Language with ʃ but no tʃ

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RionTK
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Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by RionTK »

It's a quick question, but it deals with natural/actual languages, so forgive me if I posted this in the wrong sub-forum. Is there a natural language which has ʃ but does not have tʃ in turn? I've found languages which contain both, neither, or simply tʃ. Is there one which just contains ʃ, however?

Thanks in advance.

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by WeepingElf »

RionTK wrote:It's a quick question, but it deals with natural/actual languages, so forgive me if I posted this in the wrong sub-forum. Is there a natural language which has ʃ but does not have tʃ in turn? I've found languages which contain both, neither, or simply tʃ. Is there one which just contains ʃ, however?

Thanks in advance.
French, except in some recent loanwords from English.
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by decemviro »

RionTK wrote:It's a quick question, but it deals with natural/actual languages, so forgive me if I posted this in the wrong sub-forum. Is there a natural language which has ʃ but does not have tʃ in turn? I've found languages which contain both, neither, or simply tʃ. Is there one which just contains ʃ, however?

Thanks in advance.
Well, how about French? The "ch-" pretty much became ʃ from tʃ, so you have cheval /ʃə.val/, chaque /ʃak/.
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by RionTK »

...I feel like an idiot. The CH in French has the ʃ, duh. My apologies.

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Zaarin »

Also Akkadian, though that interpretation is not universal.
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by linguoboy »

Irish, with the same caveat regarding recent borrowings. (The traditional treatment was metathesis, e.g. Norman-French page > páiste /pasʹtʹə/.)

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Particles the Greek »

Dutch, German, many Scandinavian languages, Portuguese...
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by KathTheDragon »

I thought German does have tʃ

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linguoboy
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by linguoboy »

araceli wrote:Dutch, German, many Scandinavian languages, Portuguese...
I can't speak to Dutch, but I think it's difficult to argue that German lacks /ʧ/ when you have such well-established borrowings as Tschüs and Tscheche.

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Nesescosac »

Many dialects of Bengali keep ʃ but lenite tʃ to s. Cuitlatec, too, had no tʃ but had ʃ (also had no s).
I did have a bizarrely similar (to the original poster's) accident about four years ago, in which I slipped over a cookie and somehow twisted my ankle so far that it broke
What kind of cookie?
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Hydroeccentricity »

Arabic should fall under this category, and probably a few other Semitic languages.
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by linguoboy »

Hydroeccentricity wrote:Arabic should fall under this category, and probably a few other Semitic languages.
Certainly pre-modern Hebrew.

It's also true of Osage, now that I think about it. [ʧ] only occurs as an allophone of /ʦ/.

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Grunnen »

araceli wrote:Dutch, German, many Scandinavian languages, Portuguese...
Analysing Dutch as having S is not entirely uncontroversial though. And if you do analyse it as such, I don't see how you could not also claim it has tS.
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by clawgrip »

WeepingElf wrote:
RionTK wrote:It's a quick question, but it deals with natural/actual languages, so forgive me if I posted this in the wrong sub-forum. Is there a natural language which has ʃ but does not have tʃ in turn? I've found languages which contain both, neither, or simply tʃ. Is there one which just contains ʃ, however?

Thanks in advance.
French, except in some recent loanwords from English.
French has it in some older loans as well, e.g. caoutchouc.

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by dhok »

European and Northeast Brazilian Portuguese have ʃ but no tʃ. Standard Brazilian Portuguese has [tʃ] as an allophone of /t/ before /i/. To my knowledge, tʃ isn't actually phonemic in any variety of Portuguese, except transitional dialects along the Spanish border.

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Nortaneous »

From my dataset: Angaataha, Arabela, Cheyenne, Mandan, Maxakali. Also Seneca, but it has /ʤ/ and voicing doesn't look to be contrastive. Ket has /ç/ and no other consonants between alveolar and velar.
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Radagast revived »

Natchez. (Inspite of the language's name)

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by jal »

Grunnen wrote:Analysing Dutch as having S is not entirely uncontroversial though.
I would think it's quite controversial, and honoustly haven't seen a serious attempt to defend it. Dutch has [ʃ], but it is clearly the allophonic representation of /sj/, word initial in borrowings (mostly names like Sjaak from Jacques and /sjon/ from John), and in diminutives like "huisje".
And if you do analyse it as such, I don't see how you could not also claim it has tS.
Can you give some examples of non-borrowed [tʃ]? I can think only of "tsjing-tsjing" and "hatsjoe!", but those are onomatopoeic so they don't count, and "tsja", "tsjonge", "tsjemig" etc., but those are interjection (and varieties of the same with sj-) and therefore also don't count, imho.


JAL

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by hwhatting »

linguoboy wrote:I can't speak to Dutch, but I think it's difficult to argue that German lacks /ʧ/ when you have such well-established borrowings as Tschüs and Tscheche.
And /ʧ/ doesn't appear only in loans - non-initiallay, it appears in many native words (Deutsch "German", lutschen "suck", quetschen "squeeze", fletschen "bare (one's teeth)", quatschen "chatter", etc.).

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by Grunnen »

jal wrote:
Grunnen wrote:Analysing Dutch as having S is not entirely uncontroversial though.
I would think it's quite controversial, and honoustly haven't seen a serious attempt to defend it. Dutch has [ʃ], but it is clearly the allophonic representation of /sj/, word initial in borrowings (mostly names like Sjaak from Jacques and /sjon/ from John), and in diminutives like "huisje".
And if you do analyse it as such, I don't see how you could not also claim it has tS.
Can you give some examples of non-borrowed [tʃ]? I can think only of "tsjing-tsjing" and "hatsjoe!", but those are onomatopoeic so they don't count, and "tsja", "tsjonge", "tsjemig" etc., but those are interjection (and varieties of the same with sj-) and therefore also don't count, imho.


