Re: help! phonology...& addendum

On Tue, 24 Oct 2000 19:10:46 -0000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...>
wrote:

>> Date:         Tue, 24 Oct 2000 07:32:08 +0200
>> From:         Irina Rempt <ira@...>
>
>> They're in a class of their own; there are no dental stops in
>> English, even if that's what they told us /t d/ were called. Why
>> can't they teach the word "alveolar" to twelve-year-olds?
>
>That would mean that the teacher would have to remember the word too.
>
>> Dutch doesn't have /T D/, but it doesn't have the affricates /tS dZ/
>> either, except in loan-words (or /S/ /Z/, for that matter, but those
>> loan-words happen to be more frequent, mostly from French), so it's
>> the same problem only with different orphans.
>
>It seems that the auditory difference between dental, alveolar,
>palatoalveolar, and retroflex fricatives is much greater than between
>the corresponding stops.
>
>So it's no wonder to me that many languages distinguish more of the
>former than of the latter.
>
>Lars Mathiesen (U of Copenhagen CS Dep) <thorinn@...> (Humour NOT
>marked)
Aren't there also some articulatory differences (e.g. grooved vs. flat)
that can be made with fricatives?

Jeff