palatalized consonants in english?
M. Ranjit Mathews
in "beer", "hear" and "near" as palatalized?
beer [b;@]
hear [h;@]
near [n;@]
Peter T. Daniels
The fact that they're not?
Whereas when Terry Gross of WHYY in Philadelphia says her name, I
usually hear it as Cherry.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
Greg Lee
> M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> >
> > What, if anything, would be wrong with describing the first consonant
> > in "beer", "hear" and "near" as palatalized?
> >
> > beer [b;@]
> > hear [h;@]
> > near [n;@]
> The fact that they're not?
> Whereas when Terry Gross of WHYY in Philadelphia says her name, I
> usually hear it as Cherry.
They are, in the sense that tongue is in a palatal position for the
articulation of the first consonants. But there is no change in
place of articulation, or on-glide to the following vowel, or
affrication, which are generally associated with palatalization,
so they're not *called* palatalized. If these consonants occurred
before [a], they would be called palatalized, because then the
movement of the tongue away from the palatal position would produce
a glide.
So, it would be unconventional, but correct, to call them palatalized.
Please don't ask me how, then, it is possible in some languages
(Polish, I think) to distinguish palatalized from unpalatalized
consonants before high front vowels.
--
Greg Lee <gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu>
Rick Wojcik
Greg Lee wrote:
Greg, it is because Polish and other Slavic languages have palatalized
consonantal phonemes that stand in opposition to velarized counterparts.
Read your Baudouin de Courtenay. He got it right. Don't read
Kenstowicz or Halle. They mistake internal reconstruction for
synchronic analysis. But I suspect that you already know this. :-) I
just don't understand why it is puzzling to you that palatalized and
unpalatalized consonants can exist before high front vowels. In the
Slavic language, the palatalized consonants are fundamental, not derived
via phonological assimilation.
Brian M. Scott
<gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> wrote in
<news:c3b6f0$k2r$1...@news.hawaii.edu> in
alt.usage.english,sci.lang:
> In sci.lang Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>>> What, if anything, would be wrong with describing the first consonant
>>> in "beer", "hear" and "near" as palatalized?
>>> beer [b;@]
>>> hear [h;@]
>>> near [n;@]
>> The fact that they're not?
[...]
> They are, in the sense that tongue is in a palatal position for the
> articulation of the first consonants.
Perhaps this is true of your pronunciation; it is not true
of mine, except sometimes in <here>. Palatalized [n^] is
quite different from the alveolar [n] that I have in <near>.
Of course I also don't really have high front vowel in
<beer> and <near>; it's roughly [I@], but with a somewhat
more central first element.
[...]
Brian
Greg Lee
...
> Greg, it is because Polish and other Slavic languages have palatalized
> consonantal phonemes that stand in opposition to velarized counterparts.
> Read your Baudouin de Courtenay. He got it right. Don't read
> Kenstowicz or Halle. They mistake internal reconstruction for
> synchronic analysis. But I suspect that you already know this. :-) I
> just don't understand why it is puzzling to you that palatalized and
> unpalatalized consonants can exist before high front vowels.
It's the actual articulation that I don't understand. Where the tongue
goes, what one hears. Is there an audible glide, going from a palatalized
consonant to a following high front vowel? If not, how can one tell
that the consonant is palatalized? If so, there must be movement of
the tongue body, but if that is in a palatal position for both the
palatalized consonant and the following palatal vowel, why should the
tongue move? Is the tongue closer to the palate for the consonant than
it is for the vowel? Then how about the tongue position for hard
consonants before palatal vowels? Is there a glide there?
> In the
> Slavic language, the palatalized consonants are fundamental, not derived
> via phonological assimilation.
--
Greg Lee <gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu>
Brian M. Scott
<gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> wrote in
<news:c3c3cq$6tu$1...@news.hawaii.edu> in
alt.usage.english,sci.lang:
> In sci.lang Rick Wojcik <rwo...@att.net> wrote:
> ...
>> Greg, it is because Polish and other Slavic languages have palatalized
>> consonantal phonemes that stand in opposition to velarized counterparts.
>> Read your Baudouin de Courtenay. He got it right. Don't read
>> Kenstowicz or Halle. They mistake internal reconstruction for
>> synchronic analysis. But I suspect that you already know this. :-) I
>> just don't understand why it is puzzling to you that palatalized and
>> unpalatalized consonants can exist before high front vowels.
> It's the actual articulation that I don't understand. Where the tongue
> goes, what one hears. Is there an audible glide, going from a palatalized
> consonant to a following high front vowel? If not, how can one tell
> that the consonant is palatalized? If so, there must be movement of
> the tongue body, but if that is in a palatal position for both the
> palatalized consonant and the following palatal vowel, why should the
> tongue move? Is the tongue closer to the palate for the consonant than
> it is for the vowel? Then how about the tongue position for hard
> consonants before palatal vowels? Is there a glide there?
If it's like Russian, the vowel is actually different; I
hear the high vowel after non-palatal consonants (and have
seen it described) as a diphthong consisting of turned-m and
barred-i. The non-technical description that I've seen for
Polish is that the allophone after non-palatal consonants is
between the vowels of <sit> and <set>, but I suspect that
this is an attempt to describe something closer to barred-i.
I'd be interested to know what it actually is.
[...]
Brian
Latet
> hear the high vowel after non-palatal consonants (and have
> seen it described) as a diphthong consisting of turned-m and
> barred-i. The non-technical description that I've seen for
> Polish is that the allophone after non-palatal consonants is
> between the vowels of <sit> and <set>, but I suspect that
> this is an attempt to describe something closer to barred-i.
> I'd be interested to know what it actually is.
Well.... I don't understand much of this hard-core phonetics discussion,
but if you explain me what you want (which words or types of words),
I can easily record a Polish speaker pronouncing those *allophones*
(whatever they are) and upload them on my website as .mp3 files.
If you're still interested in digging in this stuff.
Greetings,
latet
Mark J. Reed
>but if you explain me what you want (which words or types of words),
>I can easily record a Polish speaker pronouncing those *allophones*
>(whatever they are) and upload them on my website as .mp3 files.
>If you're still interested in digging in this stuff.
FYI: "allophones" are two sounds ("phones") which are physically distinct, but
perceived by speakers of a given language as "the same sound". Often-cited
examples in English include the "aspirated" (accompanied by a strong puff of
air) and "unaspirated" (no puff) versions of p, t, and k. For most speakers of
English, the 't' in 'top' is aspirated and the 't' in 'stop' is unaspirated,
yet they sound the same to a native English speaker, who has to hold his or her
hand up to the mouth (to feel the puff) in order to perceive the difference.
So aspirated and unaspirated 't' are called "allophones" of a single "phoneme"
/t/ in English.
To a native speaker of Hindi, on the other hand, aspirated and unaspirated
't' are as different as 't' is from 'd'. In that language they are not
allophones, but two different phonemes.
-Mark
Rick Wojcik
> It's the actual articulation that I don't understand. Where the tongue
> goes, what one hears. Is there an audible glide, going from a palatalized
> consonant to a following high front vowel? If not, how can one tell
> that the consonant is palatalized? If so, there must be movement of
> the tongue body, but if that is in a palatal position for both the
> palatalized consonant and the following palatal vowel, why should the
> tongue move? Is the tongue closer to the palate for the consonant than
> it is for the vowel? Then how about the tongue position for hard
> consonants before palatal vowels? Is there a glide there?
