Re: whoops, another question -- pharyngealized consonants anyone?

R. Nierse wrote after I wrote:

> > But in cases of CV > VC metathesis (the most common inflection in the
> > language), CVaC and CV=E4C end up being the same, unless I add a *fou=
rth*
> > status of consonants -- pharyngealized!  This would occur only with t=
he
> > vowel <a>.  So, what is transcribed as theoretical _ti=E4t_and _tiat_=
=20
>would
>be
> > pronounced /tI@t/ and /tIVt_A/ -- but hey, how do you mark
>pharyngealization
> > in ASCII?
> >
>Right in front of me I have a chart of Ubykh. Ubykh has 83 consonants
>(including sonorants), 14 of them are pharyngealyzed. Here they are writ=
ten
>with a mocron over them. I suggewst you write a - after the consonant. S=
o
>/q/ vs /q-/, /p'/ vs. /p-'/ etc.
Whoa, glad you mentioned Ubyx!  Sergei Starostin, the Russian linguist wh=
ose=20
got a lot of work in progress on various language families available for=20
public digestion on the internet, wrote a paper (also available online!)=20
about North Caucasian phonology (he's pretty liberal on language=20
classifications; his Proto-Altaic reconstructions include Korean and=20
Japanese data).  The Northwest Caucasian languages especially have quite=20
large consonant inventories (and tiny vowel systems!), but Ubyx sure take=
s=20
the cake.  (It held the record before Khoisan languages like !Xu~ were=20
discovered, but bear in mind Ubyx has no clicks.)

Sadly, Ubyx, which was last spoken by a community in Istanbul, is now=20
extinct.

But you know -- I like that, the hyphen (and I forgot about tilde as well=
,=20
since it's the IPA symbol).  I think I'll use it.  So the Tech word for=20
'book, scripture' is _kjIT-A:v-_ (or _kjIT~A:v~_, with a palatized k and =
a=20
pharyngealized T (lenited t) and v (lenited b).  (This is of course a=20
borrowing from Arabic _kita:b_.)

>Ubykh has (amongst others):
>k       k' (ejective)   k` (palatalized)        k0 (labialized) k'0     =
k`'=20
>     + voiced
>counterparts g, g`, g0
>q       q'              q`              q0              q'0     q`'     =
+=20
>q- , q-0, q-', q'-0
That's one of my favorite consonants -- palatized uvular ejective.  And t=
he=20
others.  Makes the mouth sound like a big Latin percussion ensemble.

>I hope this can help you out.
Oh yeah it does.  DW

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