Update:
2008-04-01 12:09 PM -0500
TIL
Properties of Consonants
prop-con1.htm
by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale.
Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR.
UKT: Based on
• Properties of Consonants and Vowels,
Kevin Russell, Linguistics Department, University of
Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V5, CANADA
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/notes.htm.
• Online Phonetics Course (UNIL), Department of Linguistics, University of
Lausanne, Switzerland.
(This source was downloaded in 2000 or a few years later, and instead of the original
links, you can still get to them from:
http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html -- UKT: 070823)
RBM4M |Top
BG4M-indx
Contents of this page
UKT: Because the previous file prop-con.htm had become too large, because of my
notes I have to split up the original file into two: the regular text and my
notes.
UKT notes
lfor updating my knowledge
• initiation (phonetics)
• Laryngeal theory
• liquids and glides (approximants)
• Panini
• phonetic transcription (broad and narrow)
• POA for English
• radical consonant
• segment
• sibilant consonant
• syllable
• uvular consonant
• Vedanga
• VOT (Voice Onset Time: stub in notes, extensive
treatment in another chapter)
Contents of this page
UKT notes
initiation (phonetics)
airstream mechanism
From: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initiation_%28phonetics%29 download 071003
In phonetics, initiation is the action by which
an air-flow is created through the vocal tract.
Along with articulation, it is one of
the two mandatory aspects of sound production:
without initiation, there is no sound.
The means of initiating a phone is called
its airstream mechanism.
Initiation may be divided into pressure
and suction. In the former, the organ performing
the initiation — called the initiator —
builds up pressure within the vocal tract,
creating an outward airflow. In the latter,
the initiator reduces pressure within the vocal tract,
creating an inward airflow. Phones pronounced
with pressure initiation are called egressive,
and those pronounced with suction initiation
are called ingressive.
There are three initiators in spoken human languages,
the lungs/diaphragm, the glottis,
and the tongue, for six possible airstream mechanisms.
Four of these are found in 'normal' words around the world:
• pulmonic egressive, where the air is pushed out
of the lungs by the ribs and diaphragm; all human languages
employ such sounds (such as vowels), and many,
such as English, use them exclusively.
• glottalic egressive, where the air column
is pushed upward by the glottis. Such consonants
are called ejectives.
• glottalic ingressive, where the air column
is rarefied as the glottis moves downward.
Such consonants are called implosives.
• velaric egressive, (also called
lingual egressive), where the air in the mouth
is rarefied by a downward movement of the tongue.
These
are the clicks.
The Khoisan languages (of southern and eastern Africa)
have pulmonic, ejective, and click consonants,
Zulu has pulmonic, implosive, and click consonants,
and Hausa has pulmonic, implosive, and ejective consonants.
Dahalo is extremely unusual in utilizing all four,
pulmonic, click, implosive, and ejective, in normal vocabulary.
In interjections, other initiations may be employed.
For example, in Canada, Sweden, Turkey, and Togo,
a pulmonic ingressive ("gasped" or "inhaled")
vowel is used for back-channeling or to express agreement,
and in France a velaric/lingual egressive (a "spurt")
is used to express dismissal. The only language
where such sounds are known to be contrastive in
normal vocabulary is the ritual language Damin;
however, that language appears to have been intentionally
designed to be different from normal speech. ...
Go back
initiation-wiki-b
Contents of this page
From: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laryngeal_theory 071019
The laryngeal theory is a generally accepted theory of
historical linguistics which proposes the existence
of a set of three (or more) consonant sounds that appear in most
current reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).
These sounds have since disappeared in all existing Indo-European languages,
but some laryngeals are believed to have existed in
the Anatolian languages, including Hittite.
UKT: If you were versed in the Old Testament of
the Christian Bible, you would have come across
one Hittite mentioned in connection with King David.
Bethsheba, David's queen was the wife of Uriah the Hittite.
Hittites belonged to the Indo-Aryan speakers.
Uriah, though a Hittite was serving in the army of
King David who was of the Semitic language group.