OK, that makes more sense to me. Sorry that I misunderstood you. Brian
was correct that the vowels tend to assimilate to surrounding
consonants, so it is more like pronouncing palatalized and velarized
syllables. That is, the bulk of the tongue is more forward and up
against the hard palate when pronouncing the palatalized consonants. It
is retracted when pronouncing velarized consonants. Standard literary
Russian has no palatalized counterpart to /s(/, and it sounds a bit
retroflexed compared to English /s(/. That is, it is pronounced with the
tongue further back on the palate and the tongue tip well behind the
alveolar ridge. The phoneme /c(/ is always palatalized, and it is
pronounced with the tongue further forward than in English.
Subjectively, it feels to me like the sides of my tongue are pressed
against the roof of the mouth and very close to the alveolar ridge. A
velarized /t/ is pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the
teeth, but the bulk of the tongue is lowered. A palatalized /t'/ is
pronounced with the bulk of the tongue higher and the tip perhaps not so
tightly against the teeth. Again, it feels like the sides of my tongue
are on the alveolar ridge, and there is often a bit of frication on release.
You also get some rounding of of Vowels tend to front in the context of
palatalized consonants and they tend to back in the context of velarized
consonants. So the word for "five" ПЯТЬ tends to be pronounced
[p'?t']. If the final consonant were not palatalized, the vowel would
still be fronted, but less so. Although russian /e/ has no off-glide,
it does when the following consonant is palatalized. Hence, здесь
/zd'es'/ is pronounced [z'd'ejs'], with the [e] somewhat higher than in
English.
Those are my impressions, anyway. I hope that that helps.
Rick Wojcik
I tried to use non-ascii characters in the above, but it obviously
didn't work. So /s(/ represents a palatal sibilant and /c(/ the palatal
affricate. The question mark in [p'?t'] is a digraph.
M. Ranjit Mathews
>:
Why do you presume it's a barred i? In Malayalam, the allophones of
/i/ are [i] and [e_].
Both are as short as the English [I]. The former has the quality of
the [i] in "piccolo". The latter has a quality that I would describe
as a retracted [e] (or an open [I]), but an Anglo listener might well
hear it as [E].
>
> [...]
>
> Brian
Greg Lee
> was correct that the vowels tend to assimilate to surrounding
Brian seemed to me to be implying that the high front vowel dissimilates
from the preceding palatalized consonant, becoming more back and/or
lower. Presumably, so that there will be an audible glide in passing
from the consonant to the vowel.
--
Greg Lee <gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu>
Rick Wojcik
There is a funny thing going on with velar consonants, but the vowels
tend to assimilate to surrounding consonants in Russian. Russian has a
high back unrounded vowel, which people sometimes represent as a
barred-i. After the velar consonants /k/, /x/, and /g/, one would
expect the high-unrounded vowel. In the 19th century, that supposedly
happened, and modern stage Russian sometimes has the high back unrounded
vowel after the velars. In modern Russian, it is just the opposite.
One gets palatalized velar consonants followed by a high front unrounded
/i/. It is possible that high back unrounded vowels occur after velars
in foreign words and personal names, but I don't really know the facts.
There used to be a controversy between the Leningrad and Moscow schools
of phonology on how to analyze this phenomenon, but I have not kept up
with what is going on in modern Russian linguistics.
Jim Heckman
On 18-Mar-2004, Greg Lee <gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu>
wrote in message <c3dolq$7a9$1...@news.hawaii.edu>:
You misunderstood. Brian was saying that the high front vowel
has a more back and/or lower allophone after *un*palatalized
consonants. (The extent to which this is actually an allophone
as opposed to a phonemic opposition is a matter of some debate,
at least in Russian, where it's arguably evolving towards the
latter.)
--
Jim Heckman
Ruud Harmsen
<b.s...@csuohio.edu>: in sci.lang:
>If it's like Russian, the vowel is actually different; I
>hear the high vowel after non-palatal consonants (and have
>seen it described) as a diphthong consisting of turned-m and
>barred-i.
Yes, I've actually heard that, especially in the word "my" (meaning
"we", if I remember correctly). To my un-Russian ear, there seems to
be a diphthong there, as you say.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com/ update 18 maart 2004
Greg Lee
Yes, I did. After rereading Brian's posting, I canceled my post, but
evidently it still got out.
There is still a basic issue here, raised by M. Ranjit Matthews, which
I don't think we're quite coping with. If a palatalized [p'], say, is
said with the tongue position of [i], and it's followd by an [i], there
will be no tongue movement in passing from the [p'] to the [i], and
consequently no glide. However if a plain [p], with neutral tongue
position, is followed by an [i], there will be a glide, because the
tongue has to move from neutral to palatal position in going from the
consonant to the vowel. (I choose [p] as example to avoid the various
secondary effects palatalization may have on lingual consonants, which
are a distraction.)
In English, since in a word like "peel" said with [i] there no central
on glide to the [i], evidently the [p] is palatalized. So why is "peel"
never transcribed [p'il]? Maybe this [p] shouldn't count as truly
palatalized, even though it is pronounced with palatal tongue position.
I don't know.
I've read what Baudouin and also Wolfgang Dressler say about Polish
paltalization with some puzzlement, since in Polish apparently there
is a whole series of palatalized vs. non-palatalized distinctions before
[i], and I would just like to know how exactly the Poles do it.
> --
> Jim Heckman
--
Greg Lee <gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu>
Brian M. Scott
Ranjit Mathews) wrote in
<news:1d4c67e3.04031...@posting.google.com> in
alt.usage.english,sci.lang:
> "Brian M. Scott" <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote ...
>>>> Greg, it is because Polish and other Slavic languages have palatalized
I don't *presume* it; I *suspect* it, largely on the basis
of Russian, but also because I can see how barred-i could
end up being described this way for readers without any
background on phonetics.
> In Malayalam, the allophones of
> /i/ are [i] and [e_].
> Both are as short as the English [I]. The former has the quality of
> the [i] in "piccolo".
If you're talking about the English word, there is no [i] in
<piccolo>: it's [I].
[...]
Brian
Brian M. Scott
<gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> wrote in
<news:c3f2jl$2s9$1...@news.hawaii.edu> in
alt.usage.english,sci.lang:
[...]
> After rereading Brian's posting, I canceled my post, but
> evidently it still got out.
Only sporadically: I didn't see it here, except as quoted by
others.
[...]
Brian
Latet
I can't use all these technical words to describe pronunciation,
but I'd like to write what I think....
> In English, since in a word like "peel" said with [i] there no central
> on glide to the [i], evidently the [p] is palatalized. So why is "peel"
> never transcribed [p'il]?
One of the Americans who helped me learn English many years ago,
pointed out that I should refrain from using "soft" (palatalized)
versions of p', b', n' in English words like: peel, beat, knee.
It was very hard to me at the begining, becasuse in Polish
when p, b, n (and some more) are followed by "i"
they get palatized automaticly, and IMHO there's not a single word
in Polish in which you could hear not palatalized p,b,n before "i".
I still have to pay some extra attention to say English "peel" properly,
with no palatization.
> Maybe this [p] shouldn't count as truly
> palatalized, even though it is pronounced with palatal tongue position.
