Re: Sonority of 'h'?

Amanda Babcock sikyal

> Does 'h' fit into the usual set of sonority classes?  In English it seems
> like it can only appear as the sole onset of a syllable.
I don't see any reason why /h/ can't be treated as a normal fricative for
most languages. English bars all *hC clusters--but this doesn't
necessarily have anything to do with sonority. Languages may also have
"filters", which acts to disallow special cases which would otherwise be
acceptable.

>  In Mohawk they
> throw it around all over the place indiscriminately - does Mohawk use
> sonority distance?
All languages are believed to use sonority distance, and I've never heard
a good counterexample mentioned. But not everything can be explained
by/reduced to sonority distance. The distribution of English /h/ and /N/
is a classic example.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
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And Jesus said, "What?"