nasal m and n
Allan Adler
a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in timbre
nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and nasal
n sounds in French.
As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
in French are in any sense vocalic.
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <a...@zurich.csail.mit.edu>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
Peter T. Daniels
> I'm used to nasal n in French but, once, when I wanted to buy a stamp at
> a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in timbre
> nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and nasal
> n sounds in French.
>
> As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
> that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
> in French are in any sense vocalic.
> --
> Ignorantly,
m and n are nasal by definition. There is no [m] in <timbre>, only a
nasal vowel.
Harlan Messinger
> I'm used to nasal n in French but, once, when I wanted to buy a stamp at
> a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in timbre
> nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and nasal
> n sounds in French.
Just to try to get straight what you're talking about--"n" and "m" are
nasal wherever they are in French, even in words like "nouveau" and
"mardi", and they're nasal in English too. Are you talking about the
situations where they aren't pronounced on their own but instead serve
to nasalize the preceding vowel?
In that case: yes, "m" acts similarly to "n" in such words as "timbre"
/tE~bR/, "embaucher" /A~boSe/, "faim" /fE~/, "combien" /kO~bjE~/, and
"humble" /W~bl/.
>
> As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
> that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
> in French are in any sense vocalic.
They have no phonetic value of their own, their presence is reflected in
the pronunciation of the preceding vowel.
Ruud Harmsen
<gram...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals. You
mean nasalised vowels. A plausible term could also be oral-nasal
vowel, but I have never seen it used.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:35:51 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> >On Dec 13, 6:50 am, Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
> >> I'm used to nasal n in French but, once, when I wanted to buy a stamp at
> >> a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in timbre
> >> nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and nasal
> >> n sounds in French.
>
> >> As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
> >> that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
> >> in French are in any sense vocalic.
> >> --
> >> Ignorantly,
>
> >m and n are nasal by definition. There is no [m] in <timbre>, only a
> >nasal vowel.
>
> Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals. You
> mean nasalised vowels. A plausible term could also be oral-nasal
> vowel, but I have never seen it used.
I gather you've never studied French. That's what they're called.
Stefano MAC:GREGOR
> As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
> that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
> in French are in any sense vocalic.
Maybe you mean syllabic M and N; they can be syllables by themselves
in come languages.
And then there's Czech, which uses R as a vowel, and possibly L as
well.
--
Stefano
Richard Wordingham
> Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:35:51 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels" wrote:
>>On Dec 13, 6:50 am, Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu> wrote:
>>> I'm used to nasal n in French but, once, when I wanted to buy a stamp at
>>> a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in
>>> timbre
>>> nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and
>>> nasal
>>> n sounds in French.
>>> As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
>>> that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
>>> in French are in any sense vocalic.
>>m and n are nasal by definition. There is no [m] in <timbre>, only a
>>nasal vowel.
> Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals.
How does this statement square with syllabic nasals? They're often reported
for English _bottom_, _button_ and _bacon_.
Richard.
Allan Adler
> Allan Adler wrote:
> > I'm used to nasal n in French but, once, when I wanted to buy a stamp at
> > a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in timbre
> > nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and nasal
> > n sounds in French.
>
> Just to try to get straight what you're talking about
I appreciate that. I'm also trying to get straight what I am talking about.
> --"n" and "m" are
> nasal wherever they are in French, even in words like "nouveau" and
> "mardi", and they're nasal in English too. Are you talking about the
> situations where they aren't pronounced on their own but instead serve
> to nasalize the preceding vowel?
I guess so. But, however one describes it, the first question is whether
there is a difference between the nasalization due to m and that due to n.
> In that case: yes, "m" acts similarly to "n" in such words as "timbre"
> /tE~bR/, "embaucher" /A~boSe/, "faim" /fE~/, "combien" /kO~bjE~/, and
> "humble" /W~bl/.
Similarly. But identically?
> > As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
> > that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
> > in French are in any sense vocalic.
>
> They have no phonetic value of their own, their presence is reflected in
> the pronunciation of the preceding vowel.
I gather the examples "bottom" and "button" illustrate the idea of the
vocalic m,n. So, the corresponding PIE vowels are apparently different
from these French nasal vowels.
Thanks to all who helped me with these questions.
Harlan Messinger
> Harlan Messinger <hmessinger...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>> Allan Adler wrote:
>>> I'm used to nasal n in French but, once, when I wanted to buy a stamp at
>>> a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in timbre
>>> nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and nasal
>>> n sounds in French.
>> Just to try to get straight what you're talking about
>
> I appreciate that. I'm also trying to get straight what I am talking about.
>
>> --"n" and "m" are
>> nasal wherever they are in French, even in words like "nouveau" and
>> "mardi", and they're nasal in English too. Are you talking about the
>> situations where they aren't pronounced on their own but instead serve
>> to nasalize the preceding vowel?
>
> I guess so. But, however one describes it, the first question is whether
> there is a difference between the nasalization due to m and that due to n.
No. "Fin" and "faim" are pronounced identically.
>
>> In that case: yes, "m" acts similarly to "n" in such words as "timbre"
>> /tE~bR/, "embaucher" /A~boSe/, "faim" /fE~/, "combien" /kO~bjE~/, and
>> "humble" /W~bl/.
>
> Similarly. But identically?
Yes.
>
>>> As long as I'm wondering about that, I'm also wondering about the fact
>>> that PIE used to have vocalic m and n, and whether these nasal m and n
>>> in French are in any sense vocalic.
>> They have no phonetic value of their own, their presence is reflected in
>> the pronunciation of the preceding vowel.
>
> I gather the examples "bottom" and "button" illustrate the idea of the
> vocalic m,n. So, the corresponding PIE vowels are apparently different
> from these French nasal vowels.
Correct, the French nasalized vowels are not what "vocalic m/n" refers to.
Ruud Harmsen
<gram...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
>> Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals. You
>> mean nasalised vowels. A plausible term could also be oral-nasal
>> vowel, but I have never seen it used.
>
>I gather you've never studied French. That's what they're called.
French was the first foreign language I was taught in school (even
before English!), from age 10-12. Later again from 13-16. I never
learnt it very well, but I can get by. The nasalised vowels were
called "neusklanken" in Dutch ("nose sounds"), which is equally
incorrect. As a result of that, many people find them difficult to
pronounce. I don't, because I understand what's really going on (oral
and nasal air paths simultaneously) which the correct term "nasalised"
reflects.
Ruud Harmsen
<jrw...@yahoo.co.uk>: in sci.lang:
>> Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals.
>
>How does this statement square with syllabic nasals? They're often reported
>for English _bottom_, _button_ and _bacon_.
Button has dental closure, then nasal release. The latter means the
valve [not the right term?] in the back of the mouth is suddenly
opened to relieve the air pressure built-up against the dental
closure.
Bacon and bottom are different, a nasal release in those would result
in something like [beIkN] instead of [beikn], and [bOtn] or [bOpm],
which is clearly not correct.
But this is not relevant. Our apparent difference of opinion stems
from a different view on what is essential for a vowel: you look at
its role in the syllable, and I define vowel as "a speech sound in
which the air flows through the mouth (and possible nose, for
nasalised vowels) unobstructed". Therefore r, l, z, and n are not
vowels, although all of them can easily play the role that vowels
often take in syllables; and in some languages, this actually happens.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>I guess so. But, however one describes it, the first question is whether
>there is a difference between the nasalization due to m and that due to n.
No, there isn't. The choice of m or n depends on the following
consanant (in writing!), and reflects assimilation in earlier stages
of the language, when the vowels were not nasalised yet.
An example:
The word "import" (which exists in many languages of course) is from
Latin. In was once inport (from in+portare = carry in), but already in
Latin it was assimilated to import. Assimilation means that the
characteristics of sounds that are close to each other (they are
adjacent) become similar: a p is made which both lips, and so is an m.
An n is made which the tongue and the teeth (or slighlty farther
back). So really saying np is possible, but akward. So np tends to
become mp. Such tendencies exist in all languages.