> I don't know.
When I hear a native English speaker saying "peel" -
as for my ears - there's no palatization there at all.
At least, not what we could realy call palatization in Polish.
> I've read what Baudouin and also Wolfgang Dressler say about Polish
> paltalization with some puzzlement, since in Polish apparently there
> is a whole series of palatalized vs. non-palatalized distinctions before
As I stated before, I can't think of any Polish word having non-palatalized
consonant before "i".
Unless Baudouin and Dressler had counted a Polish vowel "y" as "i" -
that would be a different story then.
> [i], and I would just like to know how exactly the Poles do it.
I can record my female friend (nice voce, a bit squeaky though ;-)
reading Polish pairs of words like:
b'it - byt
p'it - pyl
nocn'ik - nocny
If it is that what you'd like to hear?
Greetings,
latet
Nathan Sanders
Greg Lee <gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu> wrote:
> I've read what Baudouin and also Wolfgang Dressler say about Polish
> paltalization with some puzzlement, since in Polish apparently there
> is a whole series of palatalized vs. non-palatalized distinctions before
> [i], and I would just like to know how exactly the Poles do it.
The palatalization contrast in Polish exists before phonemic /i/, but
not before surface [i]:
/p'i/ -> [p'i]
but: /pi/ -> [pI]
To my knowledge, there are no cases of a non-palatalized consonant
before [i] (or [j]) in Polish. Either the consonant must be pronounced
with a high front secondary articulation, or the vowel must be [I].
[I] (spelled <y>) has been incorrectly called 'central' for a couple of
reasons. Historically, it seems to have actually been a central vowel,
though its phonemic status died out centuriies ago.
Synchronically, phonologists trying to account for Polish's complex
'palatalization' phenomena noticed that while front vowels (except [I])
triggered historical palatalization (which is very different from
synchronic palatalization!), [I] and central/back vowels did not.
With a binary feature classification system and the assumptions that [I]
was phonemic and that historical palatalization must be triggered
synchronically by spreading of the feature [-back], [I] *had* to be
classified as [+back], making it phonologically 'central', despite being
phonetically front.
Of course, once these assumptions are (IMO, rightfully) abandonded,
[I]'s phonological and phonetic status can be conflated.
Nathan
--
To contact me, replace verizon.net with aol.com
M. Ranjit Mathews
t is not a good example since Hindi has no alveolar t. English
aspirated consonants are not heard as aspirated consonants by Hindi
speakers. For example, consider p. The Hindiwala's pronunciation of
<phal> meaning fruit aspirates the p so heavily that it resembles* the
German [pf] more than it does the English aspirated p. Likewise, the
Hindi aspirated k resembles* the ch in Chaim more than it does the
English aspirated k. Thus, English aspirated consonants are written as
an unaspirated consonants in Hindi words borrowed from English, such
as "police".
* even if vaguely
In Malayalam, aspiration is as light as in English. In the word
<phalam> [p<h>Vl@m] meaning fruit of one's labor, the Malayali's <pha>
is aspirated rather like the Englishman's [pV] in "puck" or "power".
Spoken Malayalam makes phonemic distinctions other than aspiration -
<balam> is pronounced [bEl@m], so the phonemic distinction between the
<pha> and <ba> is denoted by both aspiration and vowel quality.
M. Ranjit Mathews
> There is still a basic issue here, raised by M. Ranjit Matthews, which
> I don't think we're quite coping with. If a palatalized [p'], say, is
> said with the tongue position of [i], and it's followd by an [i], there
> will be no tongue movement in passing from the [p'] to the [i], and
> consequently no glide. However if a plain [p], with neutral tongue
> position, is followed by an [i], there will be a glide, because the
> tongue has to move from neutral to palatal position in going from the
> consonant to the vowel. (I choose [p] as example to avoid the various
> secondary effects palatalization may have on lingual consonants, which
> are a distraction.)
Rather than peel, consider bier and beer. I pronounce the two
differently - as [bi@] (i like in piccolo) and [bj@:]. Kashmiri and
its close relatives are the only Indian languages I know of with
phonemically distinct palatalized consonants. When Kashmiri is written
in Devnagri, both [;] (palatalization) and [j] are written as <y>.
That is, in Nagri Kashmiri, the Russian [brAt;] would be written as
<brAty> and read/ pronounced as [brAt;]. So, the issue I was really
trying to raise was whether a pronunciation of [bj@:] may be described
as [b;@:], not whether the pronunciation of "beer" is [b;a:].
M. Ranjit Mathews
> There is still a basic issue here, raised by M. Ranjit Matthews, which
> I don't think we're quite coping with. If a palatalized [p'], say, is
> said with the tongue position of [i], and it's followd by an [i], there
> will be no tongue movement in passing from the [p'] to the [i], and
> consequently no glide.
There's a crucial issue I missed addressing:
I would describe a [p'] not with a tongue position but as a p
enunciated with the lower lip curled inward. To get the lip into
position, one can curl it inward and bring one's upper teeth down on
the lip to verify that most of the lip is positioned behind the teeth
rather in front of them.
P.S. In retrospect, I'd describe my "peer" as [p;j@].
Latet
> reading Polish pairs of words like:
> b'it - byt
I have recorded some words.
You can download the mp3 files from:
http://www.xyz.jabluszko.net/polish_sounds.html
You will hear Polish words:
byt - b'it
tany - tan'i
pyk - p'ik
my - m'i
pet - p'it
kot - k'it
g'iga
p'ipa
I hope you will be able to hear palatalization,
and easily notice the difference between non-palatalized
and palatalized versions of consonants.
Have fun! :-)
latet
Latet
> before [i] (or [j]) in Polish.
I do agree.
> Either the consonant must be pronounced
> with a high front secondary articulation, or the vowel must be [I].
> [I] (spelled <y>) has been incorrectly called 'central' for a couple of
> reasons.
True, but one must realize that Polish sound [I] (spelled <y>) is really
different from English [I] in "big, kit, nick".
I've made a recording of 5 Polish words with "y" vowel:
http://www.xyz.jabluszko.net/polish_sounds.html
Please, listen to them and tell me, honestly, which English vowel sound,
in your opinion, sounds the closest to Polish "y".
Thanks,
latet
Ruud Harmsen
>I have recorded some words.
>http://www.xyz.jabluszko.net/polish_sounds.html
>
>You will hear Polish words:
>
>byt - b'it
>tany - tan'i
>pyk - p'ik
>my - m'i
>pet - p'it
>kot - k'it
>g'iga
>p'ipa
I hear much more difference in the vowels than is the consonants.
Where there is any palatalization or velarization of the consonants,
it is very slight. Much weaker than what I heard in Russian.
Latet
> >tany - tan'i
> >pyk - p'ik
> >my - m'i
> >pet - p'it
> >kot - k'it
> >g'iga
> >p'ipa
> I hear much more difference in the vowels than is the consonants.
> Where there is any palatalization or velarization of the consonants,
> it is very slight. Much weaker than what I heard in Russian.
Yes,. the difference in the vowels there is really *huge*.
The difference in palatalization is derivative.
Thanks for listening!
latet
Wiktor S.
> > paltalization with some puzzlement, since in Polish apparently there
> > is a whole series of palatalized vs. non-palatalized distinctions before
> > [i], and I would just like to know how exactly the Poles do it.
