Hiatus (was Re: Rs)

Tristan wrote:
> BTW: a vaguely related question. How do languages which don't mind
> hiatus deal with sequences of the same vowel? How would a
> non-intrusive-R speaker pronounced something like 'data about' (I say
> /d6:t@r@b&ut/ for anyone who might wonder why I ask. And I'm not at all
> concerned with the first vowel of 'data').
>
Typically we insert a sort of brief "voiced h" or (in careful speech)
glottal stop.  Radio announcers of the Old School do the latter routinely.
After the diphthongized vowels, its also possible to insert the approriate
[j] or [w] glide, but it sounds affected if the glide is too prominent.

Using * for the "voiced h" whose symbol I forget--
data about :  ['d&t@*@'baUt] ~ ['d&t@?@'baUt] (I also say ['deIt@] at
times......

we eat :  [wi*it] ~ [wi?it] ~ [wi(j)it] -- for a really noticeable glide,
cf. the song "I yam what I yam" (from the musical "The Birdcage", adaptation
of "La Cage aux Folles")

WUOM (my usual radio station)
the announcer:  ["dVb@lju"ju"?oU'?Em]
me:  ["dVb@lj@ju(w)oU(w)'Em]

Indonesian inserts ? between all like vowels, btwn a/@ and unlike vowels; a
brief [j] or [w] glide btwn i/u and an unlike vowel. (in phrases and at
morpheme boundaries)

...beli itu '...buy that'  [b@li?'itu]
...beli empat '...buy four' careful [b@li'?@mpat] or common [b@li(j)'@mpat],
plus you can drop /@/ btwn initial stop--r/l... so [bli....]
lima anak '5 children' ['lima'?ana?]
ke/empat 'fourth' [k@'?@mpat]
ke/angkat/an 'departure' [k@'?aNkatan]
seru/an 'complaint' [s@'ru(w)an]

Note that the only vowel-final prefixes that can occur before another vowel
are /k@-/ and /s@-/; the only suffixes that would create hiatus are /-an/ (2
flavors) and /-i/, and /-i/ doesn't occur with bases ending in /-i/.

Within a word-base, -ai-, -au- are pronounced as diphthongs; i/u+unlike
vowel has a glide.  For historical reasons, there is no hiatus in native
word-bases involving @, nor two like vowels; at least I can't think of any
offhand.