The Mystery of the a:/aa Solved? (was Re: Phonomological Rob Zook Wed, 29 Oct 1997 12:45:10 -0600 At 10:47 AM 10/29/97 -0600, Saul wrote: > >> That does not sound to disimilar to what it sounded like in _Amok >> Time_ so I have no objection to that, so kroy' and kroy'kah then? >> Should we also then change the other "oy" words to this syllable >> structure? > >So many of the more "active" action/state words end in that it's >tempting to see a morpheme there, in which case there would be good >reason to keep them all the same. Unfortunately, intensified "imroy" >is "imimroy," "tixoy" is "titixoy", and so on. So, I don't know. Well, frankly I don't see what's wrong with leaving kroy spelled kroi. The oi is a diphthongs, so what's wrong with splitting the diphthongs to do the intensive form? >> >> The one that really bugs me is what the heck should "kh" sound >> >> like? An aspirated "k" or a fricative "k"? My personal >> >> preference is the fricative. >> > >> >I think in most cases it is the fricative (or ) -- though I do >> >think Vulcan probably allows stop-/h/ consonant clusters... >> >> But, I was thinking of "kh" as a voiceless velar fricative, and I >> thought /x/ represented a voiced glottal fricative? > >According to what? For one thing, I don't think there ARE glottal >fricatives, really, though that's sometimes how /h/ is classified. >Friction at the glottis modifies the voicing of other sounds, >producing "creaky" and "breathy" voice. Actually, I maybe getting confused here. I think you have the right of it. In the Zvelebil Lexicon, we have /x/ as sounding like the ch in the Scottish "loch". I've been saying that, and I realized it's not quite as far back in the throat as a I thought. I was thinking of thlingan Hol's Q. One might regard that as a voiced glottal fricative. It's supposed to sound kind of like you're clearing your throat. >> >Yes. Except "ah" tends not to be used to represent a short a, and >> >there are a number of those. >> >> What kind of sound is the "a" in father then? > >It depends on the dialect. The "a" in my "father" is a low back >vowel, just like the "ah" in my "ah-hah." Doctors tell us to "say >'ah'" because we automatically put the backs of our tongues down. > >> I was thinking the >> short a sound in English was a tense low front vowel, and that >> that was also the sound in patte. > >The English "short" a IS a low front vowel (in many dialects), the >sound of the "a" in English "pat." I don't know what French "patte" >sounds like. Ok, I was a little mixed up. So the a in pat, is a lax low front vowel, and the a in father is a tense low front vowel, that kind of clears that up a bit. As I've heard it used (admittedly by Americans), the a in patte sounds like the a in pat. Eureka! I think. I was perusing Mike Rose's Language Construction Kit page, and I think I found the key to unlock those funny : vowels. On his page under vowels he shows the following matrix: --lax-- --tense-- front------back front------back high pit put peat poot mid pet putt pate boat low pat pot father bought Now the first set of vowels in the Zvelebil Lexicon map on to this pretty easily: --lax-- --tense-- front------back front------back high pit(i) put(u) peat poot mid pet(e) putt(^) pate boat low pat(a) pot(o) father bought If I'm saying them the way Prof. Zvelebil intended then the first six all appear to me as lax vowels. Now the words are different, but the ea in peat seems to do the same thing as the ea in mean, the example for /i:/. The ought in bough appears to do the same thing as the au in fault the example for /o:/ (although the l in fault makes it sound a little different, a better example for /o:/ might be fraught). The oo in poot does the same thing as the u in prune the example for /u:/. So I think that the : adds "anxiety" to lax vowels and makes them tense :-) The only exceptions might be /^:/ and /e:/. Of course since we have no example of /a:/ it could also be an exception. However, Mike's chart simplifies things considerable, he should have expanded the horizontal axis to front-center-back and the vertical axis to high, upper-mid, mid, lower-mid, low. --lax-- --tense-- front------back front------back high pit(i) put(u) peat poot mid pet(e) putt(^) pate boat low pat(a) pot(o) father bought I'm looking for a more fully fleshed out chart, but if anyone else has one and can send it to me, or knows of one on the web and can point it out - I'd appreciate it. If I'm right about this Saul, then the a:/aa should sound like the "a" in father. Rob Z. -------------------------------------------------------- Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. -- Notes from Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky