Re: the Most Consonants in a row?
| From: | R A Brown <ray@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, September 15, 2005, 10:59 |
|---|
Rodlox R wrote:
>> Reply-To: veritosproject@GMAIL.COM
>
[snip]
>> Subject: Re: the Most Consonants in a row?
>> Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:07:34 -0700
>>
>> Some Eastern European langs have like 5 or 6, but they usually have
>> schwas and stuff.
>
>
> schwas are okay.
>
> if I might ask, what consonants were they?
They're not - they're vowels! The schwa is the mid central vowel,
written [@] in CXS and as an inverted lowercase e in IPA. It is probably
the most common vowel in English.
The 'stuff' is syllabic consonants (e.g. /r/ and /l/ often function as
the nucleus of a syllable in many languages, but so can many other
consonants, for example [n] is syllabic in most pronunciations of
'nation' /'nejSn=/).
If you are going to allow 'schwas and stuff', then the question "What's
the most consonants that can neighbor one another?" is as meaningless as
"How long is a piece of string?" Indeed, even if you do not allow schwas
or any other epenthetic vowels, but do allow syllabic consonants, the
question still remains meaningless - or at least the answer is "as many
as you like".
=======================================
Paul Bennett wrote:
[snip]
> I'd argue that the |v|s could be syllabic too, if pushed.
Certainly [v] can be syllabic.
> Doesn't stop them being consonants, though --
Indeed, not.
> although we're in territory where "vocoid" might be a more useful
> term than "vowel".
Exactly!!
A syllabic [v] is a phonological consonant but a phonetic vowel or vocoid.
It is unfortunate that the terms 'vowel' and 'consonant' are often used
- sometimes, alas, indiscriminately for both phonological and phonetic
features. (They are also, of course, commonly used by non-linguists to
describes certain letters of the alphabet - even more confusing :)
In order to avoid confusion, the American linguist Kenneth Pike proposed
the terms _vocoid_ and _contoid_ to denote _phonetic_ values, reserving
'vowel' and 'consonant' for phonological values. Regrettably IMO his
suggestion has not been adopted by everyone - and confusion continues.
These terms were discussed at some length not so long ago on the Conlang
list - go search the archives :)
Thus if Rodlox was asking how many (phonological) consonants there can
be in any string of sounds, the answer is simply as many as you like.
A more interesting question is how many contoids can be adjacent to one
another. There is clearly a limit here.
--
Ray
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