[tied] Re: Retroflexes in Sanskrit

--- In cybalist@..., "richardwordingham" <richard.wordingham@...>
wrote:

> --- In cybalist@..., Piotr Gasiorowski <piotr.gasiorowski@...>
> wrote:
> > Phonemicity (inasmuch as any sort of reality can be ascribed to

it)

> is a mental phenomenon, and the evidence for phonemic status is
> always indirect, since native speakers have no conscious access to
> their "analytic engine". A phoneme is a member an abstract system,
> contrasting with any other member at least potentially, but not
> necessarily. The minimal-pair test may fail occasionally, as in the
> case of English /h/, /Z/ = "zh" and /N/ = "ng": as far as I can

see,

> none of them contrasts with either of the others,...
> > ... but no-one in his right mind would argue that they are
> allophones of the same phoneme.
>
> Except to prove a point!
>
> /h/ has simple realisation rules :)
>
> (a) Syllable start, except after last stress [h]
> (b) Last consonant of intervocalic cluster [h]
> (c) Otherwise [N].
>
> I have a feeling the above rules might actually apply to a southern
> dialect of Thai where initial /N/ has indeed become /h/. I need to
> check my secondary source, though.

My secondary source, Fang-Kuei Li's 'Handbook of Comparative Tai',
cites Vichintana Chantavibulaya's 1956 M.A. Thesis at Chulalongkorn
University, Bangkok, entitled 'Differences between the Bangkok and
the Songkhla Dialects' ('Khwam taektang rawang phasa Krungthep lae
phasa Songkhla' in the original). It is not clear from the title, in
English or Thai, which are all I have access to, how many dialects
were studied. Li's text refers to the sound change applying to 'some
southern Thailand dialects', which is one of his vaguer
identifications. In his other discussions he is more precise, e.g.
identifying the Songkhla dialect explictly when discussing tone
changes recorded in another thesis, so I suspect that this change may
not apply to the dialect spoken in Songkhla itself.

Richard.