Re: Tonal inflection?

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:08:34 +1000, Tristan McLeay <conlang@...>
wrote:

>On 26/08/08 02:32:30, Alex Fink wrote:
>
>> * aspiration.  Aspiration's really rare on things that aren't stops.
>> Occasionally one finds aspirated fricatives, but I've never heard of
>> aspirated implosives
>
>Wouldn't that be physically impossible? Aspiration is air going out,
>implosion is air coming in. You could probably have /h/ after an
>implosive, but I would guess it'd be perceived as a separate segment.
I dunno.  That sounds convincing enough, sure.  But if you think of
aspiration as positive voice onset time -- articulatorily manifested on the
following vowel more so than the aspirated segment itself -- I see no reason
you couldn't combine it with an implosive.

Checking Wikipedia I see that so-called voiceless implosives aren't quite
straightforward devoicings of ordinary implosives: instead the glottis is
entirely closed.  That may or may not be relevant.

Incidentally, that page also mentions the labial stop inventory of Owere
Igbo, [p p_h b_<_0 b b_t b_<] (and [m]) which, allowing standard fudges, can
be put into a nice neat grid much like what I think Dana was after:
            plain       aspirated   implosive
voiceless  [p           p_h         b_>_0]
voiced     [b           b_t         b_>  ]

Mind also the analysis (about which I don't know much) that says implosives
aren't obstruents.  If this is a good analysis it'd predict that they
aspirate about as non-readily as usual non-obstruents do.

Alex