Re: The Story of Guper the Foolish Troll

At 10:25 pm -0600 26/2/99, dunn patrick w wrote:
>A note on phonetics.
I'm puzzled by some of the phonetics.

[....]
>
>t, d, s, z, r, and l are all palatal.
Presumably t, d, s, z and l are /c/, /J/, /S/, /Z/ and /{vcd,pal,lat}/
respectively (I can't find a symbol for the latter in Kirshenbaum ASCII
IPA).  But what exactly is r-palatal? Is it a palatalized version of the
apical trill, i.e. the palatalized /r/ of Russian and Gaelic?

> r and l are frequently vocalic;
>when in doubt, pronounce them so
Are we to understand that vocalic /r/ and /l/ are also palatal?

[....]
>q, Q indicate unvoiced and voiced glotal stops, respectively.
Eh? Voiced glottal stop? Surely this is physically impossible, since:
(a) stops are produced by a _complete closure_ somewhere in the vocal tract;
(b) voicing is caused by vibration of the vocal chords;
(c) the glottis is the aperture between the vocal chords;
(d) when the vocal chords are _not_ vibrating then there are two
possibilities: either they remain wide open so that no vibration is
possible, or they are completely closed, i.e. the glottis is closed;
(e) the glottal stop is produced by the complete closure of the glottis.

How can the vocal chords vibrate if the glottis is completely closed? I.e.
how can one have a voiced glottal stop?

Or have I misunderstood something?

>
>h, H, glottal fricative
>
>x, X, glottal approximate
Voiceless and voiced glottal fricatives are both common enough in natlangs,
but what are the glottal approximates?  Do you mean 'approximants'?
Approximants are normally understood to be _frictionless_ continuants, how
can we have glottal approximants?  If there is no friction in the glottis
_and_ the glottis is open, it seems to me that there'd be no sound.  But
then, may be you mean something else by 'approximate'.

>
>ng nasal approximate
I fail to understand this entirely.

Hoping for enlightenment,
Ray.