Re: THEORY: Feature geometry for uvulars/pharyngeals

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.
Uvulars have much more in common with velars than with
pharyngeals, the difference between uvulars and velars being only
gradual.  Uvulars are articulated before the nasal passage,
for instance, and pharyngeals behind it, so you can have uvular
nasals but no pharygeal ones.  It seems much more natural to me
to group uvulars with palatals and velars, and pharyngeals with
glottals.

>        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.

Jörg.

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