Re: A bunch of phonological questions

Paul Roser wrote:
>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.
Hmm, that's kinda ... too simple. So if [_l] xor [_n] are not applicable to
any vowels that are not followed by a (homorganic? is that a requisite too?)
lateral xor nasal, why is there a need for two different diacritics? It's
starting to seem to me that just one release diacritic (say, $) would be
enough, one that means "not released independently":
/t_h/ = /t$h/
/t_ll/ = /t$l/
/t_nn/ = /t$n/
/ts)/ = /t$s/
/tK)/ = /t$K/
/t_} / = /t$ /


> >> > b) Are /K K\/ considered sibilants or spirants?
>
>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
Yes, that does help. I was asking this because I was wondering if coronal
affricates were the most common for POA reasons or because they're sibilant
affricates. But if /tK)/ is not a sibilant, I guess it's the POA...

John Vertical