Re: THEORY: h huffnpuffery (was: RE: varia)

At 8:30 am +0000 6/2/00, Ed Heil wrote:
>> The voiceless lateral fricative is very different from the so-called
>> voiceless /l/ of /plej/ (play), which IMO might be better described as
>> devoiced.  You IIRC in fact agreed with us on that point.
>
>Indeed.  I have a tape of my stepfather pronouncing Navajo, and the
>[l-] sounds to me just like "sh."
Sounds like the genuine Welsh article   :)

>Very much a fricative, and
>very different from the l in "play".
Exactly.

>Clearly, unless by "l" you mean [l], the IPA symbol, "voiceless l" is
>a
>vague enough term to cover the fricative or the approximant.
Indeed it is; but then it can (and I've met this too many times) lead to
the conclusion that both are the same.  As you have observed, they are not.
IMO to call the fricative version 'voiceless' without further
qualificative, is apt to give the misleading impression that its voiced
equivalent is [l] - it isn't.  The voiced equivalent is the Nguni {dl},
SAMPA [K\].  IIRC Philip Jonsson has proposed using [l^S] and [l^Z] for the
voiceless & voiced lateral fricatives respectively.

>(Incidentally, voiceless l's which are approximants, not fricatives,
>do
>occur in some languages.
....as phonemes?  So I've been told; but they seem pretty rare. (Philip
tells me the so-called voicless /l/ in Icelandic is, in fact, the voiceless
lateral fricative).

>I doubt that they ever contrast with the
>fricative versions.)
I doubt it very much also.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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