Re: new(?) phoneme discovered

-----Original Message-----
>From: René Uittenbogaard <ruittenb@...>
>Today, while driving to work, I accidentally discovered a new phoneme.
>It appears to be possible to make a voiceless whistling sound between
>the glottis.
What, no Phoneme Nazi replies? Okay, I'll bite.

*fumes* It's only a phoneme if it occurs contrastively in a known language!!!! GRAR!

Er, slightly more seriously, I can't even begin to image what you mean here. I'm
at work in an open lab environment, so I can't sit here trying to whistle
through my glottis tóo much. I guess I'll have to wait until I get home, and
annoy my long-suffering wife. She's a pretty good sport, though, and tends to
tolerate my making strange noises, intentional and otherwise.

Doesn't a whistle need some kind of chamber in which to form the right kind of
turbulence? If you can record and post examples, it might help me understand.
Spectrograms *might* help, but they're not usually of more than superficial use
for articulatory questions (at least to me, YMMV). Either way
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ is your friend.



Paul

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