Re: vowels: are they necessary?

Steven Williams wrote:
>  --- # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:
>
>>When a consonant is fricative or trilled, it can be
Well, some of us can only trill for brief periods :(

>>continued as long we want. Is there any languages
>>that has some words that are only consonants without
>>vowels?

> Oh, quite a few. Russian comes to mind; 's' and 'v'
> are both legitimate words (I think they're
> prepositions).
Well, phonologically, they never stand alone (AFAIK).
Indeed, another consonental preposition is 'k'.


Many languages have a syllabic 'r' or
> 'l' (such as Czech, Slovak and Sanskrit).
Or English. (little /litl=/, better /betr=/)


>>A little word that is only a rolled [r], a [s], a
>>[v], without the vowel releasing. It would be
>>conceivable.
>
>
> Indeed. When DVD's first came out, I (jokingly)
> pronounced the acronym as [dv=:d], rather than
> [,di.vi."di:].
>
>
>>Generally, consonant always means that there is
>>vowel pasted to, but why?

I guess the question is, can a phonological segment (a "sound") act as
a syllable peak? If so, surely it's operating as a vowel in the language
in question.



> Generally, most languages have syllabic constraints
> that forbid isolated consonants without vowels. But
> then again, many languages break those very same
> rules; Mandarin, in certain interpretations, has
> syllabic [s], [s`], [s\], [ts], [ts`], [ts\] and [r\].
I don't think any rules is being broken here, simply because (say) [s]
comes from the part of the IPA chart labelled "consonants". As for syllable
constraints, I guess Mandarin is a funny example: there are a limited number
of syllables (414, IIRC) before tone is considered, so I'm not sure if it
makes sense to talk of syllable constraints :)

ObConlang: I once had a conlang idea for a lang that had no "vowels". It had
syllable peaks, of course, but these were mostly fricatives and sonorants.
I think the idea came mainly from the idle phonological babeling I sometimes
engage in while walking. My brief and only first draft for the language had
a lot of words like [fTn] :).

s.
--
Stephen Mulraney    ataltane@ataltane.net   http://livejournal.com/~ataltane
I remember that I tried several times to use a slide rule, and that, several
times also,  I began modern maths textbooks, saying to myself that if I were
going slowly,  if I read all the lessons all in order,   doing the exercises
and all, there was no reason why I should stall             -- Georges Perec

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