Re: Consonant Clusters at the Beginning of Words II Rob Zook Tue, 11 Nov 1997 17:31:44 -0600 At 04:37 PM 11/11/97 -0600, you wrote: > >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 may have gotten that one wrong. I'm not sure. I have not got a complete, or even faintly complete list of English consonents and their IPA cousins. >>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. OK, I buy that. >>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). Hmm. OK. I thought they sounded long, but maybe I just don't now how to pronounce a sound without putting a /'/ in the middle. >>Laterals with fricatives would be this set: >> >>lv lz lj lx (voiced+voiced) >>lf ls lc lh* (voiced+voiceless) >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. Yup. That's another good reason to exclude these. >>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. OK, then I would like to alter my suggested rule [m]+[any nasal] to [any nasal]+[any nasal]. >>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. Actually, wh'ltri is the original transcription. I did not alter it since I did not know what was supposed to sound like. >>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 . Yes, I forgot about that one. Rob Z. -------------------------------------------------------- Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. -- Bertrand Russell