Re: Arabic Questions

Roger wrote:

<<A good explanation, I think. I take it 'ayn is "backward glottal stop" in
the IPA??>>

That's the way they transcribe it, but it's status as "fricative" is 
negligible.

Christian wrote:

<<That's a description of the voiced h, i.e. [h\].  The
[?\], on the other hand, has a constriction at the
adam's apple.>>

No, no.   My description was of a pharyngeal approximant (which is the
sound of Arabic 'ayin--not a fricative in any way).   The sound [A] is
produced by lowering your tongue and moving the back of it towards
the pharynx.   To make Arabic 'ayin, you just move it further back.   A
glottal [h] is made without the tongue doing anything; a voiced one
is the same save for the vibrating of the vocal folds.

One might think that a glottal fricative is the sound being described
because any language that has a glottal fricative usually has as many
allophones for that glottal fricative as there are vowels, because the
reflex of the glottal fricative is usually a voiceless version of the vowel
it precedes.   This is why a sound like the pharyngeal "h" of Arabic actually
does pop up in English--before the vowel /A/, when it's truly pronounced
as [A].

Roger also wrote:

<<Is there any friction or is it smooth?  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?>>

You know, they can really just do a word that begins with a vowel.   For a
time I didn't believe it was actually possible (years ago), but no matter how
hard I listen, there's no itty-bitty glottal stop, no tiny little [h], no 
nothin': just
the vowel.

But to reiterate, the 'ayin I'm familiar is smooth; no frication.   That's 
not to
say it can't pop up.   Like Mexican Spanish <y>, which we were talking about
not long ago.

-David
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