Re: Syllabic consonants (was: Re: Beek)

Isidora Zamora sikyal:

> >[snip]
> > > the /l/ is actually the nucleus of the syllable.  In forming a present
> > > active participle of this verb, the /l/ ends up in the syllable onset, and
> > > the word is stressed on the second syllable, which contains the
> > > /l/.  <tovleis>, 'instructing';  <toerevl>, (stressed on the second to last
> > > syllable) means 'war"; and then there is the minimal pair <mta> and <mta>,
> > > one of them stressed on the syllabic /m/ the other stressed on the
> > > <ai>.  (I don't know what either word in the minimal pair actually means,
> > > but I think that they are probably verbs.)
> >
> >Interesting. Usually, I'd think of syllabic /m/ and consonantal /m/ as
> >being two totally different phonemes altogether. Your language seems to
> >alternate between them freely, which is rather interesting.
>
> To me it just seemed to be a logical thing to do as soon as I had made up
> the phonotactic constraint that liquid+nasal clusters were illegal (I
> already knew that the language had syllabic sonorants.)  BTW, in the native
> orthography, AFAIK, it is not notated whether a sonorant consonant is
> syllabic or not.  It should be transparent to speakers/readers when to
> pronounce them syllabic and when to pronounce them consonental.
>
> I wonder if any natural language alternates them like this?
I'm certain that they do, though I can't think of any examples right off.
Wait, here's one: A Russian word like /petr-/, which alternates between
nominative ['pjo.tr=], and genitive [pje.'tra]. (Hopefully those are
reasonably accurate). The /r/ must be syllabic at the end of the word, but
becomes part of the onset when a vowel is added that can be the nucleus.

English should have some similar examples, though I don't know of any
right off the top of my head.

Tzingrizil, a sister language of Yivrian, has this process, too. A word
like /rd�ro/ "hat", is phonetically [r=.'du.r@], but when the definite
prefix /ni/ is added, you get /nird�ro/, phonetic [n1r.'du.r@].

> Now, if the behavior that I have outlined above is correct, that has some
> ramifications (which I had not thought through before now) for my minimal
> pair verbs <mta> which begin with syllabic a syllabic sonorant.  If the
> syllabicity(?) of a sonorant consonant is conditioned by its phonological
> environment then it is possible for those /m/'s to turn consonental when
> preceeded by a vowel.  As a matter of fact, if the /l/ in <tovleis> turns
> consonental because it can in that context, then I cannot think of any
> reasonable way to for the /m/ in <mta> not to do exactly the same
> thing.  (I think it would be completely unnatural if it didn't behave in
> the same way.  Can you think of any reasoning to the contrary?)  Here is an
> example: the way to negate a verb is to add the negative prefix emi- to
> it.  So you get <emimta> 'to not...whatever mta means.'  This would have to
> be broken up into syllables as e-mim-ta, and stressed either e-MIM-ta or
> e-mim-TA, depending on which of the two verbs it was.
>
> I suppose that an alternative would be to trash the idea of the sonorant
> consonats alternating between syllabic and consonantal realizations and
> have <tovleis> pronounced as to-VL-eis and <emimta> pronounced as either
> e-mi-M-ta or e-mi-m-TA.  (This would probably also require the addition of
> a syllabicity diacritic to the transcription of the language to avoid
> confusion.)  Which is the better one to go with do you think: phonemically
> distinct syllabic and consonantal sonorant consonants, or syllabic and
> consonantal sonorant consonants as allophonic variations conditioned by
> context?
Oh, no, please go with the alternating version! It's much more fun. Both
can be considered equally naturalistic and have natlang correlates, but I
much prefer the alternations between syllabic and non-syllabic sonorants.

For even more fun, you can apply the same thing to high vowels. I.e., have
a word like /uma/, which when prefixed with /emi/ becomes [e.miw.ma],
rather than [e.mi.u.ma]. For kicks, throw some high dissimilation in
there, so that /emi + uma/ is actually [e.mew.ma]. Whee!


--
Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/
http://students.washington.edu/jaspax/blog

Jesus asked them, "Who do you say that I am?"

And they answered, "You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground
of our being, the kerygma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our
interpersonal relationship."

And Jesus said, "What?"

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