Re: Ant: Palatovelars

>>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...
>
>Isn't [H] a labialized palatal? I think that [H] is to [j] what [y] is to
>[i], exactly the same but with rounded lips
My thoughts exactly. But maybe there is some reason which escapes me to
transcribe [j_-] as [H]?


>I think also that [w] is also only a labialised [M\]
>
>None of those are palatovelar, it would glides for [1] and [}] but I don't
>think such glides would be analysed as palatovelars but maybe as [j_q] and
>[H_q]
>
>- Max
[_q]?? I've understood that "retracted tongue root"  = "uvularized", which
doesn't sound at all like central vowels... correct me if I'm wrong. And in
case it just means "a more farther back POA", what's the difference with
[_-] (plain "retracted")?

And now that notation's come into the play, [_"] could be a good diacritic
too...

>>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.
Point made... though with fricative disctinctions commonly being a lot finer
than approximant or stop distinctions, I'd've thought that being able to
identify something as being between [C] and [x] would be no harder than
telling (eg) [3] apart from [E] and [V].

John Vertical

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