Re: Hell hath no Fury (was: war and death are in my hand)

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001 11:09:23 +0200 Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> writes:
> > Does it seem possible that the first two doubly-articulated stops
> would
> > exist?  I remember seeing /kp/ and it's voiced counterpart /gb/ in
> > African languages, but i've never heard of /pt/ and /tk/.  I can
> > pronounce them easily enough...
> Labio-velar consonnants are really common. After all, the normal
> articulation of
> /w/ is not only labial but labio-velar, so its place of articulation
> is the one
> of [k_p] rather than [p]. I think they appear because the labial and
> velar
> articulations are far enough from each other to be used at the same
> time without
> much difficulty. With /p_t/, the two simultaneous articulations are
> nearer to
> each other, so they could produce a problem, but since the two
> articulations are
> made with different parts of the mouth (the lips and the tongue), I
> think it
> could be possible without much trouble. After all, maybe some Greek
> dialects
> pronounced the cluster /pt/ as a double articulation :) . As for
> /t_k/, the
> problem is that both articulations have to be made with the tongue,
> and it seems
> to me rather difficult to curve the tongue correctly to make both
> articulations
> at the same time. Maybe with a little training, but I would think
> that such a
> double-articulated consonnant should be much rarer than the other
> two (in fact,
> kp should be the most frequent, pt less frequent and tk the rarest
> if you really
> choose to keep them all). Maybe you should allow clusters as
> allophones of the
> double-articulated consonnants...
> Christophe.
-

Thanks, the frequencies idea makes sense... i was actually thinking about
for some descendent languages, /pt/ could become linguolabial, and /tk/
could be come a velarized /t/ or maybe a palatal stop.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "Word making is world making."
     ~ _The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis_
          by Avivah Zornberg

Reply