Q: speech synthesis and historical phonology

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Alice Faber <faber at haskins.yale.edu> wrote:

>I'd love to see
>some instrumental data from Basque dialects in which the putative fricative
>merger took place; in my view, that's the most reliable way of knowing for
>sure that there was in fact a merger. Of course, the fact that the relevant
>dialect might have been spoken several hundred years ago would make that
>somewhat difficult, alas.

Not at all.  One would merely have to change the destination of the
field trip from, say, gorgeous Donostia [San Sebastian] (occasional
strolls along the Concha beach, zuritos and tapas in the Old Town in
between collecting instrumental data), to the no less gorgeous
Pyrinees just north of Iruinea [Pamplona] (July/August, when the
villages tend to have their Fiesta Mayor would do nicely).  They
merge /x/ and /j/ there.

[I'm sorry, but it's cold in Amsterdam]


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam