Re: Vowels?

En réponse à Chris Palmer <cecibean@...>:

>
> Now, now, don't confuse the man. :) There is a clear break between
> vowels
> and consonants, and that is physical contact between articulators.
But there's no physical contact between articulators as soon as you're talking
about fricatives! Only the stops are defined by physical contact between
articulators, all the other sounds (vowels AND consonnants) are defined by the
size of the cavity and the distance between the nearest articulators (which is
never zero!). Even if it's true that there are still contacts between some
articulators, but it's the case with vowels too (for instance, when I
pronounce /i/, there is a definite contact between the tongue and the palate,
though it's definitely a vowel).

 We
> can
> draw a clear line between, for example, /i/ and /c,/ (c cedilla, a
> palatal
> fricative).
>
One is pronounced with friction (the air flow is forced to pass between the
tongue and the palate), while the other is not (the air flow passes around it).
Personally I can't draw a clear line between those two sounds. I pronounce them
with the tongue in the same position (when I pronounce for instance the German
pronoun 'ich', my tongue doesn't move at all during the whole word. It's just
tensed to produce the friction, but was already against the palate when
pronouncing /i/).

> > In between, there is a blurred frontier of sounds that can be
> > used both as vowels or consonants (the so-called semi-vowels or
> semi-
> > consonants).
>
> The sole phonetic difference between /i/ and /j/ is whether or not
> they
> are the head of a syllable (the former is, the latter is not). It's a
> matter of rhythm (prosody), not articulation.
But that's the whole point of my post! You define vocalic and consonantic
sounds by prosodic features, not articulation features. You're just proving my
point that there's no definite line between vowels and consonants by this
remark.

 The only blurred frontier
> is
> between shades of phones as they are performed, but phonemically, the
> boundaries between consonants and vowels are usually quite clear.
>
Of course. Sanskrit as definite phonemic vowels like /r=/ and /l=/ (and their
consonantic correspondents are phonemic too), while French definitely
considers /l/ as a consonant. The line can be clearly drawn, but only for one
language at a time, and other languages may draw the line somewhere else. So in
absolute, you can't draw a line.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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