Re: Number

On Sun, 5 Aug 2001, Jesse Bangs wrote:

YHL:
> > I was trying to figure out how in the heck you would hear a [?]
> > before a vowel <rueful look> since the prof for that class told us
> > that technically when you say a vowel (without something else
> > before
> > it??) there's always a glottal stop, so if you said [qaItSaref] by
> > itself, how would you know?  :-/  The somewhat tentative fix for
> > that
> > was to make {q} [?] between two vowels, [x] otherwise.  <looking
>
> I like the tentative fix myself, but I don't think there's a problem with
> having phonemic initial /?/.  *My* phonetics teacher said that it is
> possible to pronounce a vowel-initial word without a glottal stop, though
> he might have said that no languages actually make use of that
> distinction.  If you want to keep {q} fundamentally a stop, you could
> replace it with something stronger initial positions, like a pharyngeal
> stop.
<rueful look>  I just happen to like [x] despite my difficulty
pronouncing it before high vowels.  I think I'll keep the fix for
now...who knows what dialectal variations will evolve later?  (I love
dialects.  It gives me an excuse to try different configurations!)  Thanks.

YHL

Reply