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Re: vowels: are they necessary?

From:H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...>
Date:Wednesday, December 8, 2004, 0:45
On Tue, Dec 07, 2004 at 07:08:14PM -0500, Paul Bennett wrote:
> On Tue, 07 Dec 2004 18:25:19 -0500, # 1 <salut_vous_autre@...> > wrote: > > >Is there any languages that has some words that are only consonants > >without vowels? > > Yeah. Loads. Czech, and a number of other Slavic languages. There are some > North-East African languages, if I'm not mistaken (I want to say Berber, > Tigrinya, and plausibly Ancient Egyptian (and Coptic? Certainly it's > phonotactically allowed, even if none actually exist), if and only if my > memory is not playing tricks), and a number in East and South-East Asia, > where AIUI /N=/ is not uncommon.
[...] In my L1 as spoken by my grandparents, the word for 'yellow' is [?N=:]. In my generation it has mutated into [?ui~], however. Also, [m=] is the negation particle both in my L1 and in Cantonese. IMHO, all non-obstruents can conceivably be phonemically vocalic, esp. if they are voiced. Whether such sounds are consonantal or not depends merely on whether they are articulated consonantally or vocalically in a particular language's phonology. They could very well be both, as [N] and [m] are above. T -- "You know, maybe we don't *need* enemies." "Yeah, best friends are about all I can take." -- Calvin & Hobbes

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bob thornton <arcanesock@...>