Boreanesian /3/ (was Re: Paucity of Phonemes...

Thomas Wier wrote:

>Kristian Jensen wrote:
>
>> Nik Taylor wrote:
>>
>> >Kristian Jensen wrote:
>> >> where; /t[/ and /d[/ are laminal denti-alveolar, /L/ is a lateral
>> >>        fricative, /3/ is a consonantal version of /@/ (schwa - or
>> >>        more specifically a raised and centralized close-mid back
>> >>        vowel).
>> >
>> >What?  How can /@/ be pronounced as a consonant?
>>
>> Easy! Consider English /r/ and then the American English retroflexed
>> vowel in words like 'bird' and 'heard'. English /r/ could be seen as a
>> consonantal version of the retroflexed vowel.
>
>That's true, but that doesn't change the fact that /@/ (as opposed to
>[@]) can't be a consonant. /@/ in most dialects either has no allophones
>at all, or can alternate only with another vowel, [V], but in no case that I know
>of can it be allophonically a consonant.  Moreover, /r/, /r=/ and /@/ are
>all separate phonemes, with only the first, a retroflex approximant, being
>nonvocalic (approximants are technically neither vowels nor consonants).
I'm not sure what you are trying to tell me, but perhaps you have
misunderstood something. I'm assuming you are commenting about something
you _though_ I said about Boreanesian /3/ being an allophone of /@/. If
so, then that's _not_ what I said. Boreanesian /3/ and /@/ are separate
phonemes (hence the use of slashes). When I wrote that /3/ was a
'consonantal version of /@/', I was drawing an analogy between the two
just like one could draw one between /j/ and /i/. I wasn't stating that
they were allophones of each other. Note also that Boreanesian /@/ is
(and I repeat) more specifically a raised and centralized close-mid back
unrounded vowel. Yes, its close to a schwa, but its not quite there.
I chose the symbol /@/ merely because it would be more convenient than
writing say /i-/.

You snipped a couple of things from my last post as well cause I could
have sworn I mentioned that English wasn't a very good example. I
mentioned Danish /r/ as a better parallel to Boreanesian /3/. Note that
Danish /r/ is uvular in syllable initial-position but a pharyngeal
semivowel in syllable-final position. So in syllable-final position,
Danish /r/ is _analogous_ to the low back unrounded vowel [V]. Similarly
for Boreanesian, syllable-final /3/ is _analogous_ to the vowel /<raised
centralized close-mid back unrounded>/.

In both Danish and Boreanesian, its more appropriate to distinguish
semivowels from approximants -- something the IPA has ceased doing.
The midsagittal passage is not that narrow in Danish syllable-final
/r/ and Boreanesian syllable-final /3/ as it would normally be if they
were approximants. Functionally, they also differ from approximants in
that rather than functioning as obstruents in the phonological system,
they function clearly as sonorants. These sounds are clearly semivocalic
-- adding to appropriateness of drawing an analogy between them and
vowels. I suppose that instead of saying that /3/ was a consonantal
version of /@/, I should have said that /3/ was a _semivocalic_ version
of /@/ (a raised and centralized close-mid back unrounded vowel). Better
yet, I should have stated that /3/ was a semivocalic version of _/i-/_.

I hope I clarified things a bit more.

-kristian- 8)