That the word "importer" is now written with an m in French, is merely
historical: it show the origin of the word. It no longer influences
the pronunciation. In standard French, the m is no longer pronounced,
but instead the preceding vowel is nasalised: part of the air escapes
through the nose while the rest flows through the mouth.
In a normal (non-nasalised) vowel, all air goes through the mouth.
In a nasal sound (m, n, ng), all the air goes trough the nose.
A nasalised vowel has a bit of both.
Ruud Harmsen
<hmessinger...@comcast.net>: in sci.lang:
>No. "Fin" and "faim" are pronounced identically.
Yes. Another example, from Portuguese:
"End" is "fin" in French and Spanish, but "fim" in Portuguese. It has
a nasalised vowel (but not the same one as in French). The m is merely
a spelling convention. In "fin do caminho" (end of the road), it
wouldn't sounds any different if written "findo caminho".
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> Thu, 13 Dec 2007 12:08:58 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> >> Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals. You
> >> mean nasalised vowels. A plausible term could also be oral-nasal
> >> vowel, but I have never seen it used.
>
> >I gather you've never studied French. That's what they're called.
>
> French was the first foreign language I was taught in school (even
> before English!), from age 10-12. Later again from 13-16. I never
> learnt it very well, but I can get by. The nasalised vowels were
> called "neusklanken" in Dutch ("nose sounds"), which is equally
> incorrect. As a result of that, many people find them difficult to
> pronounce. I don't, because I understand what's really going on (oral
> and nasal air paths simultaneously) which the correct term "nasalised"
> reflects.
It's also not "correct" to say that "a noun is the name of a person,
place, or thing" or that "an adverb modifies verbs, adjectives, or
other adverbs." Nonetheless, that is probably what OP learned in
elementary school.
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:47:15 GMT: "Richard Wordingham"
What gives _you_ the right to define "vowel"?
Still don't know the difference between phonetics and phonemics?
António Marques
_fin do caminho_ would be my proposal for Galician, the pt is _fim do
caminho_ 'end of the path', which usually sounds the same as _findo o
caminho_ 'once the path ended, ...'.
Where pt (and ga) differs from fr is that before consonats, m and n may
keep a small consonantal value; pt nasals are not quite so nasal as the
french ones.
Whereas spanish simply has consonantal n/m. A telling difference between
ga and sp - for those who just assume ga sounds like spanish - is that a
sentence such as _pan a cocer_ has [pana] in sp but [pa~ a]/[paN a] in
ga (with [N] the -ng- in german _junge_).
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
António Marques
> Harlan Messinger <hmessinger...@comcast.net> writes:
>
>> Allan Adler wrote:
>>> I'm used to nasal n in French but, once, when I wanted to buy a stamp at
>>> a tabac in France, I noticed that the proprietor pronounced the m in timbre
>>> nasally. I've been wondering whether there are distinct nasal m and nasal
>>> n sounds in French.
>> Just to try to get straight what you're talking about
>
> I appreciate that. I'm also trying to get straight what I am talking about.
>
>> --"n" and "m" are
>> nasal wherever they are in French, even in words like "nouveau" and
>> "mardi", and they're nasal in English too. Are you talking about the
>> situations where they aren't pronounced on their own but instead serve
>> to nasalize the preceding vowel?
>
> I guess so. But, however one describes it, the first question is whether
> there is a difference between the nasalization due to m and that due to n.
None. M is written before p/b, following latin.
ekk...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:35:51 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
>
> >m and n are nasal by definition. There is no [m] in <timbre>, only a
> >nasal vowel.
>
> Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals. You
> mean nasalised vowels. A plausible term could also be oral-nasal
> vowel, but I have never seen it used.
Arrghhh, nasal vowels are not only possible, "nasal cardinal vowels"
are used in real languages, like Southern Min (Hoklo). By "nasal
cardinal vowels" I mean these vowels have well-defined frequency
spectrum, they are sustainable and maintain the same frequency
spectrum throughout the main body of the vowel, which can last beyond
one whole minute for a good swimmer or singer.
What people call "nasal vowels" in European languages like French or
Portuguese are not "cardinal": the voice quality (and hence the
spectrum) changes. Try to sustain a nasalized French vowel for 40 or
50 seconds, and you will realize what I mean. Most people will have
difficulty in sustaining a nasalized French vowel beyond 2 seconds.
The details are in the velum (soft palate). See picture in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vocal_tract.
For true nasal cardinal vowels, the velum is position in such a way
that air flows out equally from the nostrils and from the mouth. The
velum's position is static in this case. Both nasal tract and oral
tract are open. If you pinch your nose, or block the mouth with your
hand, you notice change in sound quality.
For normal un-nasalized vowels, the oral tract is open, the nasal
tract is closed. You can pinch your nose to close the nostrils and
this won't affect the vowel quality.
For /N/, the back the tongue is pressed against the velum, hence oral
tract is closed, nasal tract is open. When you make the vocalic /N/
sound, if you block your mouth with your hand, there is no change in
sound quality (usually there is a tiny escape of air to the oral
cavity, though. But it is possible to totally block this escape with
some effort.)
Now, to the case of French nasalization. It's a complicated process.
The vowel starts out as unnasalized. Then the velum lowers and the
nasal tract is open (step A). Next, the back of the tongue is pressed
against the velum to close the oral tract, and at this stage air
escapes only through the nasal tract (step B). And finally, the tongue
is so pressed back that it block the pharynx and the voicing stops. In
the French case, step A is glide (short), step B is vocalic (long).
Portuguse nasalization is slightly different from French nasalization.
The steps are almost the same as the case of French, but the vowel
starts out nasalized with velum already lowered, and step A is vocalic
(long), step B is a glide (short).
All this is my personal observation. You won't find it in any
linguistic books, since the majority of linguists are not personally
familiar with true nasal cardinal vowels.
-- Ekki
Peter T. Daniels
> On Dec 13, 10:15 am, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@rudhar.com.invalid>
> wrote:
>
> > Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:35:51 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> > <gramma...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
>
> > >m and n are nasal by definition. There is no [m] in <timbre>, only a
> > >nasal vowel.
>
> > Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals. You
> > mean nasalised vowels. A plausible term could also be oral-nasal
> > vowel, but I have never seen it used.
>
> Arrghhh, nasal vowels are not only possible, "nasal cardinal vowels"
> are used in real languages, like Southern Min (Hoklo). By "nasal
> cardinal vowels" I mean these vowels have well-defined frequency
> spectrum, they are sustainable and maintain the same frequency
> spectrum throughout the main body of the vowel, which can last beyond
> one whole minute for a good swimmer or singer.
>
> What people call "nasal vowels" in European languages like French or
> Portuguese are not "cardinal": the voice quality (and hence the
> spectrum) changes. Try to sustain a nasalized French vowel for 40 or
> 50 seconds, and you will realize what I mean. Most people will have
> difficulty in sustaining a nasalized French vowel beyond 2 seconds.
>
JIPA would welcome an article on the topic.
Ruud Harmsen
<gram...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
>> >I gather you've never studied French. That's what they're called.
>>
>> French was the first foreign language I was taught in school (even
>> before English!), from age 10-12. Later again from 13-16. I never
>> learnt it very well, but I can get by. The nasalised vowels were
>> called "neusklanken" in Dutch ("nose sounds"), which is equally
>> incorrect. As a result of that, many people find them difficult to
>> pronounce. I don't, because I understand what's really going on (oral
>> and nasal air paths simultaneously) which the correct term "nasalised"
>> reflects.
>
>It's also not "correct" to say that "a noun is the name of a person,
>place, or thing" or that "an adverb modifies verbs, adjectives, or
>other adverbs." Nonetheless, that is probably what OP learned in
>elementary school.
It's what I learnt, and I still think it is correct.
