Re: [tied] Abstractness (Was Re: [j] v. [i])

From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 22703
Date: 2003-06-05

On Thu, 05 Jun 2003 16:42:54 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Jens ElmegÄrd Rasmussen
>To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
>Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 4:20 PM
>Subject: [tied] Abstractness (Was Re: [j] v. [i])
>
>
>> ... One could invent a notation in which [l] is /p/ and [p] is /l/; that
>would work without contradiction, but it's hardly advisable.
>
>It would work without contradiction ony from a strictly structuralist point
>of view, where contrasts are all that counts. Modern phonology demands,
>however, that phonological representations should be "natural", i.e.
>reasonably surface-true. To use a real-life example, Englidh /h/ and /N/
>("ng") are in complementary distribution, but no-one has ever dreamt of
>simplifying the system by assigning them to the same phoneme.

They have... Which I suppose is precisely why modern phonology now insists
on "naturalness".

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...