"Unbalanced" Stop Systems

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

iffr762 at utxvms.cc.utexas.edu wrote:

>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.)

Indeed, as Theo Vennemann suggested, before the fricativization
of the long/aspirated series (*ph > *f etc.), Proto-Germanic must
have had a system exactly like the Korean one.

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