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

At 1:31 pm -0700 6/2/00, Ed Heil wrote:
>Yes, voiceless lateral approximants are phonemes in some languages; I
>can't remember which ones but Ladgefoed mentions some; I think Tibetan
>is one of them, so maybe Boudewijn can confirm this for us.
Yes, voiceless laterals certainly occur in Tibetan.  But are they voiceless
approximants or are they the more familiar voiceless lateral fricatives?

Philip, can you help us?
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At 1:51 pm -0700 6/2/00, Ed Heil wrote:
>Raymond Brown wrote:
[...]
>> If one accepts Ladgefoid's analysis above, then [h] is, presumably, a
>> vocoid but functions as a consonant in English.  However, there seems one
>> weakness in this.  AFAIK all vocoids _may_ act as centers of syllables; I
>> fail to see how [h] can ever do that.
>
>I think that "syllabic [h]" would be a fair, if somewhat too vague,
>description of the "unvoiced vowels" one sometimes finds in American
>Indian languages.  (One would also have to specify the quality of the
>vowel to make the description at all adequate.)
Do these unvoiced vowels act as centers of syllables?  If they do,
presumably they have some vocalic coloring (otherwise there'll be only one
unvoiced vowel) which seems to me to be a little more than merely "syllabic
[h]"

I find it difficult to think of [h] as a vocoid.  Does any know how Pike
classified [h]?

Ray.


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