Nathan Sanders
hru...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote:
> In article
> <6c03f7b8-852c-4f97...@s12g2000prg.googlegroups.com>,
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >On Dec 14, 4:05 am, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@rudhar.com.invalid>
> >wrote:
> >> Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:47:15 GMT: "Richard Wordingham"
> >> <jrw0...@yahoo.co.uk>: in sci.lang:
>
> >> But this is not relevant. Our apparent difference of opinion stems
> >> from a different view on what is essential for a vowel: you look at
> >> its role in the syllable, and I define vowel as "a speech sound in
> >> which the air flows through the mouth (and possible nose, for
> >> nasalised vowels) unobstructed". Therefore r, l, z, and n are not
> >> vowels, although all of them can easily play the role that vowels
> >> often take in syllables; and in some languages, this actually happens.
>
> >What gives _you_ the right to define "vowel"?
>
> >Still don't know the difference between phonetics and phonemics?
>
> Is there a clear accepted definition of vowel which
> disagrees from his? Or which agrees with his interpretation?
In phonetics, a vocoid is any sound with a sufficiently open oral
cavity (greater than for a fricative), but this collapses "true"
vowels with semi-vowels. To further distinguish vowels, you have to
bring in syllabic role, which isn't really a phonetic concept, so
vowels as such can't really be defined purely in phonetic terms.
In phonology, a vowel is usually any sound that occupies the nucleus
of a syllable: "true" vowels and syllabic consonants, though some
people define them explicitly as syllabic vocoids.
The distinction between "nasal" and "nasalized" is technically correct
in phonetics, but not in phonology, where both are just [+nasal].
However, the distinction is needlessly pedantic either way. Reading
Ruud harp on it reminds me of those annoyingly prissy teachers who
responded to "Can I go to bathroom?" with "I don't know, can you?".
Nathan
--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/
Bart Mathias
> On Dec 14, 1:56 pm, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@rudhar.com.invalid>
> wrote:
>
>>Fri, 14 Dec 2007 05:35:36 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
> descriptive, structural, Chomskyan, whatever. Those are not adequate
> definitions nor are they useful in any sort of description or analysis
> of language.
I didn't major in linguistics, but I considered myself a professional
linguist for 30 years, and I'm inclined to side with Ruud on this one.
I wouldn't put it in those terms; I don't particularly like that use of
"modifies," and I'm aware that an adverb could be a whole utterance,
with nothing around to "modify," but I don't see where the notions are
that far off.
I remember Gleason (_An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics_) spent
a paragraph or two trying to make fun of that characterization of nouns,
but he failed.
Bart Mathias
António Marques
>> Where pt (and ga) differs from fr is that before consonats, m and n may
>> keep a small consonantal value;
>
> Probably. But that is inevitably always the case, as I explained
> before, because leaving the the nasal consonant out entirely requires
> a precise timing of closing the nose channel and establishing the oral
> closure, which is diffcult and unnecessary. So it is only natural that
> in any language /V~C/ becomes either [V~Vc] or [VNC]. (with the second
> V and the N (meaning the nasal at the articulation place of consonant
> C) very short. The exact point in between is exactly that, a point, so
> difficult to hit, while the areaa at either sides are areas.
Yeah.
>> pt nasals are not quite so nasal as the
>> french ones.
>
> Possibly. Between zero and 100% procent air through the nose, any
> intermediate degree is physically possible, and not only the exact 50%
> qualifies as a nasal vowel.
>
>> Whereas spanish simply has consonantal n/m.
>
> So has Galician, in the dialects I heard.
Ruud, PLEASE. I'm refering to final -n, not to any other kind.
>> A telling difference between
>> ga and sp - for those who just assume ga sounds like spanish - is that a
>> sentence such as _pan a cocer_ has [pana] in sp but [pa~ a]/[paN a] in
>> ga (with [N] the -ng- in german _junge_).
>
> I never noticed that, but you may be right.
Peter T. Daniels
Did not.
What, exactly, is a "part of speech"? What sense does it make to give
a semantic characterization of it?
Is "humility" a person, a place, or a thing?
"Adverb" was a grab-bag, the "miscellaneous" part of speech,
collecting all sorts of words that have very little in common.
Brian M. Scott
<mat...@hawaii.edu> wrote in
<news:v-idnbJJNcR_sf7a...@hawaiiantel.net> in
sci.lang:
[...]
> I remember Gleason (_An Introduction to Descriptive
> Linguistics_) spent a paragraph or two trying to make
> fun of that characterization of nouns, but he failed.
He spent several paragraphs demonstrating its shortcomings.
As he said, the only reason that it sort of works in
informal, everyday contexts is that in practice people don't
actually use it.
Brian
Ruud Harmsen
Rubin): in sci.lang:
>Is the flow of air restricted in r, l, z, n, m?
In r, l and z: yes. In n and m: no, but there is no air flow through
the mouth, so they are vowels.
>Even more can be added, such as f, v, s. Several
>of these are used as vowels openly in Indo-European
>languages.
Yes, if we take vowel as referring to its role in the syllable.
Ruud Harmsen
<nsan...@williams.edu>: in sci.lang:
>In phonetics, a vocoid is any sound with a sufficiently open oral
>cavity (greater than for a fricative), but this collapses "true"
>vowels with semi-vowels. To further distinguish vowels, you have to
>bring in syllabic role, which isn't really a phonetic concept, so
>vowels as such can't really be defined purely in phonetic terms.
>
>In phonology, a vowel is usually any sound that occupies the nucleus
>of a syllable: "true" vowels and syllabic consonants, though some
>people define them explicitly as syllabic vocoids.
>
>The distinction between "nasal" and "nasalized" is technically correct
>in phonetics, but not in phonology, where both are just [+nasal].
Why is it that so often (but not always) when you write something, I
understand it immediately and am quite willing to agree with it?
>However, the distinction is needlessly pedantic either way. Reading
>Ruud harp on it reminds me of those annoyingly prissy teachers who
>responded to "Can I go to bathroom?" with "I don't know, can you?".
You have a point there too, even though of course I hate to admit it.
Ruud Harmsen
>Arrghhh, nasal vowels are not only possible, "nasal cardinal vowels"
>are used in real languages, like Southern Min (Hoklo). By "nasal
>cardinal vowels" I mean these vowels have well-defined frequency
>spectrum, they are sustainable and maintain the same frequency
>spectrum throughout the main body of the vowel, which can last beyond
>one whole minute for a good swimmer or singer.
OK, so in your view [n], [m], [N] and [l] are all vowels.
>What people call "nasal vowels" in European languages like French or
>Portuguese are not "cardinal": the voice quality (and hence the
>spectrum) changes.
Not necessarily.
>Try to sustain a nasalized French vowel for 40 or
>50 seconds, and you will realize what I mean. Most people will have
>difficulty in sustaining a nasalized French vowel beyond 2 seconds.
I just said fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin for 10 seconds, and noticed no
problem. Same with Portuguese comuuuuuuum and coooooooom.
It's just a matter of keeping that thingy (whatever it is) in the back
of the nose in the middle position, so air flows equally through mouth
and nose. You need a good command of nasal vowels, of course, and if
ones native language dosn't have them, that requires practice.
Ruud Harmsen
>Now, to the case of French nasalization. It's a complicated process.
>The vowel starts out as unnasalized. Then the velum lowers and the
>nasal tract is open (step A). Next, the back of the tongue is pressed
>against the velum to close the oral tract, and at this stage air
>escapes only through the nasal tract (step B). And finally, the tongue
>is so pressed back that it block the pharynx and the voicing stops.
Only is a pauze of voiceless consonant follows. What about a word like
<changeant> [SA~ZA~]? Is there any reason why the voicing would stop
after the first vowel? And is devoicing normally done by pressing back
the tongue and blocking the pharynx? Why?
ekk...@yahoo.com
wrote:
> Fri, 14 Dec 2007 09:22:32 -0800 (PST): ekk...@yahoo.com: in sci.lang:
>
> >Arrghhh, nasal vowels are not only possible, "nasal cardinal vowels"
> >are used in real languages, like Southern Min (Hoklo). By "nasal
> >cardinal vowels" I mean these vowels have well-defined frequency
> >spectrum, they are sustainable and maintain the same frequency
> >spectrum throughout the main body of the vowel, which can last beyond
> >one whole minute for a good swimmer or singer.
