed less weird...but I have not seen that cited as Karajá's plosive inventory anywhere, and it seems to be a pretty well-documented language.kodé wrote:Not really that strange: if /d ɗ/ is really /t d/ on the level of abstract features, then you get /b t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k/, which is completely reasonable.
/b t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k/ may or may not be a useful analysis. It really depends on the phonological behavior of those segments, the way they pattern. You can't just look at an inventory and make a prima facie determination that it needs a tweaking because it's too weird.kodé wrote:I mean in terms of an abstract set of plosives, you could analyze it as having a two-way phonation contrast in dentals and alveo-palatals. /t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ are really just symbols here for the two contrastive elements of the two sets. That the phonation contrast is realized as "voiceless vs. voiced" for alveo-palatals but "voiced explosive vs. implosive" for dentals. This is really an issue about abstract versus surface representation.cromulant wrote:/b t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k/ is indeed less weird...but I have not seen that cited as Karajá's plosive inventory anywhere, and it seems to be a pretty well-documented language.kodé wrote:Not really that strange: if /d ɗ/ is really /t d/ on the level of abstract features, then you get /b t d t͡ʃ d͡ʒ k/, which is completely reasonable.
It's not /ɗ/ that does this.wikipedia wrote: /a/ is nasalized word initially and when preceded by /h/ or a voiced stop: /aθi/ → [ãθi] 'grass', /ɔha/ → [ɔhã] 'armadillo'; this in turn nasalizes a preceding /b/ or /d/: /bahadu/ → [mãhãdu] 'group', /dadi/ → [nãdi] 'my mother'.
Seems like /a/ likes nasalization. Someone on the board posted about rhinoglottophilia happening in Avestan, and it was only around /a/, IIRC.Nortaneous wrote:Nasalization only of /a/ in Karaja is interesting -- /a/ is apparently always nasalized in Iau, which otherwise has no nasality whatsoever anywhere in it.
viewtopic.php?p=1050945#p1050945Pogostick Man wrote:Someone on the board posted about rhinoglottophilia happening in Avestan, and it was only around /a/, IIRC.
According to the Wikipedia article, it also has /ə̃ õ/. My guess is that history has created a lot of odd correlations that haven't been broken by language contact and that these foul up the extraction of phonemes. A list of allophones might clean the picture up.Nortaneous wrote:Nasalization only of /a/ in Karaja is interesting -- /a/ is apparently always nasalized in Iau, which otherwise has no nasality whatsoever anywhere in it.
Been checkin' out this nifty resource (thanks!). Just me or are very few PNG consonant inventories not < 12 consonants?Nortaneous wrote:Going through all the organized phonology datas on SIL PNG --
It's just you. So far, I'd estimate it at about a tenth.cromulant wrote:Been checkin' out this nifty resource (thanks!). Just me or are very few PNG consonant inventories not < 12 consonants?Nortaneous wrote:Going through all the organized phonology datas on SIL PNG --
Hmm, I did a little stats on that and that's the results:Theta wrote:Found a bunch more (really long list inbound); cf. Berkeley University:
[dupa]
Several of these have identical inventories to each other, but I've included them for completeness. You can remove the duplicates if you want, or do whatever with these.
In general they're pretty boring as far as inventory goes, but there are a couple I think are especially strange. Taushiro has no labials, Umotina has /z/ but not /s/, Cabiyari, despite the small inventory, distinguishes dental and alveolar stops, and Avá-Canoeiro has a uvular consonant, which is really unusual for the area. The Amazon is weird.
I recall one explanation: if the language allows codas, then consonant clusters can arise at syllable boundaries, which are likely to simplify and give rise to new consonants, enlarging the inventory. The argument was basically then that the situation of non-simple syllable structure and small consonant inventory is unstable, and likely to change to a larger inventory.cromulant wrote:Why do small consonant inventories and simple syllable structure tend to go hand in hand?
Indeed. I note that, on the other hand, the converse appears not to be true: Simple syllable structure does not imply a small consonant inventory. Southern Africa in particular has plenty of languages (mainly Bantu and "Khoisan") that allow only (C)V syllables and have massive consonant inventories.Cúlro wrote:I recall one explanation: if the language allows codas, then consonant clusters can arise at syllable boundaries, which are likely to simplify and give rise to new consonants, enlarging the inventory. The argument was basically then that the situation of non-simple syllable structure and small consonant inventory is unstable, and likely to change to a larger inventory.
Seconded.Ketumak wrote:I nominate this thread for the L&L Museum.
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Nomination accepted.Chengjiang wrote:Seconded.Ketumak wrote:I nominate this thread for the L&L Museum.
Mods please note.
By this, do you mean "the presence of either /p/ or /n/ implies /m/", or "the presence of both /p/ and /n/ implies /m/"? I ask because Arapaho has /b/ and /n/ but no /m/, in which case the statement only holds true if it's the "both" version and only if /p/ specifically means a voiceless bilabial stop and not just any bilabial stop.Nortaneous wrote:/p n/ also imply /m/.
Aren't there certain Australian languages whose sole plosive series is always realized as voiced? I realize that the more common situation is to have a single plosive series that is realized as voiceless in some environments and voiced in others, but I thought there were a few where they were always voiced. That might just be an artifact of the analyses I've read, though.Theta wrote:That was the most spectacular thing about it to me--if some men really do get rid of *all* instances of [k], then for some speakers the language has no unvoiced plosives, unless you count affricates.
The latter.Chengjiang wrote:By this, do you mean "the presence of either /p/ or /n/ implies /m/", or "the presence of both /p/ and /n/ implies /m/"? I ask because Arapaho has /b/ and /n/ but no /m/, in which case the statement only holds true if it's the "both" version and only if /p/ specifically means a voiceless bilabial stop and not just any bilabial stop.Nortaneous wrote:/p n/ also imply /m/.