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.

>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!
Low back vowels can be interpreted as pharyngeal since the narrowest
constriction made in such vowels are in the pharyngeal area. With this
in mind, pharyngeal sounds could also be interpreted as inherently
vowel-lowering and/or vowel-retracting. So a pharyngeal would lower
and/or retract /i/ and /u/ to [E] and [O] respectively. The lowering of
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.

-kristian- 8)