Re: Cat phonemes

IMO the hiss is best represented as an heavily aspirated front semivowel.

I could be wrong ;)

Wesley Parish

On Thursday 29 November 2007 01:49, Mark J. Reed wrote:
> Hissing may be /h/ phonemically, but it's surely realized as [x:] or
> [X:] or [C:] or something like that. [h] is far too tame (and not very
> hissy).
>
> On 11/27/07, Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
> > This thread caused me to analyse the speech of my house-friend a
> > little, an 8 kg male - very handsome and cuddly, but you wouldn't
> > want to meet him in a dark alley.
> >
> > I found that he has the famous 4 cat phonemes, /m/, /i/, /a/ and /u/,
> > and in addition he uses an /e/ quite a bit, and the /u/ and the /m/
> > can open up to /o/ and /w/ respectively, but I suspect these are only
> > allophones. So far I haven't heard any /N/, but maybe cats have
> > dialects, and/or large variations in their vocal organs.
> >
> > I think the purr may be phonemic too. At least it seems he means
> > something entirely different when he says it with a purr than when he
> > says the same thing without it.
> >
> > However he does not rely on speech very much. Rather he prefers
> > telepathy, based on his experience that "daddy always knows what I
> > need." Unfortunately, his daddy isn't very susceptible to that kind
> > of communication.
> >
> > Technically I think the purr is similar to the vibrantness that can
> > be heard in many people's voices.
> >
> > LEF
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