[Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?

[Hartmut Haberland]

Apparent counterexamples seem to be Italian (no vowel length) and maybe Japanese (long vowels in Sinojapanese vocabulary like sū ‘number’ seem to be genuine but in suu ‘sucks, inhales’ with a morpheme border it is often considered u+u. Both languages have long/double consonants.

Den 20. dec. 2020 kl. 17.49 skrev Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com>:


ps Sorry, i shouldn't have sent it to the general list. I am aware that individual cases do not undermine the general correlation. But because Florian also asked for language-level evidence, I provided (my understanding of) the data I know of.

Michael Daniel

вс, 20 дек. 2020 г., 19:25 Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com<mailto:misha.daniel at gmail.com>>:
Dear Florian,

i guess this depends on how to define consonant length, and what to count as presence of vowel quantity contrast. In East Caucasian, many languages distinguish between geminate vs simple, alias strong vs weak, alias fortis vs lenis, alias non-aspirated vs aspirated stops.

At the same time, vowel length, if present at all, is much less central to the system, though this varies across languages. I'm afraid, in order to fully assess the force of this implication, you should somehow account also for the role of the two contrasts in the language.

As one example, there is an important contrast between fortis and lenis stops in Archi, Lezgic.  Vowel length is also present, but is used in expressive elements such as distance demonstratives; secondarily as compensation for the loss of the intervocalic -q- in one (of several hundred) of verbal forms; in some morphophonological contexts with the coordinative clitic; and maybe in one or two other forms that do not quickly come to my mind.

Sincerely,

Michael

вс, 20 дек. 2020 г., 19:13 <florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch<mailto:florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>>:
Dear all,

is anybody aware of large-scale studies investigating the distribution of contrastive length in consonants and vowels? Preliminary analysis of phoible data tells me that there is an implicational tendency where if a language has contrastive length in consonants, it also has it in vowels. Are there studies supporting this? I’m also interested in literature on the geographical and genealogical distribution of contrastive length.

Best,
Florian



_____________________________

Universität Bern

Institut für Sprachwissenschaft

Florian Matter



Länggassstrasse 49

CH-3012 Bern

Tel. +41 31 631 37 54

Raum B 168

florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch<mailto:florian.matter at isw.unibe.ch>

http://www.isw.unibe.ch<http://www.isw.unibe.ch/>

_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org<mailto:Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
_______________________________________________
Lingtyp mailing list
Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20201220/45159a61/attachment.htm>