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Re: vowels: are they necessary?

From:Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 8, 2004, 0:49
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

Replies

Steven Williams <feurieaux@...>
Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>