Re: Cerebral consonants & transliterarion

Pablo Flores eskribe:

>Just a question to the list: are "cerebral" consonants the same
>as retroflex consonants? I encountered the term while reading
>about Sanskrit. Isn't it annoying when someone calls things
>in a different way than you're accustomed to? Why would you
>call something "cerebral" (unless the etimology of the word
>differs from current "brain").
I've only heard the term 'cerebral' used in indological terms -- the
literal translation of the Sanskrit term used to describe retroflexes in
both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages.  Maybe it's because the tongue
points towards the brain in forming these.  Actually my theory is that
many linguists in the past describe consonants in the dental to uvular
range according not to where in the mouth the tongue articulates, but
what the shape of the tongue is.  Therefore, a dental could be called an
'apical', a velar a 'dorsal'...

>As for this, I'd like to know if anyone out there tends to use
>retroflex sounds. I'm trying to incorporate them into a lang
>I'm sketching, and I've found there's no "nice" way to transliterate
>them (I'm having retroflex t, d, and n, and I can't use uppercase
>letters -- they're reserved for other uses and I actually hate
>Klingon-like transliteration.) What do you do when this things
>happen?
In local English terms, I've heard here in East Texas retroflex
realizations of sibilants, especially among the older generations.  This
is especially true after back vowels or a dark velar 'l' (as in 'else').
Of course in many parts of North America alveolars and sibilants next to
'r' often become retroflex (as in 'train', 'hard').

How do you transcribe retros in case-insensitive Roman type?  It's
pretty hard, because you have to have a simple, practical way of
transliterating dentals and, often, palatals/postalveolars.  You'll
probably need digraphs.  Here are some natlang examples:

Mandarin Chinese, Pinyin transcription:

d   t
t   t^h (^h = superscript h)
n   n
l   l
z   ts
c   ts^h
s   s
zh  ts` (` = retroflex)
ch  ts`^h
sh  s`
r   z`/r`
j   ts' (' = palatal)
q   ts'^h
x   s'

The -h digraphs indicate retroflexes, and <r> is naturally retroflex.
To palatize, change <z c s> to <j q x>.

For Pama-Nyungan (Australian) languages: retroflexes are marked with a
preceding r, for example <rt> for /t`/, and palatals are marked with -j:
<tj> /t'/.  (Incidentally, local forms of Swedish and Norwegian have
retroflexes in r- combinations such as <rt>, <rd>, <rs>...)

If you decide to use a WGL-4 or a Unicode font, diacritics such as the
acute accent or the cedilla can be used to mark a retroflex -- provided
that you don't need it for a palatized consonant or something like that.
(I use the cedilla for transliterating my conlang, Tech, which has
retroflexes galore.)

Or, if all else fails, do what Abkhaz did to the Cyrillic alphabet --
invent new letters!

Cheers,

Danny

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