RAS-1965 — Page 63

56

a : J. MCCOY

e € i 0 = ai ei ui au iu ου at et it ut ak ik ok uk an en in on un ang eng ing ong ung iek ieng

010

If I use my own analysis of SC, the consonant phoneme inventories of KS and SC are the same. This is because I combine the two palatal series as Chao himself suggests, eliminate the labialvelar series (Chao's labialized gutturals), and drop the semivowels. However, similarity of phoneme charts can not be taken as identity between two dialects. Even though the phonetic values may be similar as they are in KS and SC, we still have the problem of distribution which results in unique systems of syllable types. Thus, the loss in KS of initial /n, ng, kw/ creates quite a different picture for this dialect; similarly the loss of final /m, p/ makes no changes in the phoneme inventory but produces considerable variation at higher linguistic levels.

1

For the vowels a convenient comparison can be made of the lists of possible syllable finals. Already we can expect differences in the vocalisms by virtue of the fact that in my analysis KS has five vowel phonemes and SC has six. More significant is the point that KS has 31 syllable finals plus zero, while SC has 48 plus zero in either Chao's system or mine. Since there is no evidence that the consonants, tones, or any other features have conditioned this discrepancy in numbers, it must be assumed that there is a loss in KS of some syllable finals of which the counterparts are distinctive in SC. Twelve of these can be identified immediately as those possessing length or final /m, p/ in SC. The losses, more accurately described as mergers, show up readily in the rime table correspondences but reducing these from tabular form to descriptive text requires more space than can be justified in a non-technical paper. Instead, I propose to give a number of examples for each of the possible KS syllable finals in order to give general indications of the ancient sources