Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: NATLANG: Gaidhlig volunteer needed

From:Tristan Alexander McLeay <tristan@...>
Date:Wednesday, March 22, 2006, 2:16
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.

Reply

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>