>
> The palatalization contrast in Polish exists before phonemic /i/, but
> not before surface [i]:
>
> /p'i/ -> [p'i]
> but: /pi/ -> [pI]
>
> To my knowledge, there are no cases of a non-palatalized consonant
> before [i] (or [j]) in Polish. Either the consonant must be pronounced
> with a high front secondary articulation, or the vowel must be [I].
The problem is, that Polish has phonetically different s and s', c and c'
and so on, and palatalized allophones of non-palatal consonants as well.
"syn" and "sikawka" have two different consonants at the beginning.
The latter is written ś (s-acute) at the end of a word and before
consonants, as s before i, and as "si" before palatal vowels. s is non
palatal, ś is. These two consonants are distinct phonemes, but they
interchange each other in inflections: where the next vowel is non-palatal
(like a, o, u, e, y), there's non-palatal s; where the vowel is palatal,
(like i, {i}a, {i}e etc) there is /ś/ (spelled s before i, and si before
other palatal vowels).
kasa [kasa]
kasy [kasI]
kasie [kaśe]
HOWEVER:
*** In borrowings, and in some other cases, s does not become ś before i ***
"sinus" is [sinus], not [śinus].
s in "sinus" is NOT palatal as ś is. It _may_ be palatalized _a_bit_, but
such palatalization is not important and not phonemic. Polish speakers are
not aware of this difference between palatalized and not palatalized s. What
makes them different is the vowel. Ask a random Pole, what is a difference
between "si" in "sinus" and "sy" in "syn". Everyone would say: there's
different vowel. Only a linguist could say that s in sinus is palatalized
too. So speaking that i and y are only allophones of one phoneme in Polish
is plain wrong.
Modern borrowings with [si] have plain [s] or maybe it's allophone (but the
difference is very subtle), and palatal i. Not palatal "ś" or "y", so it's
neither /śi/ nor /sy/. If even "i" and "y" WERE allophones in the past, they
are obviously NOT in modern Polish. Again: ask a Pole what is the difference
between "mi" and "my". The answer is: a vowel. Only linguists know that
there's different m in these two words.
The same applies to c - there are different c(y) and ć(i), and c(i) being
and allophone of c(y). /ć = c-acute/
And finally, this is not the case of p, b, n - they are always palatal
before i, that's why it's difficult for us to pronunce "need" correctly.
and now i wonder if anyone will understand what i have just written here...
;-)
--
Azarien
e-mail: wswiktor.fm<dot>interia.pl<slash>mail.html
Keith GOERINGER
Rick Wojcik <rwo...@att.net> wrote:
Rick,
> Greg Lee wrote:
> > Brian seemed to me to be implying that the high front vowel dissimilates
> > from the preceding palatalized consonant, becoming more back and/or
> > lower. Presumably, so that there will be an audible glide in passing
> > from the consonant to the vowel.
>
> There is a funny thing going on with velar consonants, but the vowels
> tend to assimilate to surrounding consonants in Russian. Russian has a
> high back unrounded vowel, which people sometimes represent as a
> barred-i. After the velar consonants /k/, /x/, and /g/, one would
> expect the high-unrounded vowel. In the 19th century, that supposedly
> happened, and modern stage Russian sometimes has the high back unrounded
> vowel after the velars. In modern Russian, it is just the opposite.
> One gets palatalized velar consonants followed by a high front unrounded
> /i/. It is possible that high back unrounded vowels occur after velars
> in foreign words and personal names, but I don't really know the facts.
> There used to be a controversy between the Leningrad and Moscow schools
> of phonology on how to analyze this phenomenon, but I have not kept up
> with what is going on in modern Russian linguistics.
I have to admit I haven't been following this thread thoroughly, so
forgive me if I'm jumping in inappropriately, but...I think things are a
bit confused in the above paragraph.
One thing is that, as far as palatalization goes, the consonant drives
the vowel, so to speak. Thus, in Modern Standard Russian, we have <kit>
'whale' because the [k] is palatal -- the <i> is showing that fact. In
Ukrainian <kyt>, the [k] is not palatal, and the vowel shows that.
(Beyond that, <kit> in Ukrainian means 'cat'...) The fact that <kyt> is
not the word for 'whale' in Russian is due to something else.
Once the velar palatalizations occurred, it is true that in Slavic
words, you would not find {velar + front vowel} sequences -- they would
have been palatalized. There is, however, the problem of loan words
with velars followed by front vowels. Early ones did wind up the way
native words did -- with palatalized velars (the one that comes to mind
is Russian <s^lem> 'helmet', which was borrowed from Germanic [I'm
guessing here, I don't know the exact form -- Miguel?] <helm->). But
subsequent ones forced the language to begin to accept {velar + FV}
sequences, and the one that comes to mind here is <kelija> '[monk's]
cell'. By some time in the 11th or 12th cc., you start to see front
vowels after velars in manuscripts in native words as well.
I don't know about the phenomenon you describe for the 19th c., but I
can make two comments about MSR. First, there are instances of {velar +
BV} in Russian -- at least with [k]. One is <Kyrgyzstan>, which, if the
announcer is being PC, will be pronounced that way. Another example is
a novel by Tat'jana Tolstaja, called <Kys'>. Are they the norm? No;
but they're out there, and the number of toponyms and personal names
from Turkic has probably lessened the "gratingness" of the sequences.
Finally there is the issue of morpheme boundaries. The sequence <k
Irine> 'to Irina' is pronounced [kyr'in'@] (a messy transcription, but
you get the point); <grex i iskuplenie> 'sin and atonement' is [gr'exy
iskupl'En'@]...roughly.
Micheal MacThomais
<gr...@ling.lll.hawaii.edu>:
> In sci.lang Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> > M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
> > >
> > > What, if anything, would be wrong with describing the first consonant
> > > in "beer", "hear" and "near" as palatalized?
> > >
> > > beer [b;@]
> > > hear [h;@]
> > > near [n;@]
>
> > The fact that they're not?
>
> > Whereas when Terry Gross of WHYY in Philadelphia says her name, I
> > usually hear it as Cherry.
>
> They are, in the sense that tongue is in a palatal position for the
> articulation of the first consonants. But there is no change in
> place of articulation, or on-glide to the following vowel, or
> affrication, which are generally associated with palatalization,
> so they're not *called* palatalized. If these consonants occurred
> before [a], they would be called palatalized, because then the
> movement of the tongue away from the palatal position would produce
> a glide.
>
> So, it would be unconventional, but correct, to call them palatalized.
Greg,
Thank you very much for that message.
I've been stuck trying to explain explan the dictinction (very clear
to me, in sound) between palatalised consonants and unpalatalised ones
followed by a high vowel - for some consonants, anyay, for others
there's been no problem.
I'm not a linguist (I'm a ex-mathematiciam) but one of my
(unrenumerated) passtimes is teaching Sottish Gaelic. I've always had
trouble from people (people who want to learn a minority language are
often people who regard themmselves as linguists, but aren't quite)
who will tell me that it's impossible to palatalise a labial
consonant, or that the only way that you can tell whether such a
consonant is palatalised or not is whether it's followed ny an
i-glide, This has given me problems in my classes, because so far as
I'm concerned there's a phonemic difference between palatalised an
unpalatalised consonants in my language. Your description is exactly
what I need to feed to the students so that they can understand that
there is a difference (and after they decide to believe that, teaching
them to hear the difference and to pronounce the difference is going
to be much easier). So thak you very much - your words are a great
teaching aid.
