1000090429

•In oeparating the non-sigpificant from the sigpificant sounds, three

premisas are basic:

Premiee One: Granted that a langullge will have a limitad number of sounds

(from 12 to 50), ea

sound tends to

affected by its

environment, either by becoming somewhat liloS neighboring

sounde, or alee by varying according to its position at the

beginning, middle or end of word, eyllable or sentence.

For

e:rample, Engliah /k/ has rounded lips before the vowel /u/

because /u/ has rounded lips.

(These changas may be callad

"conditioned variants").

It is with this in view, that when

two separata words differ by one sound only (as fpen/ vs.

/ben/) one concludes that the eounde in question, viz.

fpf

Bnd /b/, are different sigpifioant sound units, since the

environment is the eame and cennot be responsible for the

difference.

In many dialecto of Qua chus and .lymera one of

the most prominent ccnditioned variante is the use of

~e~

for the general sound unit /1/ next to

fqf,

in which the

back position of

fqf

causes the backing of the

~1~

~e~.

is due to the fact that

~e1

and

~11

(and other varietiee)

are membere of a single unit, that the nativa has diff iculty

to dietinguish or even to pronounce the identical sounds

when he meets them not as varieties of one unit but as en–

tirely oeperate unite, in

Spani~.

If they were separata

dietinct units in his own language system, they would

~ive

him little or no diffioulty when he met them in another

system.

"Premisa Two: When a native repeats the sama word several times, he tends

to use the eeme sounde each time.

therefore the foreigner

heare slight variations of sound during such repetition , he

concludes that variation ie "free", and noneignificant

(except that occasionally under Premisa One, sounde are

preven different elsewhere, by giving abbreviated or alterna–

tive pronunciations of a few words).

In Quechua and .lymara,

one ofte::1 heare free var1Btion between varietiee of

/uf

from

tu~

4u~1, ~o•1

and

~ov+.••

"Premisa Three: Each languege has a limitad number of characteristic se–

quences of

conson~nts

and vowels which meke

the

"structural pattern" of syllables, words and morphemes.

(a) Soma sounds may be either consonante or vowele, depending

upon the pressure of the etructurel pattern which for a

specific language mey force them either moy.

Quotes (as

11 )

are used to indicate reference to a letter; brackets

ere usad when attention is called t o the phonetic character of a sound;

llnd bars / / ere used to enclose sounds when attention is directed to their

phonemic unity or writing.

"The eign (") indicates a raising of the tonl!)le position, for e:rample, of

~o~

to118rd

~u1;

the sign (Vj indicetes the lowering of the tengue position.