Re: Irish Gaelic is evil!

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> Stephen Mulraney wrote:
>
>>>  > <c>  -  [k_-]  -  [k_j]
>>>  > <g>  -  [g_-]  -  [g_j]
>>>
>>> "_-" means "retracted" -- does that mean I have to pull back
>>> my tongue a bit?
>>
>>
>>
>> Yes, well, as I suggested, you can take the broad consonants as
>> simply "plain", so that broad <c> is just /k/ rather than /k_-/.
>> I decided to give a bit more detail, though, and I had a choice
>> of how to transcribe it: I wanted to avoid the obvious /k_G/ since
>> that's what I was trying to explain, so I described another way
>> (probably implicit in the /k_G/) in which the broad <c> actually
>> differs from /k/. It probably caused more confusion, though.
>> Basically, the [k_-] needs to be distinguised from the [k_j],
>> and if you keep that in mind, then you'll probably find a natural
>> strategy for doing it. I think my own impressionistic trascription
>> of what I think is going on in my own mouth might only confuse!
>> But it feels to me as if my tounge is a little bit further back
>> that for an English [k]. It's probably just the (in Irish,
>> phonologically salient) accomodation of the [k] to the back vowel.
>> (The whole point about palatalised vs non-pal. consonants is that
>> a broad vowel accomodates to a back vowel, even if there's actually
>> a front vowel in the environment :))

Aargh, I've systematically reversed [] and // in the above, and indeed
in all my recent posts :). For some reason I do this every now and again,
despite knowing well enough what the right usage is... In any case, I
was making the phonemic/phonetic distinction pretty much on the fly and
without a lot of thought in the above.

This is irrelevant to BP's question, though -

> In Icelandic there is simply a distinction between /k/--/c/ and
> /g/--/J\/(*) and I always assumed the Irish distinction was the
> same(**).  Not so?
No - actually [c] is a realisation of the /t'/ phoneme (the slender or
soft or palatalised /t/), and the distinction between broad and narrow
/k/ is made in the dorsal zone. I guess Irish has to be a bit stricter
in finding "palatalised" (really, front-vowel-accomdated) counterparts
of plain consonants since it needs to find such a counterpart for nearly
every consonant, while Icelandic has more gaps in the correspondence (or
does it?).


> (*) In Icelandic /c/ and /J\/ can occur before any vowel, while
> /k/ and /g/ occur only before back vowels, so a phonemic analysis
> where [c] before back vowels is /kj/ may be possible.
> (**) Icelandic also has a /t/--/tj/ (with /tj/ being [ts\] or
> [tC], analogous to, thought I, /t/ [t]--/t;/ [tS] in Irish.
[t] does indeed correspond to [tS] in some varieties (Donegal Irish, IIRC,
and some (?all) Scottish varieties), but this is a trait heavily associated
with the those varieties; elsewhere in Ireland, [t] corresponds to [c] or [tj]
(or perhaps [t_j]). Indeed, as you go from north to south through Gaeldom :)
you successively pass through regions where the slender counterpart to [t]
is [tS], [c], and finally [tj] or something like it (in Cork, I think, but
Keith would know better).

s.
--
Stephen Mulraney        ataltane@ataltane.net        http://ataltane.net
In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.


>
> --
>
> /BP 8^)>
> --
> Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
>
>         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
>                                             (Tacitus)
>
>

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