Included in the Semitic language group were
the ancient Sumerians of the Euphrates-Tigris basin
who were believed by some to be directly related
to the ancient people of Indus-Saraswati basin.
The following is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hittite_language download 071019
Hittite is the extinct language once spoken
by the Hittites, a people who created an empire
centered on ancient
Hattusas (modern
Boğazkale) in north-central Anatolia (modern Turkey).
The language was spoken from approximately 1600 BC
(and probably before) to 1100 BC. (UKT: About 500 years
before Gautama Buddha.) There is some attestation that
Hittite and related languages continued to be spoken
in Anatolia for a few hundred years following
the collapse of the Hittite empire and the last
of the Hittite texts.
The evidence for them is mostly indirect, but serves
as an explanation for differences between vowel sounds
across Indo-European languages. For example,
Sanskrit and Ancient Greek, two descendents of PIE,
exhibit many similar words that have differing vowel sounds.
Assume that the Greek word contains the vowel [e]
and the corresponding Sanskrit word contains [ i ] instead.
The laryngeal theory postulates these words
originally had the same vowels, but a neighboring
consonant which had since disappeared had
altered the vowels. If one would label the hypothesized
consonant as [h1], then the original PIE word
may have contained something like [eh1]
or [ih1], or perhaps a completely different
sound such as [ah1].
The original phonetic values of the laryngeal sounds
remain controversial (
See below). ...
Pronunciation
Considerable debate still surrounds the pronunciation
of the laryngeals. The evidence from Hittite and Uralic
is sufficient to conclude that these sounds
were "guttural" or pronounced rather back
in the buccal cavity. The same evidence is also
consistent with the assumption that they were fricative sounds
(as opposed to approximants or stops), an assumption
which is strongly supported by the behaviour of laryngeals
in consonant clusters. The assumption that *h₁
is a glottal stop is still very widespread. A glottal stop
would however be unlikely to be reflected as a fricative
in Uralic borrowings, as appears to be the case,
for example in the word lehti < *lešte <=
PIE *bhlh₁-to (though a Proto-Finnic *k
would have the same outcome in Finnish).
UKT: "Consonant clusters" would be medials
in Burmese-Myanmar. Since, {ha.} is the medial former
to produce the {ha.hto:}, it is curious why Burmese
phonotactics would not allow the stops {ka. ta. pa.} etc.
to be conjoined with {ha.}. Does it mean that these
have an "inherent h" sound to prevent
more "h sound" to be added?
If, as some evidence suggests, there were two
*h₁ sounds, then one may have been
the glottal stop and the other may have been
the h sound as in English "hat".
UKT: The MLC in its MEDict listed its entries
that end in an {a.that} with glottal stop /ʔ/,
or its equivalent /'/ . Does the two *h₁
sounds" mean that one is the {a.that} sound
and the other the sound of {ha.} in the onset?
What about the {ha.hto:}?
Various arguments have been given to pinpoint
the exact place of articulation of the laryngeals.
Firstly the effect these sounds have had on adjacent phonemes
is well documented. From what is known of such phonetic conditioning
in contemporary languages, notably Semitic languages,
*h₂ (the "a-colouring" laryngeal)
could have been a pharyngeal fricative. Pharyngeal fricatives
(like the Arabic letter ح as in Muħammad)
often cause a-coloring in the Semitic languages
(this occurs in Hebrew, for example). For this reason,
the pharyngeal assumption is a strong one.
UKT: "*h₂ (the a-colouring laryngeal)"
means imparting a "h-sound" as in
the case of formation of a {ha.hto:}? Unfortunately,
I know next to nothing of Arabic nor Hebrew.
Likewise it is generally assumed that *h₃
was rounded (labialized) due to its o-coloring effects.
It is often taken to be voiced based on the perfect form
*pi-bh₃- from the root *peh₃
"drink". Based on the analogy of Arabic,
some linguists have assumed that *h₃
was also pharyngeal like Arabic ع
(ayin,
as in Arabic muعallim = "teacher"),
although the assumption that it was velar is probably more common.
