"Unbalanced" Stop Systems

[iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu]

	I don't know that these are so bad.  Korean has a three-way
contrast, which medially seems to based upon two oppositions 1)
long/short, and 2) aspirated/unaspirated, with no short aspirated series
existing.  (In initial position it appears to be more a matter of voice
onset time, with some weak laryngealization figuring in somehow.)  But I
think such unblanced systems are more offensive to notions of elegance
current among some theoretical linguists than to actual users of human
language.

					DLW