Re: Diphthongs

On Thu, 4 Oct 2001 19:29:37 EDT, David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
wrote:

>In a message dated 10/4/01 2:43:07 PM, scooter@BUSER.NET writes:
>
><< A question to the list, though - is this essentially diphthong creation?
>Simafira has five vowels, and, depending on the exact definition of a
>diphthong,
>which I don't know, it either has no diphthongs, or 25 of them.  The sounds
in
>fact follow logically; [a] + [i] ==> [ai], with as little glide as possible
in
>between.  (Though I am working on a glottal stop inserted to set apart some
>prefixes, but that's a grammatic construct.) >>
I think if there's any question of intermediary glides, what you mean are
not diphthongs. I am suited to the idea that the key point is mono-
/di-syllabic realization (but OTOH syllabicity varies a lot across
languages...)

[...]
>    In my opinion, [ai] is a diphthong, HOWEVER, [aj] is a much shorter
>diphthong, such that it's easier to be thought of as one sound rather than
>two, whereas [ai] could be thought of as two.  If you put glottal stops in
>between the vowels than there's no question; it's not a diphthong.  A good
>way to tell which you have is to lengthen it.  If you lengthen [aj], you'll
>end up with [a:j] with a very short release.
Or [aj:], e.g. in Swedish (AFAIK).

>If you lengthen [ai], however
>my suspicion is that you'd get [a:i:], because both members are
>significant.
In Lithuanian, either [a:i] or [ai:], depending on the quality of stress
(rising vs. falling). I suspect some similar treatment is not infrequent
in tonal langs. OTOH in Vietnamese this does not depend on tone, [a:i] {ai}
and [ai:] {ay} are simply different phonemes.

>[j] is just a sort of coloring on [a] in [aj], and that's what I personally
>was going for in Mbasa, which is why I wrote that way instead of [ai].
What do you mean by 'coloring'? As you said earlier, a diphthong must
shift from one vowel articulation to another.


Basilius