Re: NATLANG: Gaidhlig volunteer needed

Thomas (or anyone) if you can't type in the IPA symbols on the
wikipedia article, but know the X-SAMPA, just type in the X-SAMPA and
I'll go through and fix it at after you.

On 22/03/06, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> On 3/21/06, Elliott Lash <erelion12@...> wrote [quoting Mark]:
> > > Is there a convention concerning which superscript goes first?
> >
> > I think that the superscript <h> would precede the
> > <j>, but I might be biased due to my Indo-European
> > knowledge.
>
> Hm?  Why would IE knowledge bias you one way or the other?
>
> I could see it going either way, logically.  The aspiration occurs
> before any audible sound that could be said to be palatalized, but the
> tongue is probably in the palatal position even before the aspiration
> . . .
If it was me, I'd put the aspiration last: Aspiration is defined as
delayed onset of voicing, so that the important part of the aspiration
of  t_j_h will occur after the palatised stop has been released. I'm
surprised you say the aspiration occurs before any audible palatised
sound does---but maybe you're thinking of the voicelessness?
(Obviously you've got to turn your voice off before the sound for it
to be aspirated voiceless.)

> > > What the heck is a "velarized dental"  (e.g. broad single initial unlenited |l| and |n|)?
> > > How do you do that with your tongue??
>
> > Aren't they dark-l and dark-n? Like the <l> (in my
> > dialect) in <look>. They're written with a tilde
> > through the L and N.
>
> Oh!  Is that all they are?  The description I read explicity said that
> the sounds DIDN'T exist in English, so I assumed there was something
> stranger than [5] going on.  Grr.
>
> I definitely distinguish the two /l/'s in my 'lect, but I don't quite
> feel how the dark one is "velarized".  My tongue isn't in anything
> like the position it's in for velars.  But whatever, that helps
> muchly.
When a sound is velarised, it basically has a [M] (open back unrounded
vowel) superimposed, much like a labio-velarised sound has a [u]
superimposed, or a palatised sound has a [i] superimposed (note that
back vowels have sometimes been called "velar", front ones "palatal",
low vowels "pharyngeal", and rounded vowels "labial(ised)"). So it's
only an approximate, not a proper actual /g/ or /k/ sound. (If it got
closer, you'd have a coarticulated voiced velar fricative/stop &
alveolar lateral approximate, which'd sound nothing like you want. But
would still be interesting.)

Perhaps you or people around you sometimes vocalise your/their /l/'s:
if so, you'll notice you get a sound somewhat like /o/ or /u/, but
(frequently) without the labialisation.

Anyway, so what I'm saying is the back of your tongue will be in a
similar position as it is for a [u] (a cardinal one---many English
dialects have a somewhat/rather/very fronted /u:/), but without the
lip-rounding.

(Note that English /l/ are (velarised) alveolar lateral approximates,
not dental ones.)

> (BTW, in CXS, the IPA "tilde-through" diacritic is spelled _e, so
> those sounds are [l_e] and [n_e].  However, [l_e] is more commonly
> written with its own symbol, [5]).
Also, [l_e] could represent a pharyngealised [l] (used frex in the
Arabic pronunciation of the word "Allah"); if the difference is
relevant, you can spell it as [l_G], which is in IPA a superscripted
gamma. It also looks nicer than an overlaid tilde.

--
Tristan.

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