(The reflexes in Uralic languages could be the same
whether the original phonemes were velar or pharyngeal.)
UKT: " *h₃ was rounded (labialized)
due to its o-coloring effects " indicates
that *h₃ is {wa.hswè: ha.hto:} (MLC
in MOrtho describes this medial as {wa.hswè: ha.hto:}
and NOT {ha.hto: wa.hswè:}. However, in {mhwa.} for example,
I have to follow the order {ha.hto: wa.hswè:}
to conform to the way English-Latin words are written.
Common assumptions or not, it is obvious that rounding alone
did not color vowels in PIE; some additional (or alternative)
feature like "lowered larynx" (as appropriate for
"laryngeals" in the Semitic sense) might well
have had the appropriate influence on the formants
of adjacent vowels. It has been pointed out that
PIE *a in verb roots, such as *kap- "take",
has a number of peculiarites: it doesn't as a rule ablaut,
and it occurs with noticeable frequency in roots like *kap-,
viz., with a "plain velar" stop. But there
is a chicken-and-egg problem here: if there is in fact
any significance to this co-occurrence, does the plain velar
articulation account for the a-vocalism, or vice-versa?
At all events, if PIE *h₂ is regarded as somehow
in the same series as the plain velar stops as
usually reconstructed, it must be granted that
its existence is considerably better founded than
the existence of the plain velar stops.
The same is shown by some IE-Semitic correspondences, whether
these are due to prehistoric borrowing or to a common ancestor (see
Nostratic theory):-
• Greek οδυσσομαι
= "I hate", from IE root h3-d-w ::
Arabic عadūw = "enemy".
• Greek αϝησι = "it (= a wind) blows",
from IE root h2-w-h1 ::
Arabic hawā' ="air".
UKT: Nostratic theory holds that "a high proportion
of the language families of Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America"
came from a single Proto-Nostratic language, which was
spoken at a time toward the end of the Paleolithic period.
-- my note from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic_theory download 071020
Go back
prop-con.htm#Laryngeal-th-wiki-b
Contents of this page
From:
• Kickapoo High School
http://sps.k12.mo.us/khs/linguistics/lingtrms.htm#L /
http://sps.k12.mo.us/khs/linguistics/lingtrms.htm#G download 071020
• Structure of Spoken Language: Spectrogram Reading,
by Terri Lander and Tim Carmell,
http://speech.bme.ogi.edu/tutordemos/SpectrogramReading/cse551html/cse551/node38.html
download 071020
Approximants that are apical or laminal are often called
liquids (e.g., [ɹ] (U0279), [l]). Approximants
that correspond to vowels are often called glides
(e.g., [ j ] corresponds to [ i ], [w] to [u]).
UKT:
approximants: {ya.} {ra.} {la.} {wa.}
glides: {ya.} {wa.}
liquids: {ra.} {la.}
From: Kickapoo High School
liquid -- Name given to various [r] and [l] sounds.
The [r] sounds are sometimes designated as laterals.
glide -- Also called a semivowel. Segments
like English /w/ and /y/.
From Lander and Carmell
UKT: The phonetic symbols are in "Worldbet",
and I have to make the following changes:
• original /3r/ to /ɝ/ <bird>
• original /9r/ to /ɻ/ <rent>
• original /oU/ to /oʊ/ <boat>
• original /&r/ to /ɚ/ <butter>
• original /T/ to /θ/ <thigh>
For Worldbet, see
http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/tutordemos/SpectrogramReading/ipa/ipahome.html
download 071020.
The glides (/j/ and /w/) and the liquids
(/ɻ/ and /l/) in American English can be grouped
together in a larger category called the approximants.
This name comes from the fact that the articulators
are brought into closer contact, or approximation,
than in any of the vowels. However, the constriction
is less than for the obstruents (fricatives and plosives).
