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Hi David,<br><br>
I have in my notes:
<dl>
<dd>“A number of Western Malayo-Polynesian languages and perhaps some
others contrast a dental /t/ with an alveolar /d/ and /n/. The
antiquity of this phonetic difference is unknown, but a similar
distinction is found in a number of the non-Austronesian languages of
mainland Southeast Asia.” (Blust 1990:233) <br>
<dd>Muna (WMP, Celebic) /t/ is apico-dental and /d/ is
apico-alveolar (Van den Berg 2001:26)<br>
<dd>Tolaki (WMP, Celebic) /t/ is dental and /d/ is
alveolar (Youngman 2001:1)
</dl>David M.<br><br>
======================<br><br>
Berg, René van den. 1989. <i>A grammar of the Muna language</i>.
Providence, RI: Foris.<br><br>
Blust, Robert. 1990. Patterns of sound change in the Austronesian
languages. In <i>Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology</i>
(Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 45.), edited by Philip
Baldi, 231–267. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.<br><br>
Youngman, Scott.. 2001. Addenda to Tolaki phonology. Unpublished
typescript, 66 pp. <br><br>
<br><br>
At 4/8/2009 07:01 PM +0200, David Gil wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Dear all,<br><br>
In Malay and Indonesian, the apical stops exhibit a curious <br>
place-of-articulation asymmetry: whereas [d] is alveolar, [t] is dental
<br>
or (for some speakers, typically women) interdental. In recent
<br>
field-work, I seem to have encountered a similar asymmetry in two other
<br>
quite distant Austronesian languages, Mentawai and Roon (though I'm not
<br>
yet entirely sure of the facts here.)<br><br>
My two questions:<br><br>
(a) how common is this asymmetry (or for that matter the mirror-image
<br>
one) in Austronesian, or for that matter any other languages?<br><br>
(b) specifically for Austronesian languages, I would also appreciate
<br>
substantiated reports of languages that do *not* exhibit this asymmetry
<br>
(ie. languages where both [d] and [t] are alveolar, or both [d] and [t]
<br>
are dental, or both [d] and [t] can be either alveolar or dental, or
<br>
there is no contrast between [d] or [t], or whatever. My interest
in <br>
this latter question is that I would like to try and map the <br>
geographical distribution of this asymmetry in the insular Southeast
<br>
Asian region.<br><br>
Thanks,<br><br>
David<br><br>
-- <br>
David Gil<br><br>
Department of Linguistics<br>
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology<br>
Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany<br><br>
Telephone: 49-341-3550321 Fax: 49-341-3550119<br>
Email: gil@eva.mpg.de<br>
Webpage:
<a href="http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.eva.mpg.de/~gil/</a><br><br>
<br>
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