JAL
I'm just saying that if you really want to see [ʃ] as a phoneme in Dutch, you'll have to set up your definitions in such a way that it will automatically also include [tʃ].

As for non borrwowed [tʃ], I think words like <fietsje> may have it. In which case it's a contraction of [tsj].
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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by linguoboy »

hwhatting wrote:
linguoboy wrote:I can't speak to Dutch, but I think it's difficult to argue that German lacks /ʧ/ when you have such well-established borrowings as Tschüs and Tscheche.
And /ʧ/ doesn't appear only in loans - non-initiallay, it appears in many native words (Deutsch "German", lutschen "suck", quetschen "squeeze", fletschen "bare (one's teeth)", quatschen "chatter", etc.).
Yeah, but I think it's only its appearance in onsets which allows medial [ʧ] to be analysed as a single segment rather than a sequence of two. After all, /kç/ appears medially in German (e.g. Stückchen, Deckchen, Bröckchen), but there's no reason to consider this anything but a cluster.

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by hwhatting »

linguoboy wrote:
hwhatting wrote:
linguoboy wrote:I can't speak to Dutch, but I think it's difficult to argue that German lacks /ʧ/ when you have such well-established borrowings as Tschüs and Tscheche.
And /ʧ/ doesn't appear only in loans - non-initiallay, it appears in many native words (Deutsch "German", lutschen "suck", quetschen "squeeze", fletschen "bare (one's teeth)", quatschen "chatter", etc.).
Yeah, but I think it's only its appearance in onsets which allows medial [ʧ] to be analysed as a single segment rather than a sequence of two. After all, /kç/ appears medially in German (e.g. Stückchen, Deckchen, Bröckchen), but there's no reason to consider this anything but a cluster.
I dunno - at least I don't see how appearing word-initially wouldn't allow [ʧ] to be analyzed as a sequence of /t/ and /ʃ/. Otherwise one could argue that English has the phonemes /sp/ /st/ etc.
I'd say [kç] is different from [ʧ] because for [kç] there always is a morpheme boundary involved between /k/ and /ç/ , while that is not the case for [ʧ].

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by linguoboy »

hwhatting wrote:
linguoboy wrote:
hwhatting wrote:
linguoboy wrote:I can't speak to Dutch, but I think it's difficult to argue that German lacks /ʧ/ when you have such well-established borrowings as Tschüs and Tscheche.
And /ʧ/ doesn't appear only in loans - non-initiallay, it appears in many native words (Deutsch "German", lutschen "suck", quetschen "squeeze", fletschen "bare (one's teeth)", quatschen "chatter", etc.).
Yeah, but I think it's only its appearance in onsets which allows medial [ʧ] to be analysed as a single segment rather than a sequence of two. After all, /kç/ appears medially in German (e.g. Stückchen, Deckchen, Bröckchen), but there's no reason to consider this anything but a cluster.
I dunno - at least I don't see how appearing word-initially wouldn't allow [ʧ] to be analyzed as a sequence of /t/ and /ʃ/. Otherwise one could argue that English has the phonemes /sp/ /st/ etc.
Clusters of /s/ + plosive appear in all positions in English, and other /sC/ clusters are found both initially and medially. What other /Cʃ/ initial clusters occur in German?
hwhatting wrote:I'd say [kç] is different from [ʧ] because for [kç] there always is a morpheme boundary involved between /k/ and /ç/ , while that is not the case for [ʧ].
Fair point; not the best example. What about [pʃ] then (as in Glupsch|auge and grapsch|en)?

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Re: Language with ʃ but no tʃ

Post by hwhatting »

linguoboy wrote:Clusters of /s/ + plosive appear in all positions in English, and other /sC/ clusters are found both initially and medially. What other /Cʃ/ initial clusters occur in German?
That's not what my point was about. What I mean is this - is it position that makes the distinction between a phoneme cluster and a complex phoneme (e..g. an affricate) or something else? AFAIK, an affricate is an affricate even if it only shows up with a limited distribution. Or would you say that a phon is only a phoneme if it can occur in any position? Or only if it can occur initially?
linguoboy wrote:
hwhatting wrote:I'd say [kç] is different from [ʧ] because for [kç] there always is a morpheme boundary involved between /k/ and /ç/ , while that is not the case for [ʧ].
Fair point; not the best example. What about [pʃ] then (as in Glupsch|auge and grapsch|en)?
Actually, if someone would tell me that this is a phoneme on a par with /ʧ/, only rarer, I might even believe it. It would be in line with my perception as a native speaker. (And there are a few names like Pschorr that start with [pʃ], but as most of them seem to be Bavarian or of Slavic origin, their status as integral words of German is of course questionable).

I'm actually a bit tired right now and probably not thinking too clearly, but I think the point I want to make is that I remember the reasons for declaring something a cluster or a single phoneme have something to do with perceptional and articulational issues, not with distribution - distribution is only relevant for distinguishing phonemes from allophones. But I may remember wrongly, and the only reason while I'm not asleep and resting my brains is that a houseguest is going to the airport tonight and I've got to see him off. :-)

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