Ant: Palatovelars

--- John Vertical <johnvertical@...> schrieb:
> Sooo... anyone ever heard/thought of palatovelar
> consonants? I do not mean palatalized velars /
> velarized palatals, but rather a place of
> articulation between these two. Central vowels are
> all common and good, but they never seem to have
> even any corresponding semivowels, let alone
> obstruents?
There is a palatovelar semivowel, namely, [H] (the
initial consonant in the French /huite/ [Hit] or the
Mandarin Chinese /yuen/ [HVn]). Now, this can be seen
as a palatalized [w], but it's definitely a
smoothly-pronounced palatovelar semivowel, at least as
far as I hear...

> Note that I'm looking for palatovelars which
> phonemically contrast with palatals and/or velars,
> not palatovelar allophones (which I'd in fact
> assume to be somewhat common.)
There isn't a language, as far as I know, that
contrasts palatal, palatovelar and velar obstruents,
because the palate is sort of a flat space in the
mouth, and you can't really make that many
distinctions without allophony rearing its head and
making phonemes difficult to tell apart.

If any language did come up with such a system, it
would rapidly evolve into something else, like a
distinction between palatoalveolar affricates,
palatalized velar obstruents and velar obstruents.

If you want to add a whole bunch of fine phonetic
distinctions, stick with the alveolar ridge. Its shape
is perfect for making a lot of phonemic contrasts in a
small space; practically all dialects of English have
at least three points of articulation for fricatives,
all in an area in the mouth only about a centimeter in
length (dental [T / D], alveolar [s / z] and
postalveolar [S / Z]). So do most dialects of Arabic
(which is a particularly fricative-rich language
anyways).

Theoretically, you could set up a system that
contrasted dental [T / D], alveolar [s / z],
palatoalveolar [s\ / z\], postalveolar [S / Z] and
retroflex [s` / z`] fricatives, but that would be a
bit overcrowded; I personally would collapse at least
the palatoalveolars and postalveolars, since they're
very hard to tell apart without exaggerating the
palatalized aspect of the palatoalveolars to a
ridiculous extent...

Helpful?


	

	
		
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