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Re: Lateral/vowel coarticulation

From:Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 6:18
On Feb 17, 2009, at 11:29 AM, Roger Mills wrote:

>>>> On Sun, 15 Feb 2009 19:14:54 -0600, Eric >> Christopherson wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Hi, folks. I've been wondering for a long >> time if any languages >>>>> feature coarticulation of laterals (e.g. /l/) >> and vowels. I seem to >>>>> be able to produce these, and they sound >> somewhat distinct, although >>>>> not as distinct as other vowels; but I've >> searched and never found >>>>> any mention of this occurring in natural >> languages (either phonemicly >>>>> or allophonicly). > > Not sure what you're getting at here. Do you mean [l+V] or [V+l]? > In Engl. [l+V] has no audible affect on the V, though the [l] > varies ("bright/dental vs. dark/velarized") depending on front/back > V. Could it be that you're velarizing your [l]s?
No; I was talking about just trying to pronounce e.g. [l] at the same time as I pronounce an approximation of [a]. I only do so when experimenting (not while speaking English).
> That might have an affect on the following V quality. In [V+l] > there tend to be off-glides on the vowel, again depending on > frontness/backness, and the [l] also varies. Engl. certainly has > what might be called "C with lateral release" (plan, blade, glue, > clay, fly,)
I see. So it appears that in most cases when one sees something transcribed [kl], it would be correct (in an even narrower transcription) to write [k_ll]?
> but the release has no audible affect (IMHO) on the vowel--maybe on > a spectrogram the formants would be different. But they're > considered clusters in terms of Engl. phonology. > > In Engl. a following [r\] does have an affect on the vowel quality > (also V+N) as we've discussed before. But I'm sure there can be > retroflexed vowels that could be "units" not "clusters" in some > languages. Maybe what you're hearing is some slight retroflexion > (rather than laterality per se)??? >>>> >>>>> However (and this is what prompted me to ask >> this now), I was just >>>>> reading about Hmong, and it has labials and >> dentals with (dental) >>>>> lateral release. I have never heard a >> consonant with lateral release; >>>>> would the vowel following a consonant with >> lateral release sound like >>>>> what I described above? > > I know nothing about Hmong, but IIRC _historically_ proto-Tai had > clusters e.g. *pl, *pr that developed in various directions (often > > /t/).
Cool! I have a conlang where *pn > tt (and other changes along similar lines).
> Maybe Hmong retains these in some way... but I suspect they should > be analyzed as clusters
Hmong is Hmong-Mien, not Tai, though both are grouped together under the Austro-Tai hypothesis.
> > I think generally, in phonetics, "release" (of affricates) is by > definition at the same place of articulation as the stop-- [ts, tK, > tS, pf, kx]-- and it might then depend on the phonological > structure of a language whether these are considered units or > clusters (cf. [ts] in English and German). > > > Jeff Jones wrote: >>>> Not for the typical /tK)/ type sound. > You: >>> That's not a case of lateral release, AFAIK. > Jeff: >> It isn't? [K] is lateral and it serves as the release >> of [t] here ... > > Absolutely. Lots of languages have a /tK/ (contrastive unit > phoneme, it may or may not arise historically from a cluster); > while English can have a phonetic [tK] (eg. in Atlantic, Hitler, > Gatling, some versions of "bottling") but phonologically it's a > cluster.
I was mistaken about that.

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Garth Wallace <gwalla@...>