Re: A bunch of phonological questions

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 20:32:17 +0300, John Vertical
<johnvertical@...> wrote:

>Chris Bates wrote:
>
>>> a) What's the difference between lateral release and a lateral
>>> affricate?
>>
>> An affricate has friction, so for instance the lateral affricate
>> commonly written tl in languages like Nahuatl is /tK)/. A laterally
>> released stop lacks the fricative release of an affricate I think,
>> and is basically formed by releasing the stop by lowering the sides
>> of the tongue instead of the whole tongue but without the friction.
>
>All right.. but wouldn't *that* be just release into a homorganic lateral
>*approximant*?
Lateral release, like nasal release, applies to non-affricated stops that
precede laterals (or nasals) and are *not* released prior to the lateral or
nasal articulation. By definition a lateral affricate would have lateral
release.

>I very well may be just kind of missing the point of the whole "release"
>diacritics - they just seem to imply that the stop is followed by a
>homorganic continuant of some sort. Is that it, or is there more to it?
>
>
>> > b) Are /K K\/ considered sibilants or spirants?
>> >
>> > John Vertical
>> >
>> >
>>I don't think they're sibilants, since the air isn't escaping quickly
>>through a narrow channel but from both sides of the tongue.
>
>But is the "channel" essential? I recall the definition of "sibilant" had
>something on the airflow passing over the teeth...
>Wikipedia seems to classify lateral fricatives separate from both spirants
>and sibilants, which isn't helping either.
>
Personally, I think the distinction between spirants and sibilants
is ill-defined in the phonetic literature, particularly since
fricative, sibilant & spirant are all listed as synonyms. All sibilants
are spirants/fricatives/constrictives, but not all spirants/etc are
sibilants. Broadly, 'sibilant' seems to be applied to things elsewhere
called 'grooved fricatives'. The flat vs grooved distinction only applies
to non-lateral fricatives - you could probably groove a lateral fricative
but flat vs grooved is not used to distinguish lateral fricatives (and
the very few natlangs that have more than one lateral fricative seem to
distinguish them purely on the basis of either point of articulation
or on plain vs palatalized. So [K, K\] are spirants.

Hope that helps...

Bfowol

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