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Re: Phonology question

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 13, 1999, 13:18
At 22:17 12/07/99 -0300, you wrote:
>John Fisher <john@...> wrote: >>=20 >> In message <Pine.GSO.4.10.9907121648010.13555-100000@...>, >> Patrick Dunn <tb0pwd1@...> writes >> >Okay, a sound has popped up in my new language and I don't know what to >> >call it. >> > >> >I'd call it an alveolar fricative, but I already have /s/. >> > >> >It's like a /t/, except the tongue is relaxed, arched slightly so the=
very
>> >tip touches the alveolar ridge. Sounds a bit like a whistle, and it >> >occurs at the end of words in my new language. >>=20 >> Sounds like a "flat" [s], as against an ordinary [s] which is grooved, >> so that the air only escapes in the middle. Another way to look at it >> is as an alveolar version of [T] (theta), because that is usually not >> grooved. >>=20 > >I've encountered this same sound already. In one of the dialects of >Drasel=E9q, the alveolar trill <rr> changed into a voiced version of=20 >*that*, but I didn't know what to call it. A flat [s], an ungrooved [s]? > >I think Castilian Spanish has this sound for /s/ in almost all positions, >or a very similar one. It's a very distinctive feature. I think Padraic >Brown once called it "madrile=F1o hiss", am I right? >
I agree with you for Castillan Spanish. It seems that Basque and Castillan Spanish have the same sound for the letter 's'. Well, in fact, I think that in Spanish, /s/ and this "whistle" are allophones, whereas they are distinct phonemes in Basque (written 'z' and 's'). This is a very distinctive feature and I wonder whether it's not an influence of Basque over Castillan Spanish (as this sound isn't present in any other Romance language as far as I know). Am I wrong?
> >--Pablo Flores > >
Christophe Grandsire |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G. "Reality is just another point of view." homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html