>
> Please don't ask me how, then, it is possible in some languages
> (Polish, I think) to distinguish palatalized from unpalatalized
> consonants before high front vowels.
Well yes, obviously. I can distinguish "pill" from "puill" in Gaelic
- the latter has a non-palaralised consonant before a high vowel, in
the former the consonat is palatalied (and that's the only
distinction, at least in my dialect ). Why is it any harder than
distinguishing between palatalised and unpalatalised consonants before
low vowels?
The "u" in the spelling is not a vowel, it is just a marker that
ndicates that the "p" is not palatalised - with just 12 consonant
symbols to represent rather more phonetic differences we need these in
our orthography. we have a convention, which may seem weird to you,
to write an "appropriate" vowel before and/or after a consonant to
show whether it is palatalised or not - but this "vowel" makes no
difference to the pronunciation of the "real" vowel - learners have
trouble of course, in a word like "lean", which of e and a is the
real vowel and which is the marker for theer preceding or following
consonant, but it's absolutely clear if you know the rules (a big
problem with teaching Anglophonnes is that they find it hard to
believe that there *are* any rules matching the orthography to the
pronuciation).
Micheal
[my real email address has no no in it]
Latet
> between "mi" and "my". The answer is: a vowel. Only linguists know that
> there's different m in these two words.
That's what I tried to show in my recording:
http://www.xyz.jabluszko.net/polish_sounds.html
I hope that one can hear the difference in consonants,
and I intentionally chose only p, b, n, m, k, g which don't
have their *real* palatal equivalents.
> And finally, this is not the case of p, b, n - they are always palatal
> before i, that's why it's difficult for us to pronunce "need" correctly.
That's the point!
The easiest way to hear this subtle variant of palatalization
is to ask a Pole (who is not good at English) to say English words:
"need, beat, peace".
> and now i wonder if anyone will understand what i have just written
here...
> ;-)
I have, but that doesn't count 'cause I'm Polish too :-)
latet
Peter T. Daniels
> Rather than peel, consider bier and beer. I pronounce the two
> differently - as [bi@] (i like in piccolo) and [bj@:].
Which is which, and why?
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@att.net
M. Ranjit Mathews
Now that you bring that up, the Polish nie (meaning no) is similar to
my pronunciation of near; my vowel is twice as long. Do you have
palatal consonants at the end of words? For example, in Kashmiri,
tsop=bite and tsop'=bites.
> and now i wonder if anyone will understand what i have just written here...
> ;-)
Can you tell the difference between a palatal dental n and a palatal
alveolar n? Malayalam has the former and Polish the latter; their
pronunciations are as distinguishable as those of their un-palatal
counterparts [n[] and [n_].
M. Ranjit Mathews
> I've made a recording of 5 Polish words with "y" vowel:
> http://www.xyz.jabluszko.net/polish_sounds.html
>
> Please, listen to them and tell me, honestly, which English vowel sound,
> in your opinion, sounds the closest to Polish "y".
It sounds to me like something close to a barred u - similar to the
French u or the Kashmiri centralized u (In the word <kru:r>, what's a
back vowel <U> in Hindi becomes a centralized vowel in Kashmiri).
M. Ranjit Mathews
> I can distinguish "pill" from "puill" in Gaelic
Irish Gaelic?
> - the latter has a non-palaralised consonant before a high vowel, in
> the former the consonat is palatalied (and that's the only
> distinction, at least in my dialect ).
Does the former sound vaguely like an Anglo would pronounce "pyill"?
Does the latter sound like English pill with an unaspirated p?
Latet
> my pronunciation of near; my vowel is twice as long.
My brother-in-law is English. He tries to learn some Polish.
And yes, indeed - the way he pronouces Polish "nie" is identical
with his pronunciation of English "near". But for Polish ears
he sounds very funny and weird (not because of the duration).
latet
Thomas Widmann
Why unaspirated???
/Thomas
--
Thomas Widmann tw...@bibulus.org http://www.twid.bibulus.org
Flat 3/2, 54 Mavisbank Gardens, Glasgow G51 1HL, Scotland, EU
*** Ny gruppe om nordiske sprog: europa.linguas.germanic.nord ***
M. Ranjit Mathews
> M. Ranjit Mathews wrote:
>
> > Rather than peel, consider bier and beer. I pronounce the two
> > differently - as [bi@] (i like in piccolo) and [bj@:].
>
> Which is which,
beer [bj@:]
> and why?
That was the pronunciation in the Indian variant of RP spoken by (now
retired or deceased) schoolteachers who had taught in "public" schools
catering to children of officers in the British Indian armed forces.
year [j@:]
hour [A:]
Micheal MacThomais
Ranjit Mathews):
> tthomso...@no.btinternet.no.com (Micheal MacThomais) wrote ...
> > I can distinguish "pill" from "puill" in Gaelic
>
> Irish Gaelic?
No, Scottish Gaelic. (Irish phonetics is a bit more complicated with
regard to palatalised and non-palatalised consonants - they have
sometimes w glides after non-palatalised consonants, sometimes have i
glides after palatalised ones. We sometimes have i-glides after
palatalised consonants, but don't have the w-glides.)
> > - the latter has a non-palaralised consonant before a high vowel, in
> > the former the consonat is palatalied (and that's the only
> > distinction, at least in my dialect ).
>
> Does the former sound vaguely like an Anglo would pronounce "pyill"?
No, there isn't an i-glide (you get an i-glide with a palatalised p
before a back vowel - words like peann have it (the e isn't really a
vowel, just a palatalisation marker for the p; maybe you could say
instead that the e represents an i-glide and the i-glide causes the p
to be palatal by assimilation, and that the p in pill is palatalised
by assimilation too, but that's not how I learnt it.). And the p is
aspirated (except when it's eclipsed by the ending of the previous
word, in which case it's unaspirated - although, the aspiration and
the effect of eclipse are both dialect dependent,)
> Does the latter sound like English pill with an unaspirated p?
Unaspirated p, but the i is nothing like English i in pill (more like
English i in machine) and the ll is like nothing that exists in
English (close to Spanish ll, or English y in yes, but not the same -
it's an unlenited palatalised L).
M.
Rick Wojcik
> There is still a basic issue here, raised by M. Ranjit Matthews, which
> I don't think we're quite coping with. If a palatalized [p'], say, is
> said with the tongue position of [i], and it's followd by an [i], there
> will be no tongue movement in passing from the [p'] to the [i], and
> consequently no glide. However if a plain [p], with neutral tongue
> position, is followed by an [i], there will be a glide, because the
> tongue has to move from neutral to palatal position in going from the
> consonant to the vowel. (I choose [p] as example to avoid the various
> secondary effects palatalization may have on lingual consonants, which
> are a distraction.)
That's quite true in theory. However, the perceptual cues for
palatalization can make a difference. There is little aspiration in
Russian, but the palatalized [p'] often contains audible frication.
This is in addition to the effects of palatalized phonemes on the
quality of neighboring vowels.
