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Re: More wierd phonemes

From:Paul Bennett <paulnkathy@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 23, 2000, 6:35
On 23 Feb 00, at 1:37, Muke Tever wrote:

> > > Is there a natlang precedent (and/or existing name?) > > > for the 'hissing' > > > consonant (fricative?) produced by keeping the > > > tongue in a lax / schwa-like > > > position, and producing either voiced or voiceless > > > breath with the teeth > > > together and causing friction? > > > It sounds to me somewhere between /S/ and /f/ (or > > > /Z/ and /v/), but is > > > obviously a totally different sound.
> Gotta quote here, from a book quoting a book quoting a couple of other > people... > > "Passy (1899) describes a fricative in the Shapsug dialect of Adyghe, a > Circassian language, which has 'the lips fully open, the teeth clenched and > the tongue flat, the air passing between the teeth; the sound is > intermediate between /S/ and /f/.'
> "This sound was noticed independently by Catford who comments that 'the > Adyghe (Circassian) bidental fricative is, in fact, a variant of /x/, > occurring for the /x/ in such words as /x@/ "six" and /dax@/ "pretty" in the > Black Sea sub-dialect of Shapsug'."
> ...Is it like that?
It's exactly like that! Thanks for these examples and for confirming Ed's choice of the word 'bidental', which I was previously 'iffy' on. I think that all the other phones that I've decided on have fairly safe precedents, and can be adequately described using conventional terminology. An enormous grid of consonants and a horrible list of rules for choosing vowel allophones will surely both be forthcoming. Watch this space... --- Pb Just out of interest, does anyone know why the sound described is an allophone of /x/ in Adyghe?