Re: laterals (was: Pharingials, /l/ vs. /r/ in Southeast Asia)

>> The difference is in the _sequencing_ of the
>> closures. In a lateral, the central closure is
>> kept all the way while the lateral release is
>> being produced and only when the lateral is
>> 'finished' the central closure is released. In
>> a central plosive with lateral release, you first
>> release an amount of air centrally and release
Sorry, I left out an important word here: I meant
"and _then_ release". (I started the paragraph
talking about sequentiation, so I think the 'typo'
should be easily inferrable from context).


>> an amount of it laterally.
>
>Incorrect.  That would *not* be a lateral release!  Lateral release is,
>by defintion, what you're calling a lateral stop!  I can't even see how
>you could hear a "central plosive with lateral release" by your
>definition.
No, there's a difference between a double articulation
involving an initial central release and then a lateral
release, and a simple articulation involving only a
lateral release; and that's the difference between a
"d with a lateral release" and a "lateral stop". A
similar difference is that between a "nasal stop" [n]
and a "stop with nasal release" [d_n].


>> You have to define also _where_ the release of the
>> air is produced, centrally or laterally, and this is
>> what distinguishes the laterals from the other sounds.
>> In a lateral stop, the central closure is kept while
>> the lateral release is produced. In a central stop,
>> the lateral closure is kept while the central release
>> is produced.
>
>Right ... and if "lateral release is produced", then it's a stop with
>lateral release!  Lateral release contrasts with central release.  It's
>just that no one says, for example, "dental stop with central release"
>because it's redundant, central release being the default.  Just as no
>one says "pulmonic egressive dental stop".
The terminology can be confusing because it is
difficult to differentiate between the double
articulations involving sequential central and
lateral releases and the simple ones involving
only lateral releases. But "lateral fricative"
is used to refer to the simple articulation
involving only a lateral release with friction,
so it seems logical that the term "lateral stop"
should refer to the simple articulation that
involves only a lateral release with plosion and
that "dental stop with lateral release" refers
to a double articulation, since "dental stop"
alone refers to an articulation with central
release. When you say "dental stop with nasal
release" your not referring to a dental n (i.e.
"dental nasal stop"), are you? "Dental stop with
nasal release" is used for the double articulation
with a sequential oral and nasal release, so why
would you take "dental sop with lateral release"
to refer to a "lateral stop" instead of to the
double articulation?


>> There's no way you can lower the whole tongue between
>> the individual taps in a trill, because they are
>> pronounced much more quickly than you would literally
>> have time to perform that movement, so the plosions
>> in a trill are produced by a vibratory movement of
>> the tongue rather than a wide raising and lowering.
>
>But in a trill, you do not lower the tongue at all!  It's the force of
>the air that causes the tongue to flap, not the usage of the muscles in
>the tongue.  The difference is that in a stop or tap, you're actually
>using the muscles of the tongue to raise and lower the tongue.  In a
>trill, it's the force of air that causes the tip of the tongue to
>vibrate.  If you don't believe me, try vibrating the tip of your tongue
>without making a trill, that is, without vibrating against the roof of
>your mouth and without any airstream.  It's physically impossible.
But the final result, whatever strategy you need
to use to achieve it, is that the tip of the tongue
performs a series of plosions. Neither you use the
same strategy to achieve a bilabial plosive as to
achieve an alveolar plosive or as to achieve a velar
plosive, do you? But nobody says that bilabial
plosives are not plosives because the articulatory
strategy is different; the final result is the
same, a plosion at the place of articulation, so
they're plosive.


>> Hunh? Approximant and fricative taps are not rare
>> in Spanish at all, they are perfectly valid and not
>> uncommon allophones of /4/. Just don't touch the
>> alveolar ridge with the tip of your tongue when
>> pronouncing the tap and you get an apico-alveolar
>> fricative/approximant tap instead of an apico-alveolar
>> plosive tap.
>
>But then, it's not a tap.  To be a tap, by definition, the tongue has to
>*touch* the roof of the mouth.  You seem to be inventing your own
>definitions of sounds here.  If Spanish does have allophones of /4/ that
>do *not* involve the tongue hitting the roof of the mouth, then they're,
>by definition, non-tap allophones!  That would be like saying that the
>use of [4] in American English is a stop, just because it's an allophone
>of a stop.
You're saying that we do not consider our non-plosive
allophones as taps, but we _do_. In fact, many Spanish
speakers won't even perceive the difference between
making the full closure in the -r- of "pero" and not
making it completely unless they aren't explicitly
made aware of it, and even then they would be completely
baffled if you told them that the sound is something
completely different from a tap so that it is not
possible to describe the sound as a kind of tap.
Besides, if you don't call them taps, then what do
you call them?

Taps are defined by the _quickness_ of the movement,
which is what distinguishes them from non-rhotic
consonants and not their the degree of closure,
which in most languages that use taps is irrelevant.
If you choose to strictly restrict the term to
specifically the plosive kind and no other at all,
then you're sillily overrestricting it, because that
restriction is both unnecessary and inconvenient.


>> For an apico-postalveolar instead of
>> an apico-alveolar, just curl the tip of the tongue
>> so that it points towards the postalveolar are
>> instead of towards the alveolar ridge. You do that
>> all the time when you pronounce English initial r's.
>> If you don't pronounce them like a flap, that is,
>> quickly enough to make them look like a pulse
>
>You're clearly mistaken about English, then.  If /r/ is a "flap" or
>"tap", then so is every other English sound!  I hear no difference
>between "red" and "rrrrrrrrrred" (that is, an extended r) other than
>length, just as if I were to contrast "zero" and "zzzzzzzzzzzero".
It is usually a single-pulse rhotic, but there's no
phonemic distinction between single- and multiple-pulse
like there is in Spanish, so it doesn't matter if
you pronounce "red" or "rrrrrrred".

It does matter if you pronounce it alveolarly and
plosively instead of postalveolarly and approximantly,
because the alveolar plosive tap is in English an
intervocalic allophone of /t/ and /d/.


>The
>only English r's I know are either approximants or taps or trills,
>according to dialect.
Approximant _flapped_ sounds (or "quickly-pronounced
approximants", if you don't allow me to use the word
"flap", which I don't see why because that's what
they are, a kind of flap in which the closure is not
complete). If you don't flap it, that is, if you don't
pronounce it quickly enough, it sounds like a kind of
retroflex y and not like an r. As I said, I can record
a sample of both for you to compare.


>Javier, I think you need to study the *standard* terminology.  You're
>just confusing everyone by using your own definitions of words.
I know that the standard usage of "tap", "flap" and
"trill" refers primarily to the plosive kinds of single-
and multiple-pulse rhotics, I talked about this in one
of my other posts. And I explicitly said that I was
broadening the meaning, because there's no other
terminology available (except using long descriptions
like "single/multiple-pulse rhotic") to describe the
fricative and approximant kinds of rhotics and I don't
see why the terms tap and trill cannot be broadened
this way because the tap and trill phonemes frequently
include fricative/approximant allophones and the way
fricative/approximant taps/flaps/trills are pronounced
is all the same as in the plosive kinds except for the
degree of closure, which is not what distinguishes
a tap/flap/trill from a non-rhotic plosive.

Cheers,
Javier