Re: Here we go loup-garou

Jeff Rollin wrote:

> I know there are languages which don't have voiced consonants, like Finnish
> (except approximants, which appear to be always voiced; from loans; and /d/,
> which is regarded as somewhat artificial and replaced by various phonemes in
> non-standard dialects), but are there any languages which have voiced
> consonants but no voiced ones at all?
I assume you mean "but are there any languages which have voiced
consonants but no voiceLESS ones at all?".

No. If a language has no voicing distinction, then you will almost
always find a situation in which initial and final obstruents are
voiceless, and intervocallic ones may be allophonically voiced. This is
because (a) the pressure in your lungs needs to be a certain amount
greater than that of your oral cavity for voicing to occur, but blocking
the air from escaping while forcing air from your lungs into your mouth
causes the pressure to equalise --- this makes it hard to voice stops
and (b) because to pronounce a fricative you need to force a lot of air
through a small space (otherwise you either get no air coming through
and a stop, or you get air passing through cleanly and you get an
approximant), but vibrating your vocal chords makes it harder to obtain
this critical level --- this makes it hard to fricate while voicing.

Note that these two process work in opposite ways: It is hard to vibrate
your vocal chords while making a stop; but it is hard to make a
fricative while vibrating your vocal chords. This explains why in many
languages, voiced fricatives are often pronounced as approximants.

So in order to have a language in which only voiced consonants occurred,
either the speakers would need to be doing something harder than to
include voiceless consonants (and would therefore quickly include
voiceless consonants into their repertoire either allophonically or
phonemically); or else the language will lack obstruents entirely and
have only vowels and sonorants.

A language with no obstruents is exceedingly unlikely because it makes
the hearer's job a lot harder. Nasals and laterals at different points
of articulation are distinguished by what frequencies are *missing*
rather than which ones are *present*, and so they sound a lot more
similar (notice how hard it is to clearly say "*em*, not *en*"). Central
approximants are much harder to keep apart from vowels, being
essentially vowels in a part of a syllable designated for consonants.
I'm not sure what, if anything, is wrong with taps, as they are
essentially voiced stops pronounced so quickly that the difficulty of
maintaining voicing doesn't come up, but precisely because of this I
suppose you'd be better able to hear it if you took longer to say it and
turned it into a proper voiced stop.

(Australian Aboriginal languages often use d, rd, dj, g for /t t` c k/;
this is as much due to the (Australian) English pronunciation of
/t _ tS k/ (which are aspirated) and /d _ dZ g/ (which are unvoiced or
voiced only lightly before stressed vowels) as the Aboriginal
pronunciations.)

If you meant "but are there any language which have voiceLESS consonants
but no voiced ones at all", this would entail the absence of sonorant
consonants and allophonic intervocalic vocing. I'm not sure whether or
not any language does the former, and in the absence of a voicing
distinction I'd be surprised if the latter occurred. I wouldn't rule it
out (like I would the other way), but I don't know of any.

HTH,
--
Tristan.

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