54
J. MCCOY
The aspirated stops are analyzed as unit phonemes simply to maintain the pattern of single consonant initials; all other arguments seem equally strong for interpreting them either as units or clusters.
Two special points should be noted about the distribution of the consonants. Unlike SC, KS /m,p/ do not appear finally in a syllable but are replaced with /n, t/ respectively. Thus we find KS /sen1/ 'heart' and /it2/ 'leaf' as compared with SC /sêm1/ and /ip6/, with the SC tone contours here the same as the KS counterparts. The possible final consonants in KS then are /n, ng, t, k/.
Again unlike SC, KS /n/ does not occur initially and /ng/ occurs initially only before zero final. Initial /n/ has merged with /l/ giving /lui6/ 'female' and /lan2/ 'male'. We find /ng5/ 'five', but all other categories of words which may have initial /ng/ in other Kwangtung Province dialects have a vowel initial in KS, e.g., /ui5/ 'outside', /ngo5/ 'hungry', and /jit2/ 'hot'.
It should be noted that KS has no labialvelar consonant phonemes of the type /kw, kwh/ as postulated for SC by many analysts. There are no KS contrasts of the type which might suggest such a phoneme; thus we have KS /kong3/ 'to speak' and /kwong1/ 'bright', /kok3/ 'each, every' and /kwok3/ 'nation'. The point might well be made here that even in SC the phoneme /kw/ is not strictly required by the phonological evidence since there are no contrasts /k/ versus /kw/ which cannot be just as easily handled by /k/ plus /u/ with a saving in the phoneme inventory.
The KS vowel system is:
Front
i
Central
Back
u
The vowels require more detailed explanation since, unlike the KS consonants, they are not similar enough to SC to permit descriptions of that dialect to suffice.
54
J. MCCOY
The aspirated stops are analyzed as unit phonemes simply to maintain the pattern of single consonant initials; all other arguments seem equally strong for interpreting them either as units or clusters.
Two special points should be noted about the distribution of the consonants. Unlike SC, KS /m,p/ do not appear finally in a syllable but are replaced with /n, t/ respectively. Thus we find KS /senl/ 'heart' and /it2/ 'leaf' as compared with SC /sêml/ and /ip6/, with the SC tone contours here the same as the KS counterparts. The possible final consonants in KS then are /n, ng, t, k/.
Again unlike SC, KS /n/ does not occur initially and /ng/ occurs initially only before zero final. Initial /n/ has merged with /1/ giving /lui6/ 'female' and /lan2/ ‘male'. We find /ng6/ 'five', but all other categories of words which may have initial /ng/ in other Kwangtung Province dialects have a vowel initial in KS, e.g., /ui5/ ‘outside', /05/ 'hungry', and /it2/ ‘hot'.
It should be noted that KS has no labialvelar consonant phonemes of the type /kw, kwh/ as postulated for SC by many analysts. There are no KS contrasts of the type which might suggest such a phoneme; thus we have KS /kong3/ 'to speak' and /kong1/ "bright', /kok5/ ‘each, every' and /kok5/ 'nation'. The point might well be made here that even in SC the phoneme /k/ is not strictly required by the phonological evidence since there are no contrasts /k/ versus /kw/ which cannot be just as easily handled by /k/ plus /u/ with a saving in the phoneme inventory.
The KS vowel system is:
Front
i
Central
Back
1
The vowels require more detailed explanation since, unlike the KS consonants, they are not similar enough to SC to permit descriptions of that dialect to suffice.
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