--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
> I don't think so different sounds can be allophones.
> Otherwise /ng/ is an allophone of /h/
> Complementary distribution.
It gets worse when these two merge, e.g. initial velar nasal becoming
/h/ in a Thai dialect near Songkhla.
The velar nasal sometimes merges with the glottal stop, e.g. some
dialects of Mandarin Chinese. (The usual Mandarin pattern is to lose
the nasal initially and then change the initial glottal stop to the
velar nasal, but in clusters with a medial consonant the medial
consonant simply becomes the initial consonant.) What happens to the
phoneme structure during this process if there is no syllable-final
contrast?
Richard.