From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61149
Date: 2008-11-01
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
> At 4:41:32 PM on Friday, October 31, 2008, Arnaud Fournet
> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> from the point of view of French phonology, [wi] is a
>> vocalic diphtongue /ui/ and there is no /w/ phoneme.
>
> I disagree, but even if you were right about <oui>, there is
> no doubt that French has a phoneme /w/, e.g., in <coin>
> /kwE~/.
>
> Brian
>
===========
Right, there is a sound like [w] in French,
now the issue is : what is its status ?
1. you say it's a consonant /w/
2. I say, wrong, this is just a vocalic component in diphthongues.
There is a rule that French native words should start with only two
consonants,
and most clusters are C-l- or C-r-
If you choose option 1 : /w/ exists,
then this item has the oddest distribution possible :
1. it appears as a third consonant in groin [gr-w-ä~]
2. It never appears word-finally and in most regular contexts where
consonants are expected
3. it never appears in initial clusters C-l- or C-r (when most other
consonants do)
Next, this item can always be vocalized as [u] in slow speech.
If you choose option 2 : sound [w] is just [u+vowel]
then things are structurally clean.
No distribution oddity
The vocalic features are respected.
I chose option 2 and won't change my mind.
The same reasoning apply to the glide ü,
Cf bruant [br-w-â~] or juin [z^-ü-ä~]
it should not be described as a consonant.
The case of i is more complex,
because pied is [pje] but prier is [prije] not **[prje]
It used to be *[prje] (I guess a couple of centuries ago)
but now, it's unstable and sounds like [prije].
For these reasons,
There is no doubt that your analysis is superficial and there erroneous.
I think you need much more than just show up with a word taken for here or
there.
There is no phoneme /w/.
There is just a sound [w] that is a form of the vowel /u/ in pre-vocalic
context.
I guess synchronic French is interesting because PIE might have functioned
somehow in the same way at one moment.
Arnaud