One Response to “Datapoint Dagur / Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives”

1. John Whitman Says:
   March 6th, 2018 at 6:26 pm

   The specification for 4A “Voicing in Plosives and Fricatives” for Dagur is probably inaccurate, although specialists might want to weigh in. The reference given is Bao 1982, but I wonder if the compilers did more than look at Bao’s phonemic inventory, which uses b d g for plain stops and p t k for aspirates, as is common in Chinese descriptive linguistics. A more current reference is:

   Tsumagari, Toshiro (2003): Dagur. In: Janhunen, Juha (ed.) (2003): The Mongolic languages. London: Routledge: 129-153.

   Tsumagari writes: “The opposition between the strong (JBW: ptck) and weak (JBW: bdjg) stops is manifested in the presence vs. absence of aspiration… (2003: 131).. The weak segments b g are however voiced and spirantized intervocalically and syllable-finally (132). T. gives the examples gwareb < *gurba/n 'three' and eg < *eke 'mother' (his asterisks) for final voicing.

   This looks like a language with a plain/aspirate contrast and intersonorant voicing of plain consonants, like Burmese or Korean, with the caveat that a more careful analysis of alleged final voicing is needed.

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