[Lingtyp] Contrastive vowel and consonant length?

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

On 12/20/20 6:49 PM, Hurch, Bernhard (bernhard.hurch at uni-graz.at) wrote:
> Dear Florian,
> 
> in a line with Pier Marco's remark: hasen't there been quite some 
> agreement in the last 2-3 decades to analyze quantity as a prosodic, 
> rather than as a segmental feature?

I was thinking that as well. In Sri Lanka Malay, you have phonetic 
length distinctions in both vowels and consonants. A word can only have 
one long "segment". There are possible analyses to derive consonant 
length from underlying vowel length, or the other way round.
Instead of arguing for underlying vowel length or underlying consonant 
length, one can posit a minimal foot requirement (and ban schwa from 
lengthening) and then everything falls into place.

I seem to remember that in many languages, there are positional 
restrictions on where you can have V: or C:, but I am not a phonologist.

Hypothesizing a bit, if indeed lengthening is a result of 
prosodic/metrical requirements, one could ask whether minimal 
foot/syllable/word constraints are more easily 
satisfied/producible/perceivable via the lengthening of a vocalic or a 
consonantal segment, if both would be available in principle. If there 
was some predisposition in humans for one or the other, we might find a 
distribution difference in the languages of the world.

Best wishes
Sebastian












> 
> Bernhard
> 
> 
>> Am 20.12.2020 um 17:13 schrieb 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
>>
>>
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