Re: USAGE: syllables
| From: | Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, June 12, 2003, 20:55 |
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"Mark J. Reed" wrote:
> A question: is the above sequence universal?
Yes.
> My subjective experience in producing the sounds would lead me to say
> that fricatives were more sonorous than nasals or liquids
Sonorous means more like vowels. The higher the sonority, the more
likely to be used as a syllabic. For example, English (at least in some
dialects) allows nasals and liquids as syllabics, e.g., in "little" or
"button". Not all dialects of English make those syllabic, of course.
> The grouping of [l] with stops rather than with [r]/[w] does seem odd.
> But what is Old Yivrian? I've not heard of it.
Presumably the ancestor of Yivrian?
I'd analyze that grouping of [l] as proof that [l] is descended from
something else. It's in the same group as nasals, so one possibility is
that [l] is derived from [n]. Yoruba, for example, uses [n] and [l] as
allophones.
--
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