The [i/y] dichotomy in Russian is a classical conundrum in Slavic
linguistics. It goes back to Baudouin de Courtenay, who claimed that
the sounds represented allophonic variants (varijatsija) the same
phoneme. This became the official position of the Moscow School of
Phonology. The Leningrad School of Phonology (ironically located in
Baudouin's old stomping grounds) defended the two-phoneme view (called
'varianty' in the MSP). There is considerable evidence for both points
of view. My own feeling is that it is a case of phonemic splitting in
progress. There were certainly a number of linguists who attempted to
find a middle ground between Leningrad and Moscow positions, according
to the Moscow School Phonologist A. A. Reformatskii in his fascinating
history of Russian phonology: Iz istorii otechestvennoj fonologii.
Rick Wojcik
> In article <eXt6c.49397$H44.9...@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
> Rick Wojcik <rwo...@att.net> wrote:
>>...
>...
> Once the velar palatalizations occurred, it is true that in Slavic
> words, you would not find {velar + front vowel} sequences -- they would
> have been palatalized. There is, however, the problem of loan words
> with velars followed by front vowels. Early ones did wind up the way
> native words did -- with palatalized velars (the one that comes to mind
> is Russian <s^lem> 'helmet', which was borrowed from Germanic [I'm
> guessing here, I don't know the exact form -- Miguel?] <helm->). But
> subsequent ones forced the language to begin to accept {velar + FV}
> sequences, and the one that comes to mind here is <kelija> '[monk's]
> cell'. By some time in the 11th or 12th cc., you start to see front
> vowels after velars in manuscripts in native words as well.
Thanks for the comments, Keith. I actually based my remarks on an
admittedly hazy recollection of my History of Russian courses back in
grad school. I probably read more about it when I researched Soviet
linguistic theories, but I honestly don't remember the details. Alexis
Manaster-Ramer disabused me of my Moscow School prejudices regarding the
[i/y] dichotomy in a series of internet discussions about 10 years ago.
However, this business about the velars has long puzzled me, because
I couldn't get a straight opinion from my professors on what was going
on there.
> I don't know about the phenomenon you describe for the 19th c., but I
> can make two comments about MSR. First, there are instances of {velar +
> BV} in Russian -- at least with [k]. One is <Kyrgyzstan>, which, if the
> announcer is being PC, will be pronounced that way. Another example is
> a novel by Tat'jana Tolstaja, called <Kys'>. Are they the norm? No;
> but they're out there, and the number of toponyms and personal names
> from Turkic has probably lessened the "gratingness" of the sequences.
>
> Finally there is the issue of morpheme boundaries. The sequence <k
> Irine> 'to Irina' is pronounced [kyr'in'@] (a messy transcription, but
> you get the point); <grex i iskuplenie> 'sin and atonement' is [gr'exy
> iskupl'En'@]...roughly.
Well, morpheme boundaries are interesting. They cause juxtapositions
that often block phonological processes. The y->i process after velar
consonants never applies in external sandhi, to my knowledge. That plus
the evidence from foreign borrowings, however, suggests that it is not
an active phonological process, but something that takes place at the
level of morphemic representation. That is, it does not represent a
true constraint on articulation. It would be interesting to look at the
pronunciations of post-velar vowels in lots of pronunciations of such
words by, say, broadcast journalists. Do they ever mispronounce such
names or exhibit difficulty in pronouncing them? I don't think that any
Russian has trouble pronouncing a post-velar [y] across a morpheme
boundary, and I doubt that anyone tends much to palatalize the preceding
velar obstruents. However, what is the pattern with purely
morpheme-internal pronunciations of velar+[y]?
M. Ranjit Mathews
Is it because his n is alveolar or is it because the quality of his
vowel is off? To me, the 'e' in Polish "nie" sounds like Spoken
Hindi's [&_]*.
* the retracted [&] in spoken Hindi occurs in contexts where [@I] is
monophthongised to [&_].
M. Ranjit Mathews
> An 20 Mar 2004 06:15:48 -0800, sgrìobh ranjit_...@yahoo.com (M.
> Ranjit Mathews):
>
> > tthomso...@no.btinternet.no.com (Micheal MacThomais) wrote ...
> > > I can distinguish "pill" from "puill" in Gaelic
> >
> > Irish Gaelic?
>
> No, Scottish Gaelic. (Irish phonetics is a bit more complicated with
> regard to palatalised and non-palatalised consonants - they have
> sometimes w glides after non-palatalised consonants, sometimes have i
> glides after palatalised ones. We sometimes have i-glides after
> palatalised consonants, but don't have the w-glides.)
>
> > > - the latter has a non-palaralised consonant before a high vowel, in
> > > the former the consonat is palatalied (and that's the only
> > > distinction, at least in my dialect ).
> >
> > Does the former sound vaguely like an Anglo would pronounce "pyill"?
> No, there isn't an i-glide (you get an i-glide with a palatalised p
> before a back vowel - words like peann have it (the e isn't really a
> vowel, just a palatalisation marker for the p; maybe you could say
> instead that the e represents an i-glide and the i-glide causes the p
> to be palatal by assimilation, and that the p in pill is palatalised
> by assimilation too, but that's not how I learnt it.). And the p is
> aspirated (except when it's eclipsed by the ending of the previous
> word, in which case it's unaspirated - although, the aspiration and
> the effect of eclipse are both dialect dependent,)
An "aspirated" palatalised p seems to sound a little more like 'psh'
than like an aspirated p.
> > Does the latter sound like English pill with an unaspirated p?
> Unaspirated p, but the i is nothing like English i in pill (more like
> English i in machine) and the ll is like nothing that exists in
> English (close to Spanish ll, or English y in yes, but not the same -
> it's an unlenited palatalised L).
Ah! most illuminating. I'm not so sure there's nothing like it in
English. That seems close to some people's pronunciation of "peal" in
some contexts. How do the 'l's sound when an African American says "I
gotta tell you sumpn (something)" or when McCartney sings "I can't
tell you how I feel; my heart is like a wheel"?
http://www.gandymusic.com/wheel.htm
M. Ranjit Mathews
> One of the Americans who helped me learn English many years ago,
> pointed out that I should refrain from using "soft" (palatalized)
> versions of p', b', n' in English words like: peel, beat, knee.
>
> It was very hard to me at the begining, becasuse in Polish
> when p, b, n (and some more) are followed by "i"
> they get palatized automaticly, and IMHO there's not a single word
> in Polish in which you could hear not palatalized p,b,n before "i".
>
> I still have to pay some extra attention to say English "peel" properly,
> with no palatization.
>
> > Maybe this [p] shouldn't count as truly
> > palatalized, even though it is pronounced with palatal tongue position.
> > I don't know.
>
> When I hear a native English speaker saying "peel" -
> as for my ears - there's no palatization there at all.
> At least, not what we could realy call palatization in Polish.
Thank you very much for the insights.
piotrpanek
Dnia 04-03-19 22:00, w liście od osoby znanej jako Wiktor S. było:
>>>I've read what Baudouin and also Wolfgang Dressler say about Polish
>>>paltalization
Try Rubach. He doesn't write from historical approach. His data are also
more confirmed than other modern linguistics, since Polish is his mother
tongue.
>>
>>To my knowledge, there are no cases of a non-palatalized consonant
>>before [i] (or [j]) in Polish. Either the consonant must be pronounced
>>with a high front secondary articulation, or the vowel must be [I].
Right.
