Typology and the phonetics of laryngeals

[Max Wheeler]

-- Begin original message --

> From: Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer at cphling.dk>
> Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 18:00:15 +0200 (MET DST)

[snip]

>    Even so, I cannot dismiss your suggestion of phonetic variation - that
> could even have been there from the start, meaning that [h] may be just
> one of the manifestations of /H1/, which would still leave room for [x^]
> being another. I do not believe phonetic typology has reached a point
> enabling it to exclude any such thing. And incidentally, the Greek
> reflexes of CRH1C with /-Re:-/ are easier to udnerstand from [x^] than
> from [h], since the latter would simply add voicelessness, but not
> redirect the articulation to any other location than where the sonants are
> themselves - and they all produce [a] when given an undisturbed course.

Variation along these lines, whether allophonic or socially condiditoned (or
"free") seems very plausible. Spanish /x/ is [x] in many dialects, [h] in
others. In Welsh, [x], [X] (uvular) [h] (and zero) are variants of the same
phoneme. In Old English [h] and [x] may have been allophones of the same
phoneme. In the Spanish and OE case, [x] > [h] seems to be involved, but in
the Welsh case it's more complicated, since one source of [h] is */s/.

Max