>
> OK, so in your view [n], [m], [N] and [l] are all vowels.
Depends on the language, right? In some Chinese dialects, [m] and [N]
are truly used as vowels in many words. They can carry various tonal
values, and in the case of [N], be preceeded by consonants (sng chng
tng kng are all words that you can find in Southern Min articles in
Wikipedia, see for instance http://zh-min-nan.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kng,
not to mention a lot of Hoklo or Cantonese people with last name Ng.)
There has never been a clear cut between consonants and vowels. The
final dark [l] in English certainly is used also as a vowel.
Vietnamese does not have [N] [m] [n] [n^] as a vowels per se, but in
singing, they serves as continuation for lax phonated, -c -p -t -ch
ended syllables on long musical notes, quite an interesting
phenomenon.
> I just said fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin for 10 seconds, and noticed no
> problem. Same with Portuguese comuuuuuuum and coooooooom.
Record your speech, and take the main body of the vowel (trim the
beginning and ending), then you have the cardinal part of the vowel.
You can even use some of tools like Praat to see where the main body
and the off-glide /N/ are located. (The vowel "o" in "com" is a
diphthong anyway, at least in the Brazilian version.)
Now play only the main body part of the vowel to a French or
Portuguese speaker. Ask them whether these are the nasalized vowels of
their language. Chances are they won't agree: because they don't hear
the final /N/ part.
For Southern Min, there is no such an issue. The vowel quality is
constant.
> It's just a matter of keeping that thingy (whatever it is) in the back
> of the nose in the middle position, so air flows equally through mouth
> and nose.
Exactly. Because the velum is hanging in the middle position, this
phonation is not widely used in world languages. It's a bit like the
case of central vowels: not all languages use them.
>> Now, to the case of French nasalization. It's a complicated process.
>> The vowel starts out as unnasalized. Then the velum lowers and the
>> nasal tract is open (step A). Next, the back of the tongue is pressed
>> against the velum to close the oral tract, and at this stage air
>> escapes only through the nasal tract (step B). And finally, the tongue
>> is so pressed back that it block the pharynx and the voicing stops.
>
>Only is a pauze of voiceless consonant follows. What about a word like
><changeant> [SA~ZA~]? Is there any reason why the voicing would stop
>after the first vowel? And is devoicing normally done by pressing back
>the tongue and blocking the pharynx? Why?
I was talking about the case of final or "open" syllable. I don't know
why, but in French word like "dent" or "pain", there is always a
pharyngeal constriction at the end that shuts down the air flow. This
constriction is much stronger than the case of English's final /-N/,
where I guess the voicing disappears mostly because of dropping lung
pressure or glottal closure, instead of a forced pharyngeal
constriction. (I know dialectal situations may vary, I am talking
about the typical pronunciations in both languages.)
---
After re-reading your original comment, I have to agree with you that
a more correct name for nasal/nasalized vowels is "oral-nasal
vowels" (except for /N/. Even /m/ and /n/ would be oral-nasal since
they make use of the oral cavity.) But somehow that's not the jargon
in use today. Maybe one day it will change?
regards,
-- Ekki
Nathan Sanders
Ruud Harmsen <realema...@rudhar.com.invalid> wrote:
> Fri, 14 Dec 2007 18:06:02 -0500: Nathan Sanders
> <nsan...@williams.edu>: in sci.lang:
>
> >In phonetics, a vocoid is any sound with a sufficiently open oral
> >cavity (greater than for a fricative), but this collapses "true"
> >vowels with semi-vowels. To further distinguish vowels, you have to
> >bring in syllabic role, which isn't really a phonetic concept, so
> >vowels as such can't really be defined purely in phonetic terms.
> >
> >In phonology, a vowel is usually any sound that occupies the nucleus
> >of a syllable: "true" vowels and syllabic consonants, though some
> >people define them explicitly as syllabic vocoids.
> >
> >The distinction between "nasal" and "nasalized" is technically correct
> >in phonetics, but not in phonology, where both are just [+nasal].
>
> Why is it that so often (but not always) when you write something, I
> understand it immediately and am quite willing to agree with it?
As a general rule, when posting about linguistic matters, I try to
make a distinction between what I have rigorously studied in my
academic career (accepted, established work based on thousands of
man-hours of research done by my peers and predecessors) and what is
my own opinion or half-baked idea (which I usually mark with
appropriate qualifiers like "I think" or "it seems").
I try to focus on the former, so perhaps that's why you find much of
what I say agreeable!
Bart Mathias
> On Dec 14, 8:24 pm, Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu> wrote:
>
>>Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>I didn't major in linguistics, but I considered myself a professional
>>linguist for 30 years, and I'm inclined to side with Ruud on this one.
>>
>>I wouldn't put it in those terms; I don't particularly like that use of
>>"modifies," and I'm aware that an adverb could be a whole utterance,
>>with nothing around to "modify," but I don't see where the notions are
>>that far off.
>>
>>I remember Gleason (_An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics_) spent
>>a paragraph or two trying to make fun of that characterization of nouns,
>>but he failed.
>
>
> Did not.
>
> What, exactly, is a "part of speech"? What sense does it make to give
> a semantic characterization of it?
>
> Is "humility" a person, a place, or a thing?
"Humility" is a thing, because it's a word and words are things. More
to the point, that word obviously "names" a thing. Probably something
you and I don't have a whole lot of (I'm not going to worry about
distinguishing "things" from "stuff").
> "Adverb" was a grab-bag, the "miscellaneous" part of speech,
> collecting all sorts of words that have very little in common.
I've never had any illusions about the fact that calling something an
adverb doesn't say much about it, but the very little they have in
common is, so far as I've ever noticed yet, that they link syntactically
with a predicating element.
The "modifies a ..." notion, sloppy as it is, could have saved some
people who turned out not to be Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.
Bart
Peter T. Daniels
> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Dec 14, 8:24 pm, Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu> wrote:
>
> >>Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> >>>[...]
> >>I didn't major in linguistics, but I considered myself a professional
> >>linguist for 30 years, and I'm inclined to side with Ruud on this one.
>
> >>I wouldn't put it in those terms; I don't particularly like that use of
> >>"modifies," and I'm aware that an adverb could be a whole utterance,
> >>with nothing around to "modify," but I don't see where the notions are
> >>that far off.
>
> >>I remember Gleason (_An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics_) spent
> >>a paragraph or two trying to make fun of that characterization of nouns,
> >>but he failed.
>
> > Did not.
>
> > What, exactly, is a "part of speech"? What sense does it make to give
> > a semantic characterization of it?
>
> > Is "humility" a person, a place, or a thing?
>
> "Humility" is a thing, because it's a word and words are things. More
> to the point, that word obviously "names" a thing. Probably something
> you and I don't have a whole lot of (I'm not going to worry about
> distinguishing "things" from "stuff").
If I had been referring to the word, I would have so indicated.
> > "Adverb" was a grab-bag, the "miscellaneous" part of speech,
> > collecting all sorts of words that have very little in common.
>
> I've never had any illusions about the fact that calling something an
> adverb doesn't say much about it, but the very little they have in
> common is, so far as I've ever noticed yet, that they link syntactically
> with a predicating element.
>
> The "modifies a ..." notion, sloppy as it is, could have saved some
> people who turned out not to be Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.
Have you gone back to your Gleason yet?
Herman Rubin
<ekk...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>On Dec 13, 10:15 am, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@rudhar.com.invalid>
>wrote:
<> Thu, 13 Dec 2007 04:35:51 -0800 (PST): "Peter T. Daniels"
<> <gramma...@verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
<> >m and n are nasal by definition. There is no [m] in <timbre>, only a
<> >nasal vowel.
<> Nasal vowels are physically impossible, as they would be nasals. You
<> mean nasalised vowels. A plausible term could also be oral-nasal
<> vowel, but I have never seen it used.
