Re: Strange phonology

FFlores wrote:

> I'd like to know your opinion on some sounds
> I intend to have in a new language.
>
> 1) Have you ever heard of an aspirated trill?
> I'm sure I've seen it somewhere, represented as
> <rh>, which would be /r/ with a simultaneous
> aspiration. I mean, it looks possible, but I don't
> know if it exists anywhere and if it could contrast
> with a non-aspirated trill /r/.
Well, I think so (it depends on whether you count voiceless
trills as "aspirated", and probably also on the particular phonology
you're looking at).

I know Greek had quite a few of <rh>'s, where that represents
a rho with a rough breathing mark, as in <rhet=F4r> "speaker".

Old English, too, had something like that.  One of the main figures
in _Beowulf_ was the Danish king <Hro=FEgar>, and I presume that
to be an aspirated /r/ (rather than <h> representing a velar fricative
or something  -- as I think has been pointed out elsewhere on the
list recently, reconstructing ancient phonologies is easy, relatively
speaking, but trying to figure out their actual phonetic values isn't
that easy).

> 2) I want to have a retroflex (or maybe post-alveolar)
> "s", contrasting with a normal alveolar /s/. Is this
> reasonable? Is this retroflex "s" the one present
> in Sanskrit, which is transliterated as "s" with a
> dot below?
Sure.  It's a totally unremarkable phone, as phonologies
go.  I believe you're right about the Sanskrit bit, but I'm no
Sanskritist.

> 3) Is it reasonable to have an aspiration contrast
> for nasals?
Sure, but that's not *as* common as regular voiced
nasals.  It's relatively abundant in a couple South East
Asian languages (you might want to ask Kristian, I think it
was, on this matter).

> 4) I just produced a sound more or less like the
> one a child might produce when he sticks out the
> tip of his tongue between his teeth, and blows.
> I found in this way you can produce a trill
> (makes your lower lip shake) or an approximant
> (air going between the tongue and the lower lip),
> though I don't know if they exist in any language,
> or how to call them. What do you think?
Not quite sure how to explain that...

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

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