The glides /j/ and /w/ are similar to diphthongs
in that they consist of vowel-like movements. They
differ from diphthongs, which are moving vowels, in that:
• Their energy is usually less than that that of a vowel.
• Their formants do things which vowels never do.
- In the case of / j /, F2 and F3 almost collide
before going their separate ways. This near-miss leaves
a characteristic X pattern which is
the hallmark of the / j /. Think of / j / as
an exaggerated /i:/, where the tongue nearly
touches the roof of the mouth. It may be divided
into two phases: a period of maximal constriction
followed by a rapid breakaway. Because the constriction
for /j/ is so narrow, this phoneme is often marked
by frication as well as voicing.
- The phoneme /w/ usually starts as a single
F1 at 200-400 Hz, with all significant energy below 800-900 Hz,
and only gradually takes on very low F2 and F3 components
as the following vowel unfolds. As soon as F3 is visible,
however, it is above 2000 Hz, which helps distinguish
/w/ from / ɻ /. Think of /w/ as a "super" /u/,
where the lips are nearly in the bilabial position,
leaving only a small constriction from which something
less than a vowel emerges. Lip rounding is an essential
part of /w/, as with /u/. In addition, /w/ is also marked
by a velar constriction. (As usual with speech,
these observations only represent the best-behaved
examples of /j/ and /w/; we will see that
there is a great deal of variation. )
We call these phonemes "glides" because
they glide into the syllable nucleus. They cannot form
the nucleus of a syllable, and occur only in prevocalic
position. When a glide follows a vowel within a syllable,
the combination is considered a diphthong and
not two separate phonemes.
UKT: The Western phoneticians view <y> /j/
and <w> /w/ differently from us. The above
paragraph gives us two different environments for /j/ and /w/.
• As part of onset {ya.ping.}:
To us, they are part of the onset aksharas, and not
part of the peak vowel which itself is viewed
as part of the rime. e.g.,
{ka.} + {a.that} + {ya.} --> {kya.}
{ka.} + {a.that} + {wa.} --> {kwa.}
In other words, we do not treat /j/ and /w/
as semivowels. They are regular consonants.
• As part of the rime {ya.that}:
When {ya.} or {wa.} follows the vowel, their
inherent vowels have to be killed, and they
become part of the rime. e.g., (note, I have
to change the inherent vowel /a/ to /æ/ to make
it into a checked vowel so that a "consonant"
may follow):
{a.} + {ya.} + {a.that} --> {èý}
{a.} + {wa.} + {a.that} --> {aw}
(Unfortunately there is no ASCII character to show a killed {wa.}
We find {aw} as part of the word
{pa.ow.} -- the name of an indigenous ethnic
group in Myanmar (MEDict254}. We do not pronounce
the {wa.that}, however there is a definite
rounding of the lips.
The liquids / ɻ / and /l/ are
among the most interesting of English phonemes.
This is because of the position of the tongue
which is in each case unique.
UKT: Burmese-Myanmar does pronounce the alveolar (e.g.
{ta.}} /t/ and retroflex (e.g.
{Ta.} /ʈ/) almost the same. However, we
must note that in the IPA table, the approximant for /t/
is /ɹ/, and for /ʈ/ it is /ɻ/. We pronounce
{ra.} in two ways: without the "rolling" sound,
and with the "rolling" sound. The {ra.} without
rolling is found in the Irrawaddy valley, and {ra.}
with rolling sound on the western seaboard (Rakhine)
and when reading Pali-Myanmar texts.
In the case of / ɻ /, the retroflex liquid,
the sides of the blade of the tongue are curled up
to the alveolar ridge, and further back the tongue
sides are brought into contact with the molars.
These blockages force air to pass out through a narrow
ellipse in the center of the mouth. The tip of the tongue
may also be curled back; this is the original meaning
of the word "retroflexion", although different
sorts of r-flavoring or rhotacization
occur in the repertory of the world's languages:
the uvular fricative in French "rouge", a /d_(/ -
like flap in the Spanish "pero",
the trilled double r in the Spanish "perro",
and the real retroflexes in Hindi and other Indian languages.