>
>
> The problem is, that Polish has phonetically different s and s', c and c'
> and so on, and palatalized allophones of non-palatal consonants as well.
>
> "syn" and "sikawka" have two different consonants at the beginning.
> The latter is written ś (s-acute) at the end of a word and before
> consonants, as s before i, and as "si" before palatal vowels. s is non
> palatal, ś is. These two consonants are distinct phonemes, but they
> interchange each other in inflections: where the next vowel is non-palatal
> (like a, o, u, e, y), there's non-palatal s; where the vowel is palatal,
> (like i, {i}a, {i}e etc) there is /ś/ (spelled s before i, and si before
> other palatal vowels).
>
> kasa [kasa]
> kasy [kasI]
> kasie [kaśe]
>
> HOWEVER:
>
> *** In borrowings, and in some other cases, s does not become ś before i ***
>
> "sinus" is [sinus], not [śinus].
rather [s'inus] (but of course not [śinus]) :-) ([ś] is sometimes
written as c with circumflex, similarily to the IPA character for German
"ch")
"pasja" [pas'ja] not [paśa] nor [pasja] etc.
>
> s in "sinus" is NOT palatal as ś is. It _may_ be palatalized _a_bit_, but
> such palatalization is not important and not phonemic.
It is not phonemic, but it is anyway different from just [s].
> Polish speakers are
> not aware of this difference between palatalized and not palatalized s.
Except from me and you? :-)
> What
> makes them different is the vowel. Ask a random Pole, what is a difference
> between "si" in "sinus" and "sy" in "syn". Everyone would say: there's
> different vowel. Only a linguist could say that s in sinus is palatalized
> too. So speaking that i and y are only allophones of one phoneme in Polish
> is plain wrong.
> Modern borrowings with [si] have plain [s] or maybe it's allophone (but the
> difference is very subtle), and palatal i. Not palatal "ś" or "y", so it's
> neither /śi/ nor /sy/. If even "i" and "y" WERE allophones in the past, they
> are obviously NOT in modern Polish. Again: ask a Pole what is the difference
> between "mi" and "my". The answer is: a vowel. Only linguists know that
> there's different m in these two words.
>
> The same applies to c - there are different c(y) and ć(i), and c(i) being
> and allophone of c(y). /ć = c-acute/
>
To sum up - in Polish there are
# palatal fricatives "ś"/"ź" (and africates "ć"([tś])/"dź"), called
"soft", they are -back
# palatalized fricatives "s'"/"z'" (and africates), called "softened" ,
-back
# "normal" fricatives "s"/"z", +back
# velar fricatives "sz"/"ż" (similar to English sh but more back),
called "hard", but "historically soft" :-), sometimes transcribed [s^],
[z^], +back
# palatalized velar fricatives, :-), called "soft" (probably -back)
"ś" is a phoneme (the same is for voiced "partner"), historically
probably it was derived from s palatalized by front vowels (i,e, "jat'")
"s'", "z'" are allophones of "s", "z", they're hardly ever noticed by
native speakers, they occurs in some loanwords (sinus, sinologia),
before [j] (zjeść - perf. 'to eat'), before [i] at morpheme borders
(ziścić=z+iścić - 'to come true', in fast speech: "pas Ireny" - 'Irena's
belt')
"s", "z" are just "s" and "z", they're back (in Polish every consonant
is either +back or -back, there are no consonants "neutral" to this
feature).
"sz" (and analogously for "ż") is a phoneme, historically it is often
palatalized [x], but synchronic phonology describes it in a similar way
(cecha - cesze - 'feature' Nom. Sing. - Gen. Sing), so it is not palatal
or palatalized in a phonetic way, but in phonology (and historic
linguistics) it is palatalized velar fricative. "ż" is sometimes
palatalized velar stop ([g]), later spirantized (noga-nóżka - leg - leg
dimin.) To more complicate, [ż] (in some contexts devoced to [sz]) can
be also historically derived from palatalized [r] ("morze" [może] -
"morje" Pol.-Rus., or "morze" - "morski" 'sea-marine') :-)
"sz'", "ż'" are allophones of "sz", "ż". They occur in places analogous
to "s'" and "z'" (in morpheme borders - "mąż Ireny" - "Irena's
husband'). But they occur also in some dialects (eg.Silesian) instead of
"sz", "ż" (Silesian "rzić" [ż'ić] instead of Lesser Polish "rzyć"
[ż_i_ć] - 'ass'). (I type [_i_] for vowel "y", +back, similar to [I],
but more back). In some subdialects (eg. Cieszyn Silesian) they can
replace all "sz", "ż" and "ś", "ź" as well. Probably it was typical for
early medieval Polish.
"ć", "dź" are phonemes, historically they are palatalized "t", "d"
(Russian "tis^ina" - Polish "cisza" - 'silence'), but in synchronic
phonology it is also true ("koda" - "kodzie" Nom.-Gen. 'coda')
"c'", "dz'" are palatalized allophones of "c", "dz". They behave
similarily to "s'", "z'" ("Francja" - 'France', "wódz Indian" - 'Native
American :-P chief')
"cz", "dż" are phonemes, they're +back now, but historically and
synchronically their palatalized velar stops ("mózg-móżdżek" - 'brain -
cerebrum', "oko-oczny" - "eye, ocular")
"cz'", "dż'" are palatalized allophones of "cz", "dż", they occur in
contexts similar to "sz'", "ż'", ("welwiczia" - 'welwitschia', dialects)
History of some sounds may be different (I don't claim, that "ż" in
"żółw" -'turtle' is palatalized "h")
> And finally, this is not the case of p, b, n - they are always palatal
> before i, that's why it's difficult for us to pronunce "need" correctly.
>
>
For me it is still imposible, but "new" I pronounce almost without
palatalization :-)
>
> and now i wonder if anyone will understand what i have just written here...
> ;-)
>
I did. I wonder if anyone will understand my notes :-)
(partly because of my horrible English)
piotrek
>
Wiktor S.
but
> > such palatalization is not important and not phonemic.
>
> It is not phonemic, but it is anyway different from just [s].
>
> > Polish speakers are
> > not aware of this difference between palatalized and not palatalized s.
>
> Except from me and you? :-)
Of course not just us ;-) but most people (who are not linguists or
liguistics isn't their hobby, or does not care much what and how they say)
are not aware of *allophones*. That's the one of the reasons that such
sounds are considered allophones.
> To sum up - in Polish there are
or, in a nice table...
fricatives africates
devoiced voiced devoiced voiced
postdental? s z c dz
- palatalized {s'} {z'} {c'} {dz'}
allophone
velar sz ż cz dż
(alveolar?)
- palatalized {sz'} {ż'} {cz'} {dż'}
allophone
palatal ś ź ć dź
[yes, Polish is a consonantal language ;-)]
Miguel Carrasquer
<wswi...@poczta.fmv> wrote:
>or, in a nice table...
>
>
> fricatives africates
> devoiced voiced devoiced voiced
>
>
>postdental? s z c dz
>
>- palatalized {s'} {z'} {c'} {dz'}
> allophone
>
>
>velar sz ż cz dż
>(alveolar?)
>
>- palatalized {sz'} {ż'} {cz'} {dż'}
> allophone
>
>
>palatal ś ź ć dź
>
In Ladefoged and Maddieson's terms ("The sounds of the
world's languages"):
<s> etc. are apical dental
<sz> etc. are laminal flat post-alevolar (sometimes referred
to as "retroflex").
