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Re: Ant: Palatovelars

From:John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Date:Sunday, June 5, 2005, 9:40
>>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 _________________________________________________________________ 3 vrk:n sääennuste http://www.msn.fi/uutiset/saa

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tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...>Ant: Palatovelars: RTR, ATR, Uvulurized, Pharyngealized