Re: vowels: are they necessary?
| From: | H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, December 8, 2004, 0:45 |
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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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