Re: Arabic Questions

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 12:54:12 +0300, Isaac A. Penzev <isaacp@...> wrote:
> Roger Mills jazdy:
>
> > It occurs to me that in a language
> > with contrastive initial /?/::/0/, it might be the onset of /0/-initial
> > words??  Since IIRC you're familiar with both Arabic and Hawaiian,
> > am I more or less right?
>
> In Arabic (as most other Semitic lgs, e.g. Biblical Hebrew) V-initial
> syllables are impossible, so there is no /?/::/0/ contrast.
> In Hawaiian (as well as in her sister lgs), there is such opposition, tho i
> don't recall minimal pairs from head now.
In a book on Tongan (Shumway 1988), I find the following minimal pairs
in the introduction:

'anga "shark" vs anga "disposition"
'ono "barracuda" vs ono "six"
'uma "kiss" vs uma "shoulder"
'au "current (in the ocean)" vs au "me"
'omi "bring" vs omi "come"
'utu "draw (water)" vs utu "harvest"

(In Tongan, |'| (apostrophe) represents [?].)

There are also a number of minimal pairs given for intervocalic
glottal stop vs absence of glottal stop (e.g. ta'u "year" vs tau
"war", which incidentally fall together as "tau" in the closely
related Niuean, which has lost the glottal stop), and the book also
cautions the learner to differentiate between long and short vowels as
well as between "i" and "e" (ei/e, ae/ae, oi/oe) and between "u" and
"o" (ao/au, ou/o:, ao/au).

> I find this feature especially difficult, because smth makes me to
> pronounce all words in a certain lg either with the glottal stop, or
> without it - just compare English and German.
I agree; I'd probably tend to pronounce [?] before all vowel-initial words.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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