Re: Phonetics

Quoting Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...>:

> On 22/03/06, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> > On 3/21/06, Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...> wrote [quoting
> Mark]:
>
> > OK, got it.  Except . . . "non-syllabic vowel"?  Isn't that something
> > like "bright darkness"??
>
> No. A glide/semi-vowel is a non-syllabic vowel. [j] is the
> non-syllabic version of [i]; [w] of [u]; [M\] of [M]. All the rest are
> specified with the diacritic _^.
>
> > > > [M] is the Japanese /u/...
> > >
> > > Japanese /u/ has a different sort of liprounding to normal [u], but it
> >
> > Yes?  Do go on. :)
>
> Oh, I meant to delete that (typos & thinkos like this happen when I'm
> typing in a hurry on a qwerty keyboard). But I'll say it anyway.
>
> Japanese /u/ has a different sort of liprounding to normal [u], but it
> still has liprounding. The difference can't but expressed in the IPA,
> but it's the same difference as between Swedish /y:/ and /u\:/, which
> are often considered to be distinguished solely by this feature
> (rather than by height). I think the proper discussion of this is in
> the archives somewhere and I don't think I ever quite understood which
> rounding was front and which one was back... But Swedish /y:/ and
> Japanese /u/ have the same rounding, and Swedish /u\:/ and most
> languages /u/ have the same rounding. This difference is to some
> extent perceived as unrounding.
This sounds like a conflation of Std Swedish with my ideolect ...

Very briefly, Std /u\:/ differs from /2:/ by being labialized instead of just
plain rounded; [2_w:] vs [2:], or if BP's and my extension of the CXS be
accepted, [8\:] vs [2:]. /y:/ us just plain old [y:].

"Labialized" rounding here means that the lips assume a more rounded and
protruding position than for "plain" rounding. Supposedly, the plain rounding
is the more usual variant typologically, but I suspect plenty variation goes on
in languages where the difference is never contrastive. It seems unlikely to me
that the labialized version should be perceived as unrounded, but there's nowt
as queer as folk ...


* It's recommended you stop reading here, to avert a YASPT. *


In my 'lect, /u\:/ is [u\:], and has the same kind of rounding as /y:/ and /2:/.
IIUC, this is a retention of an older state of affairs.

Tangentially, German /y:/ seems to to have the "labialized" rounding. Germans
sometimes hear my /y:/'s as /i:/'s, suggesting its rounding is under their
radar.

                                                 Andreas