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

OK, I've been looking into this a bit more.  Turns out that if you're
a
phonetician, it is not utterly ridiculous to classify h as an
approximant,
because of theories of the following nature:

1. [h] is essentially an unvoiced, non-syllabic vowel
2. all vowels are essentially syllabic approximants
3. therefore [h] is an unvoiced approximant.

Apparently Ladgefoed, at least at some point in his writing, would
have
approved reasoning of that kind, though I understand he eventually
changed
his mind about #2.  In his _Sounds of the World's Languages_ he never
tells you in so many words what to call [h], he just says it is
usually
called a glottal fricative but that he wants to talk about it in the
section along with vowels and approximants.

My copy of J.C. Catford is more enlightening.  Catford would only
consider
high vowels to be equivalent to approximants, not all vowels.  He
mentions
that [h] *can* be analyzed as a voiceless semivowel of the same
quality as
the vowel that follows it; under this analysis, [h] followed by a
high
vowel could conceiveably be considered an approximant.

As to the difference between approximants and fricatives, he gives a
useful criterion.  In a fricative, there is noticeable turbulence no
matter whether it is voiced or unvoiced.  In an approximant, there is
no
turbulence if it is voiced, and a very faint turbulence if it is
unvoiced.

(Please note that I never denied the existence of unvoiced
approximants; I
just said that voiced approximants are the unmarked kind.)

Anyway, this criterion turns out to be useless in the case of [h],
since
the articulator is the glottis, which interferes with the production
of
voice!  ("voiced h" is not merely the production of voice
simultaneous
with an [h], it's a short span of whisper or breathy voice
functioning as
a consonant.)

But Catford's clearly willing to accept the traditional
classification of
[h] as a glottal fricative, even on purely phonetic grounds, although
he
acknowledges the validity of alternative analyses.  He says, in so
many
words, that [h] is a glottal fricative, and that the reason it is
called
such is due to the presence of turbulence of the kind characteristic
of
fricatives.

Still, overall, the issue is not as cut and dried as I thought, at
least
if you're an extremely picky phonetician.  I apologize to Nik and
others
for being so exasperated at the notion that [h] was not a glottal
fricative -- apparently [h] is problematic from anyone's point of
view,
and notions like calling it an approximant are not completely out of
the
question, at least under some theories.

Ed




John Cowan wrote:

> Nik Taylor scripsit:
>
> > Then how can I hear [l_0] in [pl_0ej]?
>
> I think that when I say "play", what comes out in fact involves a voiceless
> lateral *fricative*.  The initial [ph] and the devoiced [l] mix to
> create frications.
>
> Historically, Welsh words with initial "ll" have gone into English
> with "fl", which is essentially "pl" with no occlusion, so perhaps
> this habit is not merely idiosyncratic.
>
> --
> John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
>        I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin
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