(The main sign of the retroflex in spectrograms is that
F3 comes very close to F2, in the extreme case
being swallowed up into it, and in either case
restricting all significant energy below 2000 Hz
(higher in females and children). /ɻ/ is different
from /ɝ/ in that in /ɻ/, the formants show
a great deal of movement; in intervocalic position
F3 will swing down below 2000 Hz and back above it.
In /ɝ/, the formants seem to move instantly together
and to stay there as long as the syllable persists.)
UKT: As before <r> /ɹ/ must be viewed
in two different environments.
• As part of onset {ra.ris}:
{ka.} + {ra.} + {a.that} --> {kra.}
• As part of rime {ra.that}:
{a.} + {ra.} --> {ar} (Unfortunately
there is no ASCII character to show a killed {ra.}
We find {ar} as part of the word
{maar} (MEDict359 with the MLC transcription /[man]/
-- I have used /[...]/ to show it is not IPA transcription.).
I have always wondered why the pronunciation is similar
to a {na.that}. I have never taken note of the fact
that {na.} and {ra.} are both alveolars (the same POA)
and they would behave similarly under suitable conditions.
The lateral liquid <l> /l/ is in a sense
the reverse of /ɻ /. In the lateral, it is the tip
of the tongue which is placed on the alveolar ridge,
while the sides of the tongue are left in their
normal horizontal, open position. Air thus escapes from
the two sides of the tongue out the mouth, but not from
the center. The splitting and rejoining of the sound waves
cause an anti-resonance around 1500 Hz which is
a good clue for /l/. (The phoneme /l/ shows a lot of variety
in the spectrogram. Before a vowel, F3 may descend or
stay even, while F2 rises, giving the phoneme a forked appearance.
This is particularly true for the syllable <ly>
as in <daily>. In other cases, the formants
F2 and F3 move directly into the next vowel without
any marked frequency variations, but the /l/ shows
less energy than the vowel. There is often a clear
spectral discontinuity where the tongue touches
the alveolar ridge, causing the anti-resonance to form,
and again when it is taken away. In postvocalic contexts,
/l/ is signalled by the crushing down of F2 with
F1 near or below 1000 Hz, with F3 simultaneously moving up
toward 3000 Hz, again leaving the hole in the normal F2 range.
The two cases may be combined in the case of intervocalic /l/,
where an elliptical low-energy pattern may be
detected. / l / is easy to confuse with /oʊ/. )
One thing which /ɝ/ and /l/ have in common is that
their duration can be as short or long as desired.
The glides must move; we cannot pronounce a long /w/
or /j/; if we try to do so, they become /u/ or /i:/.
But the liquids can be pronounced as long as we wish:
try saying <well> and draw out the /l/, or
<father> and draw out the /ɝ/. Both phonemes
can become syllabic nuclei: for /l/ the symbol is /l_=/,
while we have already seen the vowels /ɝ/ and /ɚ/ .
UKT: As before <l> /l/ has to be viewed in different
environments. However there is a variation in this case.
• As part of onset {la.hswè:}:
{ka.} + {la.} + {a.that} --> {kla.}
(however, {la.hswè: is no longer used)
• As part of the rime {la.that}:
{a.} + {la.} + {a.that} --> {al}
(Unfortunately there is no ASCII character
to show a killed {la.}
We find {al} in the word
{bol}. We do not pronounce the {la.that}.
There are variants of the glides and liquids which occur in consonant clusters.
Examples are the beginnings of the following words:
/s/ swipe, Sri, sly
/f/ few, foie gras, flood, from
/θ/ thwart, thrice
/ph/ pew, poids, ply, pry
/th/ tune, twice, try
/kh/ cue, quiet, clay, cry
/b/ beautiful, bwana, blue, brute
/d/ dew, Dwight, dry
/g/ gewgaw, guava, glide, grind
Notice that in English we do not like combinations
such as /th l/ or /d l/, although these exist in other languages.
