Re: beyond langauges

On Sat, 03 May 2008 18:54:08 -0000, "jouppe"
<jouppe@...> wrote:

>--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
><miguelc@...>
>wrote:
>>
>>
>> But Catalan *has* contrastive consonant length (l vs. l.l,
>> ll vs. tll (or ll-ll as in the PN Bell-lloc), n vs. nn, etc.
>> and also in b vs. bb, g vs. gg (the latter variant in the
>> sequences bl, gl).
>>
>I'd buy <sela> (was it 'eyebrow'?) versus <cel.la> 'cell' as a
>minimal
>pair distinguished by length if no better solution exists.

'Eyebrow' is <cella>. A minimal pair would be <al·lota>
"girl" vs. <alota> "big ugly wing" (not in DIEC2, but normal
use of the augmentative suffix -ot, -ota).

>and if
>length is otherwise part of the system maybe -r- versus -rr- and -ll-
>versus -tll- can be accepted as well. Then we would have a neat
>package saying liquids may be geminated, other consonants not.

Yes, there is also <mm> (mostly words starting with com-,
em- or im-, but also <gemma> "gem" and <setmana> "week").

Mind you, consonant gemination is marginal in Catalan. There
are few minimal pairs, and gemination is generally higher
register only. There are no geminates in basic vocabulary
items, if we do not count <rr> as one (inherited /ll/ >
/l^/, /nn/ > /n^/, and the geminates /mm/, /nn/ and /l·l/
tend to occur in bookish word only). Most people don't have
/mm/ in <setmana> "week" (for me: [se'manE].

The exception (apart from <rr>) would be <tll> (/l^l^/),
which is not uncommon in basic vocabulary (espatlla,
ametlla, etc.), and is pronounced geminated by most people.

>Then, out of curiosity is it really customary to interpret [påpl#]
>as /påbbl#/ 'people' (/å/= halfopen /o/ in lack of IPA character and
># is halfopen central unrounded vowel in lack of the upside down V)?

Yes, ['pObbl@] is the normative pronunciation, although I
can't say I've heared it more than a handful of times. My
own pronunciation would be ['pOple].

>What would then be the minimal pairs showing contrast both to a
>fricative /-bl-/ and to the voiceless /-pl-/. In order to establish
>the lengthened /-bbl-/ as something else than a conditioned
>allophone you should be able to distinguish it from BOTH, no ho
>penses? And -ul- as in <paraula> won't do!

We discussed this not so long ago, and I found a Mallorcan
example where (due to loss of /l/), the contrast has become
phonemic: dobbés "money".

>As for /-nn-/ versus /-n-/, is this some morphem boundary stuff?

Not only. There is "tarannà" with /nn/, for instance.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...