Re: Consonant Clusters at the End of Words
Rob Zook 
Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:42:41 -0600

At 03:43 PM 11/13/97 -0600, Saul wrote:
>I wrote:
>>Previously Saul wrote
>>>That doesn't sound opposite. Your proposed rule transforms aspirates to
>>>fricatives when following a voiced stop at the same place of
>>>articulation. Since Vulcan otherwise has no dental fricative, but does
>>>have an alveolar fricative nearby, it is likely that the latter would 
>>>be substituted.
>>
>>Hmmm..,I guess I'm not saying this clearly. I meant that at the end of
>>a word a consonent cluster of dt could exist, but only when the final
>>stop mutates to it's fricative. So I was saying bp would be realized as
>>bf gk would be realized as gch (the velar fricative), and dt as dth (the
>>dental fricative).
>
><laughter> I understand you exactly, but it doesn't sound like you
>understand me. Are you having the same experience?

Well, sort of. I understand what I though I said, but from what you said 
above it did not seem to me you understood what I though I said, since 
that feedback does not correlate to what I though I said.

>>Ok, but when we use the t here we mean the alveolar stop, right?
>
>Other than it being described in the Grammar as comparable to an English
>sound, I don't think that's ever been addressed. But regardless of which 
>[t] our /t/ turns out to be, it has in general a very flexible position 
>with regards to its relationship to dental and alveolar fricatives.

Isn't the English t generally an aspirated voiceless alveolar stop?
As far as the relationships go, I was just thinking that you can have
a voiced+unvoiced stop at the same point of articulation at the end
of a word, if the unvoiced stop mutates to the corresponding unvoiced
fricative at the same point of articulation.

>>I was confused about p -> f so yeah, but with k -> ch, I mean
>>k ( the voiceless velar stop) -> ch ( the voiceless velar fricative ),
>>so how is the place of articulation changing?
>
>You originally compared <ch> to a voiceless palatal fricative in German,
>and since you persist in writing it this way rather than with <x>, I 
>keep assuming that's what you're talking about.

Well I have this hand written chart I copied out of a linguistics book,
and it shows the ch in ich as the symbol I see in the IPA chart in the
voiceless velar fricative position. Maybe the IPA has changed how the 
used the chart, or I wrote it down wrong, or the author did not write
the correct IPA symbol. In anycase, I mean the voiceless velar fricative.

>Something like that. While there's no way to eliminate from possibility 
>a Vulcan pronouncing [stop][glottal stop][stop], I think it's almost 
>certain that the coiners of existing Vulcan words didn't intend that 
>when they wrote things like <t'kh>, and this is one situation in which 
>I'm perfectly happy to let the intentions of the coiners guide us.

We could also explain it away as saying the only way humans can 
pronounce an [stop]+[']+[stop], is by saying it as [stop]+[^]+[']+
[stop]. Because, I have no idea how else you could say it.

Rob Z.

--------------------------------------------------------
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid
by education.
-- Bertrand Russell