The voiced /z/ and /v/ occur in very few such combinations;
again, this is probably an English preference since
there are words such as zouave and voir in French.
In cases where the preceding consonant is voiceless,
the glide or liquid may be partially or totally devoiced;
in this case it is realized in aspiration bands
rather than as voicing bands, and would be
labelled phonetically as /j_0/, /w_0/, /9r_0/, or /l_0/.
In all cases, the two phonemes interact and make
recognition more difficult.
Some phoneticians speak of the dark and light
variants of /l/. What they call light /l/ might also
be termed pre-vocalic /l/; while dark /l/ is post-vocalic.
In cases of intervocalic /l/, the liquid will tend
to group either with the preceding syllable, in which
case it is dark, or with the following syllable,
in which case it is light. But there are many cases
where the distinction is not so clear, and we get elements
of both, leading to the nice diamond or O
shape between F2 and F3 which is an easy marker for /l/.
Go back liq-glide-wiki-b
Contents of this page
Panini - Sanskrit grammarian
From: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C4%81%E1%B9%87ini download 071003
The above online link does not work even immediately downloading. I have to
search again using the string "Panini Sanskrit grammarian".
Panini (IAST: Pāṇini, Devanāgarī:
पाणिनि ; a patronymic
meaning "descendant of Pani") was an ancient Indian
grammarian from Gandhara
(traditionally 520–460
BC, but estimates range from the 7th
to
4th centuries BC).
UKT: Transliteration of Devanagari to Myanmar:
पा णि नि =
{pa-Ni-ni}
He is known for his Sanskrit grammar, particularly for
his formulation of the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology
in the grammar known as Ashtadhyayi
(meaning "eight chapters"), the foundational text
of the grammatical branch of the
Vedanga
(UKT: see my notes), the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of
Vedic religion.
UKT: In the Sanskrit "Ashtadhyayi" the part
"ashta" means <eight>. In Pali-Myanmar it is:
{aTa~Hta.}. Please note that it is a horizontal conjunct,
and is a disyllable. The word is not be pronounced as {a.Hta.}.
The Ashtadhyayi is the earliest known grammar of Sanskrit
(though scholars agree it likely built on earlier works),
and the earliest known work on descriptive linguistics,
generative linguistics, and together with the work of
his immediate predecessors
(Nirukta,
Nighantu,
Pratishakyas) stands at the beginning of the
history of linguistics itself.
Panini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar
is conventionally taken to mark the end of the period of
Vedic Sanskrit, by definition introducing
Classical Sanskrit.
Date and context
Nothing definite is known about Panini's life,
not even the century he lived in (he lived almost
certainly during the period spanning the 6th to 4th
centuries BC), although scholarly mainstream favours
a 4th century BC floruit, corresponding to
Achaemenid Gandhara with Pushkalavati
as its capital, contemporary to the Nanda Dynasty
ruling the Indo-Gangetic plain. According to legend,
[citation needed] he was born in Shalatula,
a town beside the Indus River, in Gandhara, which is
in the modern day the Attock District of Pakistan's Punjab province,
located between Rawalpindi and Peshawar.
Panini's grammar defines Classical Sanskrit, so that Panini
per definition lived at the end of the
Vedic period: he notes a few special rules,
marked chandasi ("in the hymns") to account
for forms in the Vedic scriptures that had fallen
out of use in the spoken language of his time, indicating
that
Vedic Sanskrit was already archaic, but still
a comprehensible dialect.
An important hint for the dating of Panini is
the occurrence of the word yavanānī
(in 4.1.49, either "Greek woman",
or "Greek script"). There would have been
no first-hand knowledge of Greeks in Gandhara before
the conquests of Alexander the Great in the 330s BC, but
it is likely that the name was known via Old Persian
yauna, so
that Pāṇini may well have lived as early as
the time of Darius the Great (ruled 521 BC–485/6 BC).
