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Post-velar glides
In some words, I have glides after /k/ and /g/ before /I/ and /E/, but for other similar words, I don't. These are the only ones I can think of now:
kid [kjId] kill [kjIo] get [gjE? but without a glide kick [kIk] guest [gEs] or [gEst]
That sounds like a new phonemic split alright, even though though it would be really nice if we could find a minimal pair for this (despite what I myself have said about minimal pairs in the past).
I can't think of any minimal pairs at the moment. I'm somewhat reluctant to describe this as a phonemic split, because /kj/ doesn't seem to be contrastive in any way. It seems more like an allophonic variation that for some reason only occurs in certain words. Is it possible for allophonic variation to spread by lexical diffusion? Because with the small set here, the words with the glide are all much more common than those without it.
I've been thinking about this, and it seems that after /k/ or /g/ (including across word boundaries and possibly utterance-initially as well) I have sporadic diphthongization of stressed /E/ as [jE], [iE], or [IE]. However, this is only very sporadic and does not seem lexicalized. Note though that I do not have any such diphthongization of /I/, it seems.
<<In some words, I have glides after /k/ and /g/ before /I/ and /E/, but for other similar words, I don't. These are the only ones I can think of now:
kid [kjId] kill [kjIo] get [gjE? >> Never heard of that before. |