Phonetic terminology (ekse Re: orthography)=20

[lilandbr at scn.org]

>About glottalization as phonemically distinctive in Chinook Jargon:
>there aren't many minimal pairs, of course, but that's a function
>mainly of the fact that the CJ vocabulary was (as is typical of
>pidgins) quite small.  Certainly glottalization was phonemically
>distinctive -- you don't need minimal pairs in *any* language to
>prove that, in any case (which is just as well, because they're
>hard to come up with in lots of polysynthetic languages). =20

True, but they are handy illustrations when available.  "Thy thigh" and=20
the like. =20

>Even with the small CJ vocabulary, redundancy in the context would=20
>likely have resolved any resulting ambiguity.

In my idiolect of English "when / wen" etc. are differentiated=20
by their initial consonants, but even moreso by context, as evidenced by=20
the infrequency with which I have trouble understanding speakers who=20
don't have that phonemic contrast; and when listening to nonnative=20
English speakers who don't distinguish "meat" from "mitt", my failure-to-
comprehend rate goes way up when a contrastive pair, especially a=20
grammatically interchangeable one, exists.

Perhaps at least where Eurojargoneers are concerned CJ might be described=
=20
as having had dialects with and others without these distinctions?

I say "having had" because I gather that virtually all present-day=20
speakers fluent in CJ *do* distinguish glottalized from non- and velar=20
from uvular.

>   I discussed the evidence for an elaborate consonant inventory
>for CJ in a 1983 article in the journal LANGUAGE ("Chinook Jargon
>in historical and areal context"), in case anyone wants to see the
>basis for my statement about glottalization being phonemic. In
>the same article I also argue for a systematic CJ phonemic
>distinction between velar and uvular consonants.=20

Thanks, I'll look it up.

Liland

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 Liland Brajant Ros' * UEA-D, Seatlo Usono * FD Baptismo, AA, US-lit-ro
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