Re: why can't the BBC

"Ruud Harmsen" <realemailonsite@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote..
"John Atkinson" <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

Grabbing the first couple of texts I have handy and leafing through them
to find languages which have long vowels that don't correspond to a
similar short vowel, I found the following:

Estonian (by Tiit-Rein Viitso)
Khanty (Daniel Abondolo)
Hungarian (Abondolo)
Selkup (Eugene Helimski)
Turoyo (Otto Jastrow)
Turkmen (Claus Schoenig)

Also German: /i/ versus /i:/, which is [I] versus [i:] (with [I]
possibly more central). So the systematic length distinction in the
language is accompanied with an extra difference in some cases. Same
as Hungarian /a/ vs. /a:/ ([A.] vs. [a:]) and /e/ vs /e:/ ([E] vs.
[e])

Yes, that sort of thing's almost universal in languages with length distinctions.

You'll have noticed that Peter talks about " 'phonemes' including : " being "unpaired with a 'short' phoneme of _adjacent_ quality". In some languages (not German) there are long vowels that can't be paired with an "adjacent" short vowel -- in many cases, like Sanskrit, there are more long vowels than short ones, so it's impossible to pair them all up, no matter how loosely one interprets the term "adjacent".

It's these _unpaired_ long vowels that Peter and I are rambling on about -- the paired ones are much easier to deal with when it comes to devising "appropriate" phonemic notations, since the contradiction between the principles of minimalism and iconicity doesn't raise its ugly head then to anything like the same degree.

Hungarian has one _less_ long vowel than short in my reference, and the problem there is that /aa/ could equally well be paired with /&/ (a umlaut) or with /A./ (a with a circle on top) (or so it seems to me -- someone who actually knows the language may beg to differ -- I note that you've paired /aa/ with /A./ and /ee/ with /&/, leaving (short) /e/ unpaired -- which if correct means Hungarian no longer examplifies the problem at issue and should thus be omitted from the list above.)

John.

.

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