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

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

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

And in a language in which the contrast had been lost by their
merger, it would be natural! See Message 14257 for an example.

More awkwardly, [?] is the post-vocalic allophone of /t/ in Estuarine
English. And, as I noted before (Message 14256), Korean seems to
exploit the complementary distribution to use the same letter for /?/
and /N/. (Or is this a fossil of a change of initial /N/ to /?/? I
think has happened in some Mandarin Chinese dialects.)

Richard.