Re: David qua David

At 1:25 pm -0400 20/4/01, David Peterson wrote:
>In a message dated 4/20/01 5:43:52 AM, alrivera@SOUTHERN.EDU writes:
>
><< Back in the throat?  Isn't /H/ the consonantal equivalent of /y/, the
>
>rounded front vowel?  What is [H] used for here? >>
>
>    I actually explained in the original that it was a voiceless pharyngeal
>fricative. What could be a better symbol for it than [H]?
Maybe so - but the problem is that [H] is used in the SAMPA system of
"ASCII IPA" to denote the labio-palatal semivowel at the beginning of
French _huit_ (IPA 'turned h').  Not, I think, a brilliant choice - but
neither you nor I can change that.

The trouble is that when traffic on this list is high, many of us tend to
skim through mails and if we see [H] we're likely to take it as the French
semivowel without properly reading explanations, till later.  I know we
shouldn't, but there are only 24 hours in a day and the 'real world' has a
horrible habit of making itself felt.

The SAMPA symbol for the voiceless pharyngeal fricative is [X\].
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At 8:35 pm -0400 20/4/01, Nik Taylor wrote:
>David Peterson wrote:
>>     Oops!  Already responded.  :)  As for me, I find it...difficult to
>> believe that you can begin any segment with a vowel.
>
>It's very easy.  In *English* we tend to put epenthetic glottal stops
>in, but that doesn't mean that, for example, [a] isn't possible.
>
>> I can't seem to get around that.
>
>Just requires practice.
...and for much of the world's population no practice at all.

In Britain where the glottal stop has now become an allophone of /t/ in
medial & final positions in the speech of so many people of all social
classes, the use of initial epenthetic glottal stops before vowels seems to
have more or less died out during my life-time.

The southern Europeans generally have no time for glottal sounds, whether
stops of fricatives, and happily run vowels together.

Over in Samoa, if you can't make a difference between beginning a segment
with a glottal stop (which they write with the apostrophe symbol) and with
just a plain ol' vowel, you are just asking to be misunderstood, e.g.

ai = who? which?
a'i = with which

'au = team; group; army
a'u = I

ana = cave
'ana = if

ava = passage through the reef
'ava = beard

ia = he, she, him, her
i'a = fish

ili = fan
'ili = carpenter's saw; file

ula = shrimp
'ula = necklace

ulu = head
'ulu = breadfruit

fai = do
fa'i = banana

fua = fruit, egg, flower
fu'a = flag

mai = from
ma'i = sick

...inter multa alia

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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