Re: Consonants and sonorants as vowels

Marcus Smith wrote:
>> Indeed. We've just had a discussion that Japanese also could have [s=]
>> (syllabic s) as an allophone of /su/.
>No, no. That is not a syllabic /s/. (I didn't know what the [=] mark
>meant, I guess.) The vowel in that context is still there, but voiceless,
>so basically nobody can hear it unless you are used to listening for them.
>It shows up on a spectograph, but even after years of listening to
>Japanese knowing it is there, I still can't hear it.
A similar problem probably occurs in another of my Eastern Indonesian
Favorites, Slaru (Tanimbar Islands)-- it has alternations like (working from
memory)--
vav 'pig'....vavi/re 'pigs'....vavkye 'the pig' (my "y" = [j]; the def.
marker is -ke; the lang. metathesizes final V-CV, so this must be
{{vavi-ke}}).  Similar things happen with roots with "underlying" final /u/.

The original investigator in the 30s said in effect "you just have to learn
which words insert i/u".  A more recent work (early 90s)  posited base forms
like /vavy/, /CVCw/, but she waffles somewhat as to whether these final
glides are actually audible, or just a morphophonemic clue.   Clearly both
investigators worked without benefit of instrumental analysis; it would be
interesting to see what's really going on.  (There are probably Slaru
speakers in the Netherlands, so it could be done.)