>Arrghhh, nasal vowels are not only possible, "nasal cardinal vowels"
>are used in real languages, like Southern Min (Hoklo). By "nasal
>cardinal vowels" I mean these vowels have well-defined frequency
>spectrum, they are sustainable and maintain the same frequency
>spectrum throughout the main body of the vowel, which can last beyond
>one whole minute for a good swimmer or singer.
>What people call "nasal vowels" in European languages like French or
>Portuguese are not "cardinal": the voice quality (and hence the
>spectrum) changes. Try to sustain a nasalized French vowel for 40 or
>50 seconds, and you will realize what I mean. Most people will have
>difficulty in sustaining a nasalized French vowel beyond 2 seconds.
I seem to have no problem with sustaining a nasalized
French vowel as long as my breath holds out.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Joachim Pense
>
> In phonetics, a vocoid is any sound with a sufficiently open oral
> cavity (greater than for a fricative),
Would an h qualify, or is it mandatory that the vocal chords be used?
Joachim
Ruud Harmsen
>> OK, so in your view [n], [m], [N] and [l] are all vowels.
>
>Depends on the language, right?
That depend on the definition of vowels, phonetic of morphological.
See explanation by Nathan.
>In some Chinese dialects, [m] and [N]
>are truly used as vowels in many words.
OK, but "used as" is not "is".
What's more, [z] and [Z] can be vowels in standard Chinese, written as
<i>. Strange but true.
>There has never been a clear cut between consonants and vowels.
It depends on the language and the definition. In phonetical,
language-indpendent terms, there IS a clear distinction.
>The
>final dark [l] in English certainly is used also as a vowel.
It could be called a syllabic consonant. It's just what you call it
and how you choose to define things.
>Record your speech, and take the main body of the vowel (trim the
>beginning and ending), then you have the cardinal part of the vowel.
That true of any speech sound. They are always influenced by
transition from and to adjacent sounds, except in isolation.
Successful text-to-speech algoritms all use combinations of two or
even three sounds as their building blocks, not single sounds. That's
the only way to get reasonably natural sounding and understandable
results.
>Now play only the main body part of the vowel to a French or
>Portuguese speaker. Ask them whether these are the nasalized vowels of
>their language. Chances are they won't agree: because they don't hear
>the final /N/ part.
The Portuguese words som, com, sim, fim, ruim, comum etc. etc. don't
have [N] at the end.
>For Southern Min, there is no such an issue. The vowel quality is
>constant.
That is physically impossible except for words that consist only of
that single nasal vowel, said in isolation.
>> It's just a matter of keeping that thingy (whatever it is) in the back
>> of the nose in the middle position, so air flows equally through mouth
>> and nose.
>
>Exactly. Because the velum is hanging in the middle position, this
>phonation is not widely used in world languages. It's a bit like the
>case of central vowels: not all languages use them.
Yes but some do. Some Portuguese radio announcers even pronounce the
com of dot com ("ponte com") with their nasal vowel, and end it with
no change.
>I was talking about the case of final or "open" syllable. I don't know
>why, but in French word like "dent" or "pain", there is always a
>pharyngeal constriction at the end that shuts down the air flow.
You may be right.
>This
>constriction is much stronger than the case of English's final /-N/,
>where I guess the voicing disappears mostly because of dropping lung
>pressure or glottal closure, instead of a forced pharyngeal
>constriction.
Yes.
>After re-reading your original comment, I have to agree with you that
>a more correct name for nasal/nasalized vowels is "oral-nasal
>vowels" (except for /N/. Even /m/ and /n/ would be oral-nasal since
>they make use of the oral cavity.)
So that makes it confusing. I'd call [m] and [n] nasals.
Anyway, as you might have noticed, I switched to calling nasalised
vowels nasal vowels now. Not really a bad term, because the oral part
is already included in "vowel".
Joachim Pense
>
> Record your speech, and take the main body of the vowel (trim the
> beginning and ending), then you have the cardinal part of the vowel.
> You can even use some of tools like Praat to see where the main body
> and the off-glide /N/ are located. (The vowel "o" in "com" is a
> diphthong anyway, at least in the Brazilian version.)
>
> Now play only the main body part of the vowel to a French or
> Portuguese speaker. Ask them whether these are the nasalized vowels of
> their language. Chances are they won't agree: because they don't hear
> the final /N/ part.
>
I never noticed any final /N/ part in a French nasalized vowel.
Joachim
Joachim Pense
> On Dec 15, 5:17 pm, Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu> wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Dec 14, 8:24 pm, Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu> wrote:
>>
>>>>Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>
>>>>>[...]
>>>>I didn't major in linguistics, but I considered myself a professional
>>>>linguist for 30 years, and I'm inclined to side with Ruud on this one.
>>
>>>>I wouldn't put it in those terms; I don't particularly like that use of
>>>>"modifies," and I'm aware that an adverb could be a whole utterance,
>>>>with nothing around to "modify," but I don't see where the notions are
>>>>that far off.
>>
>>>>I remember Gleason (_An Introduction to Descriptive Linguistics_) spent
>>>>a paragraph or two trying to make fun of that characterization of nouns,
>>>>but he failed.
>>
>>> Did not.
>>
>>> What, exactly, is a "part of speech"? What sense does it make to give
>>> a semantic characterization of it?
>>
>>> Is "humility" a person, a place, or a thing?
>>
>> "Humility" is a thing, because it's a word and words are things. More
>> to the point, that word obviously "names" a thing. Probably something
>> you and I don't have a whole lot of (I'm not going to worry about
>> distinguishing "things" from "stuff").
>
> If I had been referring to the word, I would have so indicated.
>
You did, by quoting the word.
Joachim
LEE Sau Dan
Ruud> That depend on the definition of vowels, phonetic of
Ruud> morphological. See explanation by Nathan.
>> In some Chinese dialects, [m] and [N] are truly used as vowels
>> in many words.
Ruud> OK, but "used as" is not "is".
Then, what is it? e.g. [hN35] in Minnan, meaning "yellow". What's
the [N] there?
(Similarly, "Krk" [krk] in Croatian is the name of an island. A
vowel-less name?)
Ruud> What's more, [z] and [Z] can be vowels in standard Chinese,
Ruud> written as <i>. Strange but true.
Doesn't that indicate that the distinction between vowel and consonant
can be very vague? Pinyin "e" and Vietnamese "o'" (unrounded [U]) is
considered vowel in these languages, but consonants in many other
languages.
>> There has never been a clear cut between consonants and vowels.
Ruud> It depends on the language and the definition. In
Ruud> phonetical, language-indpendent terms, there IS a clear
Ruud> distinction.
What is it? Is that property all-or-nothing, binary allowing nothing
in between the two extremes as in a continuum?
>> The final dark [l] in English certainly is used also as a
>> vowel.
Ruud> It could be called a syllabic consonant. It's just what you
Ruud> call it and how you choose to define things.
And how about the "m" in "prism"?
Ruud> The Portuguese words som, com, sim, fim, ruim, comum
Ruud> etc. etc. don't have [N] at the end.
>> For Southern Min, there is no such an issue. The vowel quality
>> is constant.
Ruud> That is physically impossible except for words that consist
Ruud> only of that single nasal vowel, said in isolation.
What's the vowel in [hN35]?
>> Exactly. Because the velum is hanging in the middle position,
>> this phonation is not widely used in world languages. It's a
>> bit like the case of central vowels: not all languages use
>> them.
Ruud> Yes but some do. Some Portuguese radio announcers even
Ruud> pronounce the com of dot com ("ponte com") with their nasal
Ruud> vowel, and end it with no change.
That only means that the pronounciation has been localized. French
has "point" (a cognate of English "point") pronounced [pwE~], too.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
LEE Sau Dan
>> Now play only the main body part of the vowel to a French or
>> Portuguese speaker. Ask them whether these are the nasalized
>> vowels of their language. Chances are they won't agree: because
>> they don't hear the final /N/ part.
Joachim> I never noticed any final /N/ part in a French nasalized vowel.
I just looked up the loan word "camping" in a French dictionary, and
its pronunciation is transcribed as [kA~piN].
