Re: THEORY: Semivowels

----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, September 8, 1999 11:57 AM
Subject: Re: THEORY: Semivowels


> Gustavo Eulalio wrote:
> >         Can semivowels be nasalized?
>
> Well, technically I suppose they could, because nasality is merely
> the opening up of the nasal cavity an an additional cavity for
> the resonating of the sound.  But I've never heard or read about
> any language that does this.  They can, and often do, have
> voiceless equivalents, however. My dialect of English has four
> glides: /w/, /w_0/, /j/, and /j_0/, as does the Atkan Aleut I'm
> studying right now in class.
Interesting... what English words do you pronounce with [j_0]? I've never
heard of it.

Also, I tend to have problems pronouncing palatals, so I usually pronounc=
e
Spanish <=F1> (n-tilde) by nasalizing the previous vowel and using [j] in=
stead
of the palatal nasal; thus <a=F1o> [a~jo] rather than the correct
pronunciation of [aJo]. It sounds pretty much the same to me though.

In my conlang Dhakrathat, nasalized vowels before the semivowels cause th=
e
semivowels to be nasalized too, causing them later to change to nasals, i=
.e.
/a~w/ -> /aw~/ -> /am/, /a~j/ -> /aj~/ -> /aJ/.