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Re: vowels: are they necessary?

From:Steven Williams <feurieaux@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 8, 2004, 0:04
 --- # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> wrote:
> When a consonant is fricative or trilled, it can be > 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). Many languages have a syllabic 'r' or 'l' (such as Czech, Slovak and Sanskrit).
> 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?
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\].

Replies

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...>