Re: The [??] attribute

En réponse à Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...>:

>
> M-W has the pronunciation as /m&'men(")tO/ which is what I normally use
> myself,
> except that the & vowel is very short -- as is their sound file example
> of the
> word. Is there a way to mark for an extremely short vowel? When I say
> "memento," I start in on the second syllable almost immediately after
> starting
> the &.
In IPA you use the breve diacritic, in X-SAMPA it's [_X]. It's called
the "extra-short" diacritic.

>
> And when they talk about "syllabic consonants," what does this mean in
> practice?
Exactly what they mean: something which is normally a consonant, but gets
pronounced as a syllable peak, without any vowel around (not even an extra-
short schwa). It's easy to do with nasals and liquids, trickier with
fricatives, and nearly impossible with stops, and yet all those consonants can
be syllabic in some languages or others.

 A definition I found: "A syllabic consonant is a phonetic
> element
> that normally patterns as a consonant, but may fill a vowel slot in a
> syllable." One of the examples given is the word "bottom" -- but why
> don't they
> describe this as /bAtVm/ with a very short V? (I'm from California, in
> case
> we're known for having a strange pronunciation of this word. :)
>
Right explanation, wrong example. IIRC very few dialects of English have
syllabic [m=]. I was tempted to say "no dialect", but I know that with English
you must never say never ;))) . But take any final |-er| from any word in some
rhotic dialect of English (mostly American) and you have an example of a
syllabic r.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Replies