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Long ago, somebody, either on the ZBB or on CONLANG-L, told me that there was no natural language that had phonemes at all three of the following points-of-articulation -- dental, alveolar, and palato-alveolar -- in any manner-of-articulation other than fricatives and affricates.

That turns out not to be true.

Yolngu, Arrernte, Nunggubuyu, Yanyuwa, and Ngiyambaa, all have voiceless stops/plosives at all three points of articulation; that is, they all have the phonemes / t̪ t t̠ / (that is, / t_d t t_- / in Z-SAMPA). In fact the first four languages -- Yolngu, Arrernte, Nunggubuyu, and Yanyuwa -- also have a retroflex voiceless stop; they have the phonemes / t̪ t t̠ ʈ / (that is, / t_d t t_- t` / in Z-SAMPA).

(Btw Garawa has voiceless stops at the alveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex, and palatal PoAs; / t t̠ ʈ c / or / t t_- t` c / in Z-SAMPA.)

Similar, you might also check out Malayalam and several other Dravidian languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_language.

Malayalam has stops and nasals at dental, aleovelar, retroflex (Subapical Palatal) and palatal.

Toda deserves an honorable mention too for being fun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toda_language.

Coronals are like pokemon, gotta catch 'em all. Also, take that Eurocentric IPA (without diacritics).

2+3 clusivity wrote:Similarly, you might also check out Malayalam and several other Dravidian languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayalam_language..
Malayalam has stops and nasals at dental, aleovelar, retroflex (Subapical Palatal) and palatal.

Thanks for the information, the suggestions, and the links.

2+3 clusivity wrote:Toda deserves an honorable mention too for being fun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toda_language.

Like, wow, man!

Yeli Dnye may be notable in respect to this, because while it apparently only distinguishes dental and alveolar as distinct POAs, palatalization is a prominent feature and /t̠ʲ/ may be realized as /tɕ/.

Of course, it was the Lemurians who started collecting coronal stops like this, and their descendants took them to India and Australia when Lemuria sank

hmm... yeah. Some of the Australian and Dravidian languages (in the non-sanskrit borrowings) have nice chance phonological similarities: typically no voicing contrast, few sibilants, large numbers of stop series, often no glottal consonants . . .

Come to think of it. I am surprised some crack pot hasn't connected them yet linguistically via a sunken continent or rogue contingent of Alexander the Great's army.

Also don't let this monster escape your attention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanyuwa_language. Throw some palatalization on that bad boy and, MAN, you'd be cooking.

I think some iterationsof the lemuria theory saythe lsnguagrs are related

TomHChappell wrote:Long ago, somebody, either on the ZBB or on CONLANG-L, told me that there was no natural language that had phonemes at all three of the following points-of-articulation -- dental, alveolar, and palato-alveolar -- in any manner-of-articulation other than fricatives and affricates.

That turns out not to be true.

Yolngu, Arrernte, Nunggubuyu, Yanyuwa, and Ngiyambaa, all have voiceless stops/plosives at all three points of articulation; that is, they all have the phonemes / t̪ t t̠ / (that is, / t_d t t_- / in Z-SAMPA). In fact the first four languages -- Yolngu, Arrernte, Nunggubuyu, and Yanyuwa -- also have a retroflex voiceless stop; they have the phonemes / t̪ t t̠ ʈ / (that is, / t_d t t_- t` / in Z-SAMPA).

(Btw Garawa has voiceless stops at the alveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex, and palatal PoAs; / t t̠ ʈ c / or / t t_- t` c / in Z-SAMPA.)

This is pretty normal for Australian languages, I believe.

Away from Australian and Dravidian languages, apparently the Fering dialect of North Frisian used to have something similar: it had contrasting alveolar and dental stops and also palatalised stops with a "postalveolar/palatal place of articulation". The alveolar/dental contrast has been lost, though. (Source.)

My intention is not to go thread grave digging, but I recently found this phonology for a cool language outside of south Asia/Australia and thought it should be shared.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapudungun (dental (interdental?), alveolar, post-alveolar, retroflex)

The wiki is unclear over whether the dental series is interdental or dental, but I've seen it noted as dental also in T. E. Payne's Describing Morphosyntax at pp. 257-58. The wiki source states that there is consonant harmony--i guess--in the dental v. alveolar series. Describing Morphosyntax gives a good example of such an alternation at 258 showing variations between a speaker's "mood" or attitude as encoded in the verb.