Re: transcription questions

Iblisset wrote:


> I have two sounds I'm having trouble transcribing:
 >   "hk". This is a sound made by exhaling and quickly stopping the flow of
air by pressing the rear of the tongue to the roof of the mouth. It isn't
voiced and it isn't a clicking sound, and I'm not sure how to transcribe it.

>    "tth". This is a lot like [T], but has a kind of hissing / daffy-duck
quality to it.

"hk" - preaspirated.  I assume it has to follow a vowel, otherwise you might
have either articulatory difficulties, or analytical difficulties (is the
aspiration part of the preceding consonant or of the -k?).  I've read the
various responses to this-- personally I don't get any friction (no [hxk]
etc.), though I can if I'm sloppy..  The one language I know of that has
(non-phonemic) preaspirates, has them intervocallically, in the env
"stressed V____unstressed V", e.g. (fake data) ['so(h)pa, 'sa(h)ka] /sopa,
saka/.

Assuming it has to follow a vowel, then the "h" portion could be
represented, if necessary, as a period of voiceless offset to the vowel.
How this would look in SAMPA I have no idea. In a quick-and-dirty field
situation, it would be enough to write a superscript h before the consonant.

"tth" if I read you a-right, is one of my favorite sounds.  _Dental
affricate_, dental [t] with dental fricative [T] release, so [tT]. Then
again, it might just be a strongly aspirated dental [t]-- the aspirated
release of the stop across the compressed tip of the tongue/teeth is going
to produce a [T] like turbulence anyway.

Reply