Re: Transcription exercise

Paul Roser skrev:
> On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 12:31:44 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
> <bpjonsson@...> wrote:
>
>> So let's see what Sohlob makes of these.  Pronunciation is rather
>> easily calculated from the romanization See
>> <http://wiki.frath.net/Sohlob_romanization>. The Heleb dialect
>> would be able to distinguish front rounded vowels as as well as
>> velar _ll_ from palatal _l_.  The given forms are Classical Sohlob
>> unless otherwise indicated.
>
> Does Heleb also have voiceless lateral fricatives,
Yes it does; all the Sohlob dialects except Linjeb, which
is descended from Kijeb but different enough not to be called
a dialect of Sohlob, do.

> and if so, does it distinguish velar(ized) <HLL> from palatal <HL> ?
It should, shouldn't it?  I must confess it just didn't occur
to me that there could also be lateral fricatives at different
PsOA, simply because IPA doesn't provide symbols for any, but
upon introspection I find that I'm perfectly able to pronounce
all of [x_l C_l s\_l s`_l K_G] (or however they may be transcribed)
distinctly from [K], and I also find that my xenolectic pronun-
ciation of Icelandic _hljóð_ has [C_l], but the snag is that I
hardly *hear* any difference between them -- the same goes for
voiceless nasals at different PsOA, BTW.

But actually I'm beginning to have doubts about the
palatal(ized)/palatal lateral distinction.  Perhaps
palatality in liquids should vary harmonically along with
palatality in vowels?  (Even so I could have *[r_j] > /j/!)
OTOH if so shouldn't nasal palatality also vary harmonic-
ally, with /J/ in front harmony words corresponding to both
/n/ and /N/ of back harmony words; perhaps also front [j]
and [H] against back [G] and [w].  The closest analog from a
natlang that I know of is the variation between front /k g/
and back /X R/ of classigal Mongolian, but the idea as such
seems naturalistically plausible. There would be no phonemic
distinction between palatal and non-palatal lingual
sonorants, but there might still be a distinction in
spelling, since Heleb spelling is supposed to be a
rather clumsy adaptation of Classical Sohlob spelling
-- CS having phonemic /J j/ against /n N G/ since it
has no front harmony, but only height harmony.

BTW _København_ should of course be _Kööbänhäwän_ in Heleb!

> One of the characteristics of Scungric phonology is that there are
> (minimally) two coronal series, one laminal/palatalized, the other
> apical (redundantly either velarized, uvularized, or pharyngealized),
>  distinguishing stops, nasals, sibilants, lateral approximants and
> lateral fricatives for both, with the addition of trills in the
> apical series.
Does Scungric have vowel harmony?

> -Bfowol
>
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