Re: Consonant Clusters at the Beginning of Words II Saul Epstein Tue, 11 Nov 1997 16:37:58 -0600 From: Rob Zook Date: Tuesday, November 11, 1997 2:20 PM >Last time Saul had made a proposal or two involving consonant clusters >with stops and fricatives. To recap that: > >#[stop]+[tap (r)] >#[stop]+[fricative] (as long as they have the same voice) >#[stop]+[approximate] (but he only implied this one as probable) I meant to assert it actually, but I don't have my message where I can get to it to check. I only left out stop+/w/ because I don't think /w/ is an approximant. >I would like to keep the approximates, including /qy/ because >a)the Lexicon specifies that Vulcan is rich in consonant clusters - >so we should try to keep as many as we can; and b) a couple of >times in the series Spock or his family has mentioned how difficult >(or impossible) it is for Terrans to pronounce. In _Journey to Babel_ >even Amanda who has lived on Vulcan for umpteen decades can only >pronounce it "after a fashion". Yeah, I've become convinced it's a good idea to keep it. >That would give us these: > >py by ty dy ky gy qy >pl bl tl dl kl gl ql >pr br tr dr kr gr qr > >but probably not [stop]+[w], since we have /k'wawje/ and /k'war'ma'khon/. > >so #[stop]+[approximate(but not /w/)] My suspicion is that the approximant [w] is an allophone of a phoneme which is perceived and handled as a fricative. Which would mean, if my voice rule were adopted, that /gw/ would be permitted while /kw/ wouldn't. On the other hand, /kwh/ would be permitted, while /gwh/ wouldn't. >We still have a few more possibilities for consonant clusters. We have >these possibilities in the Dictionary: > >br tc dr kn lhm mn pl sb tr vr wh > kr pr sk tv > kj sp > >The above two rules would cover all of them except for kn, lhm, mn, >vr, and wh. kn, lhm, mn all involve nasals but in three different ways. >kn represents a stop and a nasal. lhm is a compound cluster combining a >lateral approximate with a fricative and a nasal. While mn combines >two nasals. > >English used to have a sound like kn, it was spelled "kn" anyhow, >in those words which come from Anglo-Saxon. However, I think they >actually pronounced such words as k*'n-. For example, knight was >pronounced k*'nAit (to use Saul's ASCII IPA notation for the vowel >sounds). Which means kn probably does not cut it as a consonant >cluster and should probably be k'n at the beginning of a word. I don't know. Words like "knight" have cousins in German in which the is still pronounced, without any appreciable interruption before the following . The cluster has a wide distribution in Indo-European, showing up in Sanskrit as [dn~] in "jn~aya" (sacrifice) and in Greek as [gn] in "gnosis" (knowledge). >Laterals with fricatives would be this set: > >lv lz lj lx (voiced+voiced) >lf ls lc lh* (voiced+voiceless) > >Any of the voiced versions end up sounding like *lv, *lz, or *lj >when I try and pronounce them. The lower set, [l]+[voiceless fricative] >run into the same problem as [stop]+[voiceless fricative], that as >Saul mentioned the voiced component turns to a voiceless one. That >seems to happen here as well. I can only say it as either *lf (totally >voiceless) or as *l'f. So a lateral + any fricative probably wont work as >consonant clusters. It's very difficult to produce these at the beginnings of words without making a syllable out of the [l], and since that's exactly what I've suggested <'> indicates, I tend to agree with your analysis. While we have good incentive for including sounds we find difficult, we also should try to maintain an ear for Vulcan-sounding sounds. [qy] seems appropriate, whereas this set seems to epitomize the smooth, "liquid" sounds Duane has assigned to the sister language developed by the Rihannsu. >On the other hand a fricative and a nasal seems quite feasible: > >vm zm jm xm >fm sm cm hm >vn zn jn xn >fn sn cn hn > >Nor do they seem to have the same problem as a voiced stop/lateral >and a voiceless fricative, where the voice must change. I think that's because the transition from non-nasal to nasal gives us a little extra room to work with. >So these might >work as initial consonant clusters. In the lexicon we have the word >lhm'ta, the author probably meant l'hm'ta. Sure. An [l] syllable, a syllable sounding like someone saying "hmm," and [ta]. >That leaves us with mn, a voiced bilabial nasal + a voiced alveolar >nasal. mn does appear in Greek as a word initial consonant cluster >if I'm not mistaken, so it does sound possible. If we generalize >that to a rule, [any nasal]+[any nasal] we could get: > >mn mny mng >nm nym ngm > >I know from past conversations that Saul at least dislikes nm as >a possible consonant cluster. Personally I think it feasible at least. >However I think mn, mny and mng seem like definite possibilities. Well, I dislike it as an initial cluster. And even [mn] I find difficult. But I have no argument against any of them. >That leaves with vr, and wh. I will leave wh for Marketa to solve, >since it appears in wh'ltri which I think is a word of her construction. It's possible that or even was meant, in the original transcription. >vr appears in the Dictionary word "vrekact" which lists as Old Vulcan. >Whether or not it's used in modern Vulcan, I know not, but "vr" seems >like another good possibility for a rule: > >[any fricative]+[any tap] > >vr zr jr xr >fr sr cr hr Especially since we have a in . -- from Saul Epstein liberty*uit,net http://www,johnco,cc,ks,us/~sepstein "Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'." -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at