Re: Allophones Question
| From: | Muke Tever <mktvr@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, February 18, 2003, 13:20 |
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From: "Quentin Read" <quonton79@...>
> I was thinking about this: Does a language, if it has
> one side of a pair of allophones (voiced+unvoiced
> consonant) does it generally have the other or can
> they sometimes exist in isolation?
Generally, yes, if voicing is contrastive elsewhere. But not necessarily.
Spanish for example has /s/ but no /z/, even when it has /D/ vs /T/ (in
castillian) and /x/ vs /G/.
Ancient Greek also had /s/ but not exactly /z/ at one time. Latin too [I think
it is contagious...]
And dont forget the many languages with /l m n r/ and not their voiceless
counterparts...
*Muke!
--
http://www.frath.net/
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