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Re: Bilabial / labiodental distinction

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Wednesday, June 12, 2002, 9:31
En réponse à Christopher B Wright <faceloran@...>:

> > IPA and X-SAMPA don't give any values for labiodental plosives. > However, > they (the l.d.p.'s) would seem to be pronounceable. Since they don't > have > special values, should I conclude that they just don't sound different > than their bilabial equivalents? Or is it that the sounds don't appear > in > natlangs? >
AFAIK there's nothing impossible in them. It just happens that nearly no known language uses them. As for marking them, why not using the IPA "retracted" diacritic? (a minus under the letter) It is normally used only with vowels so no ambiguity could arise. In X-SAMPA it is rendered as /_-/. So we could have /p_-/ and /b_-/ as labiodental plosives.
> Would people be able to distinguish between these?
That's THE big question. But since it's a conlang, why not simply decide that the people who will speak it happen to distinguish them easily? :)) Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.