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From Utterances to Speech Acts

By Mikhail Kissine

"Kissine offers a new theory of speech acts which is philosophically sophisticated and builds on work in cognitive science, formal semantics, and linguistic typology. This highly readable, brilliant essay is a major contribution to the field."

--François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod

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Query Details


Query Subject:   Question about Phonemicization
Author:   Nate Sims
Submitter Email:  click here to access email

Linguistic LingField(s):  Phonetics
Phonology
Subject Language(s):  Qiang, Southern


Query:   I am working on a phonology of a languange called Qiang, and had a question about phonemicization.

This variety of Qiang does not oppose alveolar and alveleo-palatal fricatives or affricates nor does it require a phonemic distinction between the alveleo-palatal series and the retroflex series of consonants.

The alveolar series is in complementary distribution with the alveleo-platal series, with the palatal series occurring before high front vowels and palatal glides while alveolars appear in all other contexts.

Likewise the retroflex series is in complementary distribution with the alveo-palatal series with the palatal series ocurring before high front vowels and glides and palatal glides while retroflex consonants precede all other vowels.

My hypothesis is that the alveolo-palatal consonants [tɕ, tɕh, dʑ, ɕ, ʑ] are the result of a merger of the alveolar consonants /ts, tsh,dz,s, z/ and the retroflex consonants /tʂ, tʂh, dʐ, ʂ, ʐ/ before high front vowels and palatal glides. The alveolo-palatals are in complementary distribution with the alveolar series as well as with with the retroflex consonants, neither of which now occur in a high front environment.

The question then is, how do I know whether to classify the alveolo-palatals as allophones of the alveolar series or as allophones of the retroflex series?

Thanks,

Nate
LL Issue: 23.4341
Date posted: 17-Oct-2012



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