<ś> etc. are laminal palatalized post-alevolar
(traditionally referred to as "alveolo-palatal").
This does not exhaust the number of possibilities. The
different kinds of sibilants found around the world are:
apical sibilants [made with the tip of the tongue (apex)
against the teeth, the alveolar ridge, the post-alveolar
region or the hard palate]:
1. apical dental, e.g. Polish <s>
2. apical alveolar, e.g. Spanish, Basque <s>
3. apical post-alveolar, e.g. Toda <s_>
4. apical domed post-alevolar (= palato-alveolar), e.g.
English <sh> [can also be laminal, and is also usually
labialized]. This differs from (3) in that the blade/back
of the tongue is raised towards the palate.
5. sub-apical palatal (= retroflex), e.g. Toda <s.> [the
apex is curled up, and contact is made with what's usually
the underside of the tongue tip]
laminal sibilants [made with the blade of the tongue against
the alveolar ridge or the post-alveolar region]:
1. laminal alveolar, e.g. English <s>, Basque <z>
2. laminal closed post-alevolar, e.g. Ubykh <s+>
["hissing-hushing": this is like a <sh>, but the apex is
against the lower teeth and closes the sublingual cavity, as
happens for laminal /s/]
3. laminal flat post-alveolar, e.g. Polish <sz>.
4. laminal domed post-alveolar [palato-alveolar], e.g.
English <sh>, when laminal. This differs from (3) in that
the back of the tongue is raised towards the hard palate.
5. laminal palatalized post-alveolar [alveolo-palatal], e.g.
Polish <ś>. As (4), but even more palatalized.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
m...@wxs.nl
piotrpanek
>>
>>
>>>Polish speakers are
>>>not aware of this difference between palatalized and not palatalized s.
Well, "naive" speakers sometimes even don't know, that first sound in
"nic" 'nothing' is the same sound that in the last in "koń" 'a horse'
and think it is the same sound that is in "noc" 'night'. It is due to
the myth that Polish orthography is perfectly phonetic - so some Poles
seeing a letter "n" don't even think that it is not only [n], but in
some contexts [ń] ("nic"), [n_] ("bank"), or even might be [w~] ("sens")
and [j~] ("sensie").
Anyway, do "naive" (not aware about phonemes, allophones etc., that is
not sci.lang users) English native speakers recognize the difference
between Poles pronouncing "new" as [ńju], [n'ju] and [nju] (except from
the note that "the accent is odd")?
>
> or, in a nice table...
>
>
> fricatives africates
> devoiced voiced devoiced voiced
>
>
> postdental? s z c dz
>
> - palatalized {s'} {z'} {c'} {dz'}
> allophone
>
>
> velar sz ż cz dż
> (alveolar?)
>
> - palatalized {sz'} {ż'} {cz'} {dż'}
> allophone
>
>
> palatal ś ź ć dź
>
>
I'm not sure if this link is valid, ie. whether this article is
available for people with unregistered IPs, but nice list in Table 1:
http://vls.icm.edu.pl/pdflinks/04022613481804635.pdf
(Rubach J., Polish palatalization in derivational optimality theory.
Lingua 113, Issue: 3, March, 2003, pp. 197-237 )
Miguel Carrasquer
<WARSAWpiotr...@london.gazeta.PARISpl.ROME> wrote:
>Anyway, do "naive" (not aware about phonemes, allophones etc., that is
>not sci.lang users) English native speakers recognize the difference
>between Poles pronouncing "new" as [ñju], [n'ju] and [nju] (except from
>the note that "the accent is odd")?
I don't know. For a native speaker of Spanish it's
certainly noticeable, because Spanish has a phoneme /ñ/.
The Spanish word niña "girl" is very hard to pronounce for a
native Polish speaker, because the palatalized and
unpalatalized /n/'s are "in the wrong place."
Ruud Harmsen
sci.lang:
>I don't know. For a native speaker of Spanish it's
>certainly noticeable, because Spanish has a phoneme /ñ/.
>The Spanish word niña "girl" is very hard to pronounce for a
>native Polish speaker, because the palatalized and
>unpalatalized /n/'s are "in the wrong place."
But they _can_ say nynia?
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com/index/whatsnew.htm update 24 maart 2004
M. Ranjit Mathews
> "Wiktor S." <wswi...@poczta.fmv> wrote:
> This does not exhaust the number of possibilities. The
> different kinds of sibilants found around the world are:
Try this. Check out the Toda page.
hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/ VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html
Miguel Carrasquer
<erre-agá-a-at-rudhar-ponto-com> wrote:
>Fri, 26 Mar 2004 14:31:15 +0100: Miguel Carrasquer <m...@wxs.nl>: in
>sci.lang:
>
>>I don't know. For a native speaker of Spanish it's
>>certainly noticeable, because Spanish has a phoneme /ń/.
>>The Spanish word nińa "girl" is very hard to pronounce for a
>>native Polish speaker, because the palatalized and
>>unpalatalized /n/'s are "in the wrong place."
>
>But they _can_ say nynia?
Sure. But then again for a Spaniard, that's difficult.
M. Ranjit Mathews
>
> >Anyway, do "naive" (not aware about phonemes, allophones etc., that is
> >not sci.lang users) English native speakers recognize the difference
> >between Poles pronouncing "new" as [ñju], [n'ju] and [nju] (except from
> >the note that "the accent is odd")?
>
> I don't know. For a native speaker of Spanish it's
> certainly noticeable, because Spanish has a phoneme /ñ/.
> The Spanish word niña "girl" is very hard to pronounce for a
> native Polish speaker, because the palatalized and
> unpalatalized /n/'s are "in the wrong place."
If I say niña, a Hispanic finds it odder than if I say niñña. In an
intervocalic position, the delayed release of the geminate Malayalam
[n;n;] seems to sound, to the Hispanic ear, closer to their ñ than the
quick release of the non-geminate Malayalm [n;].
Wiktor S.
> hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/
VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html
404
Brian M. Scott
>> Try this. Check out the Toda page.
>> hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/
> VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html
> 404
Worked fine for me; did you pick up the second line?
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html
Brian
Wiktor S.
> >> hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/
> > VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html
>
> > 404
>
> Worked fine for me; did you pick up the second line?
>
>
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html
Now it works. Yes, I picked both the lines but guess did it wrong.
Mark Barratt
[...]
> pronouncing those *allophones*
> (whatever they are)[...]
I think they used to be called brontosauruses.
Mark Brader
> > pronouncing those *allophones*
> > (whatever they are)[...]
> I think they used to be called brontosauruses.
But properly they should be called crocodiles. Or is it the other way around?
--
Mark Brader | "I had never thought of Jesus as being
m...@vex.net | a variety of grape plant, but
Toronto | if you put it that way..." --Jan Sand
Mark Brader
> "allophones" are two sounds ("phones") which are physically distinct, but
> perceived by speakers of a given language as "the same sound".
On the other hand, in Canadian linguistic politics, allophones are people
whose principal language is neither English nor French.
--
Mark Brader "Just because the standard provides a cliff in
Toronto front of you, you are not necessarily required
m...@vex.net to jump off it." -- Norman Diamond