What's strange to me is that the French do keep the ending [N] as well
as refrain from nasalizing the [i] before it. But they fail to do the
same to the first syllable. They do nasalize the "a" and drop the
"m".
Compare this with "shampooing" [SA~pwE~].
Joachim Pense
>>>>>> "Joachim" == Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
>
> >> Now play only the main body part of the vowel to a French or
> >> Portuguese speaker. Ask them whether these are the nasalized
> >> vowels of their language. Chances are they won't agree: because
> >> they don't hear the final /N/ part.
>
> Joachim> I never noticed any final /N/ part in a French nasalized vowel.
>
> I just looked up the loan word "camping" in a French dictionary, and
> its pronunciation is transcribed as [kA~piN].
>
So the nasalized vowel does not end in an N.
> What's strange to me is that the French do keep the ending [N] as well
> as refrain from nasalizing the [i] before it.
Why should the French nasalize the [i]? If they don't know Portugese,
they probably wouldn't even to know how to do it.
And why "refrain from"? You seem to be implying that an (imported) N
in French normally should invoke nasalization of the preceding vowel.
Joachim
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
No, an voiceless h is not a vowel, because vowels are voiced by
definition, except of course in whispering, and except of course in
languages that have voiceless vowels (Japanese, Eur. Portugese, there
must be more).
So much for definite definitions.
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>>>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <realema...@rudhar.com.invalid> writes:
>
> Ruud> That depend on the definition of vowels, phonetic of
> Ruud> morphological. See explanation by Nathan.
>
> >> In some Chinese dialects, [m] and [N] are truly used as vowels
> >> in many words.
>
> Ruud> OK, but "used as" is not "is".
>
>Then, what is it? e.g. [hN35] in Minnan, meaning "yellow". What's
>the [N] there?
Phoneticallt: a nasal.
Morphologically: a vowel.
>(Similarly, "Krk" [krk] in Croatian is the name of an island. A
>vowel-less name?)
The r functions as a vowel in the morphological sense. In other words,
the r is a syllabic consonant.
> Ruud> What's more, [z] and [Z] can be vowels in standard Chinese,
> Ruud> written as <i>. Strange but true.
>Doesn't that indicate that the distinction between vowel and consonant
>can be very vague?
It does. Human languages are fascinating, aren't they?
> Ruud> It could be called a syllabic consonant. It's just what you
> Ruud> call it and how you choose to define things.
>
>And how about the "m" in "prism"?
Syllabic m.
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
It's there, in cinque and in southern French.
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
> Joachim> I never noticed any final /N/ part in a French nasalized vowel.
>
>I just looked up the loan word "camping" in a French dictionary, and
>its pronunciation is transcribed as [kA~piN].
And I can confirm that they really say it like that. Also in Spain.
All the French I know is camping French.
Nathan Sanders
Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Phonetically, [h] is often characterized as a voiceless version of an
adjacent vowel. For example, [ha] could also be transcribed as [Aa]
(with [A] indicating a voiceless [a]). In practice, however, you
don't really see this all that often.
Phonologically... well, there's some variability, because [h] is so
weird. Of the two most important "major class" features
([consonantal] and [sonorant]), I've seen both + and - values for [h].
However, the most common consensus is that [h]---as well as all
laryngeals---is [-cons,-son], so that it is not a vocoid [-cons,+son],
a sonorant [+cons,+son], or an obstruent [+cons,-son].
I don't know of any language that allows [h] as a syllable nucleus.
(If any language does, it would probably be Berber.)
Ruud Harmsen
<nsan...@williams.edu>: in sci.lang:
>Phonetically, [h] is often characterized as a voiceless version of an
>adjacent vowel. For example, [ha] could also be transcribed as [Aa]
>(with [A] indicating a voiceless [a]). In practice, however, you
>don't really see this all that often.
To make it more complicated, the Dutch /h/ is often voiced.
Ruud Harmsen
<nsan...@williams.edu>: in sci.lang:
>I don't know of any language that allows [h] as a syllable nucleus.
>(If any language does, it would probably be Berber.)
I think Lee Sau Dan just mentioned /hN/ as a Cantonese word. Would /h/
be the nucleus, of /N/? Perhaps /N/ is final in that word.
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:17:50 -0500: Nathan Sanders
>
> >Phonetically, [h] is often characterized as a voiceless version of an
> >adjacent vowel. For example, [ha] could also be transcribed as [Aa]
> >(with [A] indicating a voiceless [a]). In practice, however, you
> >don't really see this all that often.
>
> To make it more complicated, the Dutch /h/ is often voiced.
Then it's not [h], and it's irrelevant to the question.
LEE Sau Dan
>> I don't know of any language that allows [h] as a syllable
>> nucleus. (If any language does, it would probably be Berber.)
Ruud> I think Lee Sau Dan just mentioned /hN/ as a Cantonese
Ruud> word.
No, I didn't. I said clearly it's Minnan. Cantonese doesn't allow
syllabic /m/ or /N/ to combine with other sounds to form a syllable.
Ruud> Would /h/ be the nucleus, of /N/? Perhaps /N/ is final in
Ruud> that word.
It is traditionally analysized into: initial=/h/ and final = /N/.
This reflects historical sound development. Compare Minnan [hN24]
with Mandarin <huang2>.
Joachim Pense
Ok - but it only occurs in some situations. ekkilu seems to imply that
_every_ french nasalized vowel ends with an /N/.
Joachim
Allan Adler
While I was in France, I tried to find out where one could go camping
and got nowhere. Now I learn they go to Spain to do it.
--
Ignorantly,
Allan Adler <a...@zurich.csail.mit.edu>
* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and
* comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.
wugi
> > Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:17:50 -0500: Nathan Sanders:
> >
> > >Phonetically, [h] is often characterized as a voiceless version of an
> > >adjacent vowel. For example, [ha] could also be transcribed as [Aa]
> > >(with [A] indicating a voiceless [a]). In practice, however, you
> > >don't really see this all that often.
> >
> > To make it more complicated, the Dutch /h/ is often voiced.
>
> Then it's not [h], and it's irrelevant to the question.
Yes it is, and yes it is. It distinguishes E. have and D. hebben (making
Dutchspeakers recognisable by it when speaking English).
Now, when emphasising pronunciation of h we would tend to accompany it by
shwa, but I think that any vowel would do, and such vowelised h'es (or
aspirated vowels:) could be syllabical. I don't know that they do so in some
language, but it is what I actually get to hear in the dialogue of actors
featuring hoarse maffioso types;-)
guido
http://home.scarlet.be/~pin12499
Nathan Sanders
"wugi" <br...@scarlet.be> wrote:
> "Peter T. Daniels" :
> > > Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:17:50 -0500: Nathan Sanders:
> > >
> > > >Phonetically, [h] is often characterized as a voiceless version of an
> > > >adjacent vowel. For example, [ha] could also be transcribed as [Aa]
> > > >(with [A] indicating a voiceless [a]). In practice, however, you
> > > >don't really see this all that often.
> > >
> > > To make it more complicated, the Dutch /h/ is often voiced.
> >
> > Then it's not [h], and it's irrelevant to the question.
>
> Yes it is, and yes it is.
Not it isn't. [h] is voiceless. If you make the same articulation,
but with (breathy) voicing, it is not longer [h], but [<hooktop h>]
(X-SAMPA [h`], Kirchenbaum [h<?>]).
Or are you confusing [h] with /h/?
As for [h`], it analogously can characterized as the *murmured*
version an an adjacent vowel, but this is even more rarely seen than
[h] as a voiceless vowel.
Joachim Pense
> In article <476597d5$0$831$5f6a...@news.scarlet.nl>,
> "wugi" <br...@scarlet.be> wrote:
>
>> "Peter T. Daniels" :
>>> > Sun, 16 Dec 2007 07:17:50 -0500: Nathan Sanders:
>>> >
>>> > >Phonetically, [h] is often characterized as a voiceless version of an
>>> > >adjacent vowel. For example, [ha] could also be transcribed as [Aa]
>>> > >(with [A] indicating a voiceless [a]). In practice, however, you
>>> > >don't really see this all that often.
