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

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 Joe <joe@...> wrote:
> I know nothing of Polish, but here's what I do know.
>
> It has three 'sh'-ish sounds - <sz>, <s-acute>, and <si>.  AFAIK <sz> is
> [s`] or [S], and both <s-acute> and <si> are [C].  I'm sure  Jan will
> correct me on this - I'm probably wrong.
  Unfortunately you are wrong. <s-acute> and <si> are simple orthographic
variations: <si> occurs before vowels (and when [s\i] cluster is written),
<s-acute> otherwise. (The same is for <z-acute> ~ <zi>, <c-acute> ~ <ci>,
<dz-acute> ~ <dzi>, <n-acute> ~ <ni>.)

  <sz> is simply /S/ = [S], i.e. unvoiced "postalveolar" fricative and it
has no palatalised counterpart at all. Phonetically bothe <s- acute> and
<si> are [s\], i.e. unvoiced alveolo-palatal fricative, but phonologically
they are /s'/ (or: /s_j/), i.e. unvoiced palatalized alveolar fricative.

  Moreover, there are minimal triplets: <kasza> /kaSa/ 'cereal' ~ <Kasia>
/kas'a/ 'Katy' ~ <kasa> /kasa/ 'cash desk, ticket office, counter'.

  Phonetically <s-acute> and <si> cannot be [C], i.e. a true palatal
fricative, since some Polish dialects have palatalized <ch> = /x'/ which
is pronounced as [C] (or: [C_-] to be hypercorrect). (In fact alveolo-
palatal [s\] can be rendered as [s_-] = [C_+].)

  Reference: <http://seelrc.org/grammars/pdf/compgrammar_polish.pdf>

Reply