Re: aspirated m?

On Wednesday, November 24, 2004, at 07:11 , John Cowan wrote:

> Ray Brown scripsit:
>
>>> I only really know for sure in Quenya and Sindarin.  However,
>>> there are tenwa that could concievably be used for the purpose.
>>
>> Yes, yes - in any schematic system like tenwa there is likely to the
>> possibility of signs for sounds that do not occur or even could not occur
>> because they are physically impossible.
>
> In Appendix E of the L.R., JRRT writes:
>
> # According to the principle observed above, Grade 6 [of the tengwar]
> # should then have represented the voiceless nasals; but since such sounds
> # (exemplified by Welsh _nh_ or ancient English _hn_) were of very rare
> # occurrence in the languages concerned, Grade 6 (21-24) was most often
> # used for the weakest or 'semi-vocalic' consonants of each series.
>
> Now JRRT certainly knew his Welsh, so I would conclude that he is using
> the term "voiceless nasal" loosely.
Yes, so would I. I also get the impression that tho JRRT was very familiar
with literary Welsh & Welsh texts - he was certainly well read in Medieval
Welsh; but I am not certain how familiar he was with the actual
contemporary spoken language. In the case of Old English _hn_ this sound
was the Germanic development of PIE _kn_. Is there any reason not to
suppose it was pronounced [Xn] or [xn]?

It may be that JRRT was thinking of the _n_ part of the two combos, I
suppose.

> But "very rare occurrence" surely
> cannot mean "no occurrence at all", so I think we can also conclude
> that aspirated and/or voiceless nasals *do* occur in the Tolklangs,
> though perhaps not phonemically.  Certainly the Eldar seemed to have
> thought of hr- hl- as biphonemic, and probably hm- hn- hN- would have
> been treated likewise.
It seems likely. I do not disagree with what you have written.

But the point I was making is that in a system like the Tengwar one could
well have theoretically possible symbols for both unused (in a particular
language) or even physically impossible sound. For example we could have a
basic symbols for all the 'place of articulation' columns in the IPA table,
  and a system of modification for all the 'manner of articulation' rows on
the same sort of style as the Tengwar. We would then have symbols for such
physical impossibilities as the "voiced glottal stop" (which would
involved both closing the glottis, thus preventing the vocal chords doing
anything, and vibrating the vocal chords at the same time!).

In any case, I do not think the occurrence (or otherwise) of phonemic
status of voiceless and/or aspirated nasal in a conlang - even if it is a
Tolklang - informs us whether or not they occur with phonemic status in a
natlang.

Ray
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