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Re: Vibrants (was: New conlang)

From:Paul Roser <pkroser@...>
Date:Monday, August 8, 2005, 5:15
On Sun, 7 Aug 2005 19:13:45 +0300, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:

>>No - only that I have only noted it used specifically to refer to the very >>small set of unusual sounds I referred to. I can't recall coming across >>'percussive' as a term for taps/trills in the English-language phonetic >>literature. > >And there's the imperfect again! "It USED specifically to refer to..." So IS >there some difference between the term's current and older usage, or not?? >I don't think the name is suitable for trills at all, but it does seem to be >essentially the same thing as a tap.
Nope, sorry - that was a typo on my part - should be "it *is* used' - the present usage of percussive in phonetic literature (as far as I am aware) is restricted to s set of (at present) three symbols, denoting bilabial (Unicode 02AC), bidental (Unicode 02AD) and sublingual (Unicode 00A1 - identical to the 'inverted exclamation mark') percussives, which bear a sort of generic resemblance to taps in that they are very brief contacts, but are considered a different kind of mechanism.
>>Well, labial trills are inherently pre-stopped (ie, aways begin with a >>labial stop articulation) while apical and dorsal trills are not. > >It is not physiologically impossible to begin a labial trill without >closure; but yes, it _is_ much easier with it. So by "inherently" I guess >you mean that no natlang attests a non-pre-stopped labial trill. >(A xenosketchlang of mine does contrast /pB\/ with /B\/.)
Well, I can produce a bilabial trill from a position where my lips are close but not actually closed, but it takes much greater effort to make than one from full clsoure. And yes, I know of no natlang that has non-prestopped labial trills (though not necessarily a labial stop - Liangshan Yi in Sichuan China has labial trills as allophones of a labial fricative vowel /v/ after both labial & dental stops, and in one subdialect, even after palatoalveolar affricates (/pv, tv, tSv/ -> [pB, tB, tSB])).
>>In the phonetic literature tap usually refers to either a motion upward of >>the tongue tip or more generally a very brief contact, while flap generally >>refers to a forward or downward motion (in particular, this describes the >>distinction between a dental or alveolar tap vs a postalveolar/retroflex >>flap). > >This seems to be closer to the actual reason for my impression since /B\/ >has the lips "flapping" outwards ... while /r R\/ remain at (relatively) one >place along the POA axis; the movement being parallel to it.
In the case of labial trills, it is, obviously, the lips themselves that are subjected to the Bernoulli effect - while in apical it is the tongue tip and in uvular trills it is the uvula itself. Since the lips are a larger mass, they exhibit greater motion during oscillation. I'm not really sure that you could characterize the lips as travelling between two places on the POA axis... Bfowol