>>> >
>>> > To make it more complicated, the Dutch /h/ is often voiced.
>>>
>>> Then it's not [h], and it's irrelevant to the question.
>>
>> Yes it is, and yes it is.
>
> Not it isn't. [h] is voiceless.
In Coulson's book on Sanskrit, the "h" is also claimed to be voiced. I
never understood what that was supposed to mean.
Joachim
Nathan Sanders
Joachim Pense <sn...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
Presumably, he meant breathy voiced (aka, murmured).
António Marques
>>> It's just a matter of keeping that thingy (whatever it is) in the back
>>> of the nose in the middle position, so air flows equally through mouth
>>> and nose.
>> Exactly. Because the velum is hanging in the middle position, this
>> phonation is not widely used in world languages. It's a bit like the
>> case of central vowels: not all languages use them.
>
> Yes but some do. Some Portuguese radio announcers even pronounce the
> com of dot com ("ponte com") with their nasal vowel, and end it with
> no change.
Ponto. Ponto. Ponto. Even when it has Ekkehard's barred-u.
Usually, the more nativist pronunciations skip the dots. I can't forget
how long I took to parse 'erre cę ésse concasema' into rcs.com/casema.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
António Marques
> Record your speech, and take the main body of the vowel (trim the
> beginning and ending), then you have the cardinal part of the vowel.
> You can even use some of tools like Praat to see where the main body
> and the off-glide /N/ are located. (The vowel "o" in "com" is a
> diphthong anyway, at least in the Brazilian version.)
Is a what? Apart from the fact that it may somewhat shaky, as every
other brazilian vowel, I don't see that that word is anything other than
ko~:. Maybe it has a very slight w-ish glide? But nothing as fully
fledged as ow.
António Marques
> Ruud> Yes but some do. Some Portuguese radio announcers even Ruud>
> pronounce the com of dot com ("ponte com") with their nasal Ruud>
> vowel, and end it with no change.
>
> That only means that the pronounciation has been localized.
> French has "point" (a cognate of English "point") pronounced [pwE~],
> too.
I forgot to add that nasal '.com' in portuguese sounds weirder every
day. The traditional way of reading such shorthands is kOm, as in
(,intEr'kOm) 'intercom'. Our native nasal 'com', which pops up
everywhere in isolated usage, is the standard word for 'with'.
Bart Mathias
> Am Sun, 16 Dec 2007 19:01:11 +0800 schrieb LEE Sau Dan:
>
>>I just looked up the loan word "camping" in a French dictionary, and
>>its pronunciation is transcribed as [kA~piN].
>>
>
>>What's strange to me is that the French do keep the ending [N] as well
>>as refrain from nasalizing the [i] before it.
>
>
> Why should the French nasalize the [i]? If they don't know Portugese,
> they probably wouldn't even to know how to do it.
>
> And why "refrain from"? You seem to be implying that an (imported) N
> in French normally should invoke nasalization of the preceding vowel.
I recall that one of my difficulties when trying to learn French in
college was avoiding the natural (but unperceived by me) American
nasalization of pre-nasal-consonant vowels when saying words like "femme."
Bart Mathias
Ruud Harmsen
<nsan...@williams.edu>: in sci.lang:
>> Yes it is, and yes it is.
>
>Not it isn't. [h] is voiceless. If you make the same articulation,
>but with (breathy) voicing, it is not longer [h], but [<hooktop h>]
>(X-SAMPA [h`], Kirchenbaum [h<?>]).
That's what I'd call voiced h.
Ruud Harmsen
<dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de>: in sci.lang:
>>>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <realema...@rudhar.com.invalid> writes:
> Ruud> I think Lee Sau Dan just mentioned /hN/ as a Cantonese
> Ruud> word.
>
>No, I didn't. I said clearly it's Minnan. Cantonese doesn't allow
>syllabic /m/ or /N/ to combine with other sounds to form a syllable.
OK, Minnan then. It's all Chinese to me (:-)
> Ruud> Would /h/ be the nucleus, of /N/? Perhaps /N/ is final in
> Ruud> that word.
>
>It is traditionally analysized into: initial=/h/ and final = /N/.
>This reflects historical sound development. Compare Minnan [hN24]
>with Mandarin <huang2>.
So the is no nucleus? The nucleus got lost?
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>> And I can confirm that they really say it like that. Also in Spain.
>> All the French I know is camping French.
>
>While I was in France, I tried to find out where one could go camping
>and got nowhere. Now I learn they go to Spain to do it.
Camping (=camp site) density in France is about 10 times as high as
in Spain.
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>Is a what? Apart from the fact that it may somewhat shaky, as every
>other brazilian vowel, I don't see that that word is anything other than
> ko~:. Maybe it has a very slight w-ish glide? But nothing as fully
>fledged as ow.
"Com" is one those few words that sound exactly the same in Portugal
and Brasil.
Nathan Sanders
Ruud Harmsen <realema...@rudhar.com.invalid> wrote:
That's like saying that [b] is "voiced [p]". The description roughly
fits, but they're different sounds, with different articulations and
different acoustic properties.
And while breathy voice does involve vocal cord vibration, it is not
the same as the modal voicing in sounds like [b], [m], or [v]. The
vocal cords are in a different configuration.
LEE Sau Dan
>> No, I didn't. I said clearly it's Minnan. Cantonese doesn't
>> allow syllabic /m/ or /N/ to combine with other sounds to form
>> a syllable.
Ruud> OK, Minnan then. It's all Chinese to me (:-)
Instead of _Greek_?
Is the idiom in Dutch "it's Chinese to me"?
Man sagt so auf Deutsch, aber nicht Englisch.
>> It is traditionally analysized into: initial=/h/ and final =
>> /N/. This reflects historical sound development. Compare
>> Minnan [hN24] with Mandarin <huang2>.
Ruud> So the is no nucleus? The nucleus got lost?
I think it depends on how you want "nucleus" defined.
Some more examples from Minnan:
[mN24] "door/gate" vs. Mandarin <men2>
[nN22] "2" vs. Madarin <liang3>
(Minnan /l/ is realized as [n] when preceeding nasals, or a tap
otherwise. Is Mike here to clarify this?)
Herman Rubin
Hebrew in many places uses a schwa; in fact the word
"schwa" is Hebrew or Aramaic. However, for certain
consonants, a schwa is not used in a syllable started by
that consonant; instead a "short vowel", written as a
combination of the schwa and that vowel, is used. The
"h" is one of those consonants, as is its voiced
counterpart. In addition, many Hebrew words end in an
"h"; I believe that in ancient times this was heard as
an unvoiced aspirate.
Also, as I understand it, many consonants in Sanskrit
and the related Prakrit languages have an "h" form,
where the h is a clearly heard aspirate, not taking
on any properties of the subsequent vowel.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Joachim Pense
>>>>>> "Ruud" == Ruud Harmsen <realema...@rudhar.com.invalid> writes:
>
> >> No, I didn't. I said clearly it's Minnan. Cantonese doesn't
> >> allow syllabic /m/ or /N/ to combine with other sounds to form
> >> a syllable.
>
> Ruud> OK, Minnan then. It's all Chinese to me (:-)
>
> Instead of _Greek_?
>
> Is the idiom in Dutch "it's Chinese to me"?
> Man sagt so auf Deutsch, aber nicht Englisch.
>
Auf deutsch sagt man: "Das kommt mir spanisch vor".
Joachim
Joachim Pense
>
> I recall that one of my difficulties when trying to learn French in
> college was avoiding the natural (but unperceived by me) American
> nasalization of pre-nasal-consonant vowels when saying words like "femme."
>
Doesn't "famme" rhyme with "come"? Is the vowel of "come" nasalized?
Joachim
LEE Sau Dan
>> Is the idiom in Dutch "it's Chinese to me"? Man sagt so auf
>> Deutsch, aber nicht Englisch.
>>
Auf deutsch sagt man: "Das kommt mir spanisch vor".
Schreibt man "Spanisch" nicht groß?
