Re: THEORY: Feature geometry for uvulars/pharyngeals

Hi,

Jörg Rhiemeier a écrit :
> JS Bangs <jaspax@...> writes:
>
>
>>I've been poking around for a while, and I'm really stymied trying to find
>>out how to fit uvulars and pharyngeals into a feature geometric system.
>>I've gotten a couple of fragmentary descriptions from here and there, but
>>nothing very conclusive or helpful.
>
>
> I don't think it makes much sense to group uvulars and pharyngeals
> together.  They aren't really that alike, phonetically.
I'm sorry but I think they are. They do form a natural class with
glottals and pharyngeals in many languages (classical arabic is a well
known example).


>>       The best I can get is that there's two
>>possibilities:
>>
>>A privative feature [pharyngeal] under the Place node (but what about
>>distinguishing uvulars from pharyngeals?).
>
>
> Uvulars are not [pharyngeal] in any meaningful sense.
But [pharyngeal] is just a label. Maybe [guttural] is more appropriate,
though I personnally prefer [pharyngeal]. It's just like saying that [i]
is [coronal] : it doesn't make sense on its own, but it is a rough label
that allows you to have a unified treatment of consonants and vowels.

Regards,

Julien.

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