LINGUIST List 3.696

Tue 15 Sep 1992

Qs: Light diphthongs; Great Eskimo Hoax

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1. David Corina, Light diphthongs
2. , The Great Eskimo Snow Hoax

I was wondering if someone on Linguist might
point me towards some references concerning light dipthongs.
Specifically while I am aware of several articles
discussing universals of vowels systems (Crothers 1978),
and predictabilites/motivations for "possible" vowel systems
(Lindblom, 1986, Donegan, 1978). Often this work excludes discussions
of predicability of "possible dipthongs". Are their known facts
regarding distribution/predicability of rising versus falling
dipthongs ?. For example, given two possible
a five vowel systems /i, E, a, u, c/; /i, E, I, a, o/ can we make
a prediction of the likelihood that one of these systems will have a
phonetically realized rising or falling dipthong ? I would be especially
interested in situations where vowel inventories support
both rising and falling dipthongs. Pointers towards
useful articles would be very welcome.

Thank You

David Corina
Program in Neuroscience
U.S.C.
corinagizmo.usc.edu

If anyone has it handy I would appreciate a full citation for the article
'The Great Eskimo Snow Hoax' which appeared in a recent issue of a journal,
 possibly in NLLT.
Mimi Klaiman
klaimanipfwcvax.bitnet