Re: Time to play Identify Those Phones, and a bit of a pharyngeal question

> -----------------------
> Sender:       Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
> Poster:       Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
> Subject:      Re: Time to play Identify Those Phones, and a bit
> of a pharyngeal
>               question
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Eric Christopherson wrote:
>
> >The two sounds I'm wondering about are like crosses between [s]
> and [T]. The
> >first one seems to be about the same as [s], except that the tip of the
> >tongue is placed against the bottom teeth, and friction is
> produced between
> >the top teeth and the tongue body. The second sound is similar, but the
> >tongue sticks out between the teeth a bit, resting on the bottom ones and
> >creating friction against the top. Does anyone know what
> terminology I would
> >use to describe these, and what IPA symbols to use for them?
>
>
> The first one is a dental fricative. The second one is an interdental
> fricative. They are not known to be contrastive, so both are represented
> in the IPA by symbols representing dental fricatives (eg. theta or eth).
> But since languages that have them consistently uses one or the other, it
> is possible in the IPA to represent the second one with a 'subscript plus'
> in phonetic transcription.
Hmm, neither of them is the same as the way I form a dental fricative (i.e.
with the tongue blade against the top front teeth). There's no more specific
way to notate that? Also on the subject of notation, is there a way to write
[t] so that it's unambiguously seen as either alveolar or postalveolar? I
see that there's a "dental" diacritic, but none for those two (I've been
using the retraction diacritic for postalveolar).

> >Also, what general effects do pharyngeals have on surrounding vowels? I
> >remember reading that [i] became [E] and [u] became [O] in pharyngeal
> >environments in some language, but I'm not sure. An explanation
> of why they
> >are influenced that way would help as well. Thanks!
>
[snip]
> these vowels is fairly obvious. While the retraction of these vowels
> can be seen when comparing where the narrowest constriction is in [u]
> and [O]; the narrowest constriction in [u] is in the velar (and labial)
> area, in [O] it is in the uvular area. I'm not too sure about the process
> of retraction with [i]>[E], though.
So is [O] actually farther back than [u]? I thought all the back vowels had
about the same degree of "backedness;" at least that's what the IPA chart's
arrangement of them would have one believe.


Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo suHnus
raccoon@elknet.net