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

----- Original Message -----
From: Jens Elmegård 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.

Piotr