Re: Consonants and sonorants as vowels

En réponse à julien eychenne <eychenne.j@...>:

>
> Well, I was wondering about strange vowels we can find in some natural
> languages, such as sonorants (e.g. /r, l, m, n.../)  and above all
> consonants : I've heard of (african) languages which use sounds like /s,
> z/ as vowels.
Indeed. We've just had a discussion that Japanese also could have [s=]
(syllabic s) as an allophone of /su/.

 I was taught that sounds can become vocalic with respect
> to the sonority scale. I don't  know if some natural languages use
> (voiceless) plosives. Do some of you use such sounds? Which kind? I'm
> really interested in that point, and I'm sorry if it's already been
> asked.
>
The only language I have which consistently has syllabic consonants is Itakian.
This language doesn't separate sounds in two but three groups: consonants,
liquids and vowels. The liquids are /r/, /m/, /n/, /j/ and /w/ and can act as
consonants or vowels depending on their position in the word. As you can
see, /m/ and /n/, which are nasal plosives, can easily become syllabic. On the
other hand, I don't know of any language that uses other plosives as syllable
peaks, although it wouldn't surprise me that some language uses at least voiced
plosives. Voiceless plosives are probably too difficult to produce as syllable
peak, but there again I may be wrong.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

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

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