Peter T. Daniels
wrote:
> >>>>> "Joachim" == Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
>
> >> Is the idiom in Dutch "it's Chinese to me"? Man sagt so auf
> >> Deutsch, aber nicht Englisch.
> >>
>
> Auf deutsch sagt man: "Das kommt mir spanisch vor".
>
> Schreibt man "Spanisch" nicht groß?
'Course not. It's an adjective there.
Joachim Pense
And all populated by Dutch :-)
Joachim
Joachim Pense
"femme" of course.
>
> Joachim
Allan Adler
Ruud Harmsen
in sci.lang:
>> Camping (=camp site) density in France is about 10 times as high as
>> in Spain.
>
>And all populated by Dutch :-)
Some, not all. There are two different kinds of camp site: the other
kind has primarily French, who camp a lot themselves too.
Peter T. Daniels
> Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> writes:
> > Am Mon, 17 Dec 2007 09:10:12 +0100 schrieb Ruud Harmsen:
>
> > > 16 Dec 2007 12:21:42 -0500: Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu>: in
> > > sci.lang:
>
> > >>> And I can confirm that they really say it like that. Also in Spain.
> > >>> All the French I know is camping French.
>
> > >>While I was in France, I tried to find out where one could go camping
> > >>and got nowhere. Now I learn they go to Spain to do it.
>
> > > Camping (=camp site) density in France is about 10 times as high as
> > > in Spain.
>
> > And all populated by Dutch :-)
>
> What about Dutch camp sites?
They'd mostly be under water?
wugi
> >>> And I can confirm that they really say it like that. Also in Spain.
> >>> All the French I know is camping French.
> >>
> >>While I was in France, I tried to find out where one could go camping
> >>and got nowhere. Now I learn they go to Spain to do it.
> >
> > Camping (=camp site) density in France is about 10 times as high as
> > in Spain.
>
> And all populated by Dutch :-)
That's why the French learnt to say camping not unlike camping and not like
shampooing ;-)
Bart Mathias
> Bart Mathias wrote:
>
>
>>I recall that one of my difficulties when trying to learn French in
>>college was avoiding the natural (but unperceived by me) American
>>nasalization of pre-nasal-consonant vowels when saying words like "femme."
>>
>
>
I don't think they remotely rhyme.
As for the nasalization issue, Googling "English nasalization" brings up
a bunch of the sort of stuff I thought I remembered from my youth, e.g.
"... English, in which vowel nasalization ordinarily arises as a
predictable coarticulatory effect of anticipatory velum lowering for
production of a following nasal consonant."
I don't have access to the source of this partial quote, but the
implication is that the same does not apply to French:
"JSTOR: Teaching the French Vowels
In English, nasalization is an automatic feature predictable in terms of
the vowel's environment: it is generally nasalized-though the degree of ..."
Bart
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>What about Dutch camp sites?
Don't know, haven't been there in years, too cold and rainy.
António Marques
> 18 Dec 2007 10:32:33 -0500: Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu>: in
> sci.lang:
>
>> What about Dutch camp sites?
>
> Don't know, haven't been there in years, too cold and rainy.
Every year this season I bitterly ask myself why my parents didn't think
of emigrating to a lower latitude country.
António Marques
I wouldn't say it sounds exactly the same. The broad transcription is
the same.
Joachim Pense
> Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> 18 Dec 2007 10:32:33 -0500: Allan Adler <a...@nestle.csail.mit.edu>: in
>> sci.lang:
>>
>>> What about Dutch camp sites?
>>
>> Don't know, haven't been there in years, too cold and rainy.
>
> Every year this season I bitterly ask myself why my parents didn't think
> of emigrating to a lower latitude country.
>
Don't you live in Portugal? I live in Mainz, which is (even though it is the
same latitude as Winnipeg) is a relatively warm place, but I'd appreciate a
more mediterranean latitude a lot.
Joachim
Joachim Pense
> Joachim Pense wrote:
>> Bart Mathias wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I recall that one of my difficulties when trying to learn French in
>>>college was avoiding the natural (but unperceived by me) American
>>>nasalization of pre-nasal-consonant vowels when saying words like
>>>"femme."
>>>
>>
>>
>> Doesn't "f[e]mme" rhyme with "come"? Is the vowel of "come" nasalized?
>
> I don't think they remotely rhyme.
>
They don't? To me they sound very similar. the vowel is almost the same,
maybe a bit more open in the French (and certainly not nasalized), only the
"m" is sustained a bit longer. (Pronunciation of "famme":
<http://dict.leo.org/lf?6257606>)
Joachim
Joachim Pense
"come": <http://dict.leo.org/le?25174412>
>
> Joachim
Harlan Messinger
If I replace /f/ in "femme" with /k/ it doesn't sound like any English
version of "come" I can think of. The vowel is just too different.
Harlan Messinger
further back.
Joachim Pense
Ok. But not nasalized for sure.
Joachim
Brian M. Scott
<hmessinger...@comcast.net> wrote in
<news:5t216cF...@mid.individual.net> in sci.lang:
> Joachim Pense wrote:
>> Joachim Pense wrote:
[...]
>>> the "m" is sustained a bit longer. (Pronunciation of "famme":
>>> <http://dict.leo.org/lf?6257606>)
>> "come": <http://dict.leo.org/le?25174412>
> Those are *very* different vowels. The one in "femme" is
> more open and further back.
Forward.
Brian
Harlan Messinger
Right.
Harlan Messinger
Um ... (pronouncing carefully and deliberately) ... oh yeah. Hmm. Why
isn't that intuitive?
Bart Mathias
> Joachim Pense wrote:
>
>> Joachim Pense wrote:
>>
>>> Bart Mathias wrote:
>>>
>>>> Joachim Pense wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Doesn't "f[e]mme" rhyme with "come"? Is the vowel of "come" nasalized?
>>>>
>>>> I don't think they remotely rhyme.
>>>>
>>> They don't? To me they sound very similar. the vowel is almost the same,
>>> maybe a bit more open in the French (and certainly not nasalized), only
>>> the "m" is sustained a bit longer. (Pronunciation of "famme":
>>> <http://dict.leo.org/lf?6257606>)
>>
>>
>> "come": <http://dict.leo.org/le?25174412>
>>
>>> Joachim
>>
>>
> Those are *very* different vowels. The one in "femme" is more open and
Back? French must have changed a lot since I took it in the middle of
the last century, when I was taught to say something pretty close to [fEm].
Bart
> further back.
António Marques
I do... though the Algarve would be an improvement. I even like rain if
it's not cold, but I feel seriously unhappy below 10ºC (50ºF), and we've
had like 6 or 8 or less. At least we have snow only twice per century...
weird to think of it, but if you stretch a rope from NYC to Kabul it
will cross Lisbon, give or take a mile or two. (I live in Coimbra,
myself, and I've only gone camping once. A friend of mine once told me
of a camping site in Germany where the girls didn't mind showering nude
in front of everybody, but we're not so lucky here.)
I can't imagine how people manage to live in Russia.
António Marques
>> Those are *very* different vowels. The one in "femme" is more open and
>
> Back? French must have changed a lot since I took it in the middle of
> the last century, when I was taught to say something pretty close to [fEm].
When I got my french, it was kOm, fam, v@~. Nowadays, they'll have us
believe that it's vE~. It's just not the same vowel as in maire.
Brian M. Scott
<m....@sapo.pt> wrote in
<news:4772bcd6$0$26004$8826...@free.teranews.com> in
sci.lang:
> Bart Mathias wrote:
>>> Those are *very* different vowels. The one in "femme" is more open and
>> Back? French must have changed a lot since I took it in the middle of
>> the last century, when I was taught to say something pretty close to [fEm].
> When I got my french, it was kOm, fam, v@~. Nowadays, they'll have us
> believe that it's vE~. It's just not the same vowel as in maire.
I learnt [fam], [vE~], and [mE:R].
Brian
Harlan Messinger
>
> Back? French must have changed a lot since I took it in the middle of
> the last century, when I was taught to say something pretty close to [fEm].
If so, you were taught way wrong!