UKT:
• This Wikipedia article seems to have ignored
the Saraswati civilization which flourished along
the Saraswati river, which had flowed for 2000 years,
between 6000 and 4000 B.C.. See
www.gsbkerala.com/saraswati.htm.
• The word "yauna" in Pali-Myanmar is
{yau-ni.} meaning <vagina> (MEDict383).
It is not certain whether Panini used writing
for the composition of his work, though it is
generally agreed that he did use a form of writing,
based on references to words such as "script"
and "scribe" in his Ashtadhyayi.
It is believed that a work of such complexity
would have been very difficult to compile without
written notes, though some have argued that he might have
composed it with the help of a group of students
whose memories served him as 'notepads'. Writing
first reappears in India (since the Indus script)
in the form of the Brāhmī script from
ca. the 6th century BC, though these early instances
of the Brāhmī script are from Tamil Nadu
in southern India, quite distant from Gandhara in
northwestern India. Since Gandhara was under Persian rule
in the 6th century BC, it would also be possible that
he used the Aramaic alphabet (from a variant of which
the Brāhmī script is likely a descendant).
While Panini's work is purely grammatical and lexicographic,
cultural and geographical inferences can be drawn
from the vocabulary he uses in examples, and
from his references to fellow grammarians.
Deities referred to in his work include
Vasudeva (4.3.98). The concept of dharma
is attested in his example sentence (4.4.41)
dharmam carati "he observes the law".
The Ashtadhyayi
The Ashtadhyayi is the central part of Panini's grammar,
and by far the most complex. It takes material from the lexical lists
(Dhatupatha,
Ganapatha)
as input and describes algorithms to be applied to them
for the generation of well-formed words. It is highly
systematised and technical. Inherent in its generative approach
are the concepts of the
phoneme, the
morpheme
and the
root, only recognized by Western linguists some two millennia later.
His rules have a reputation for perfection — that is,
they are claimed to describe Sanskrit morphology fully,
without any redundancy. A consequence of his grammar's focus
on brevity is its highly unintuitive structure, reminiscent of
contemporary "
machine language" (as opposed to "human readable"
programming languages). His sophisticated logical rules
and technique have been widely influential in ancient
and modern linguistics.
The Ashtadhyayi consists of 3,959 sutras (sutrani)
or rules, distributed among eight chapters, which
are each subdivided into four sections or padas
(padani).
From example words in the text, and from a few rules
depending on the context of the discourse, additional information
as to the geographical, cultural and historical context
of Panini can be discerned.
...
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From: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonetic_transcription download 071020
Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual
system of symbolization of the sounds occurring in spoken human language. The
most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet (such as the
IPA).
Phonetic transcription vs. orthography :
Actual pronunciation of words in many languages,
versus their written form (orthography), have undergone
significant change over time, and can also vary greatly
between dialects. Traditional orthography in some languages,
particularly French and English, often does not coincide
with pronunciation. For example, the words <bough>
and <trough> are pronounced very differently
in English, even though they are spelled the same way.
In French, for example, the <s> at the end of words
is always silent ("militaire" is pronounced
the same as "militaires"). In the orthography
of most European languages, the fact that many letters
are pronounced or silent depending on contexts causes
difficulties in finding out the appropriate pronunciation,
especially in the cases of English and French. However,
in other languages such as Spanish and Italian, there is
a consistent relationship between orthography and pronunciation.
Therefore, phonetic transcription can provide a service
that orthography cannot. It displays a one-to-one
relationship between symbols and sounds,
unlike the traditional Roman alphabet (UKT: in TIL parlance
Roman-Latin alphabet). Phonetic transcription allows us
to step outside of orthography and examine differences
in pronunciation between dialects within a given language,
as well as to identify changes in pronunciation that
may take place over time.
UKT: In the case of Burmese-Myanmar, the orthography and
pronunciation are very close. We try to pronounce as
closely to the orthography as possible, especially
on the part of the educated population. We have a saying:
"What is written is correct, what is spoken is just sound".
Here, "sound" refers to the transient nature of speech.
This is not fully appreciated by Western linguists, who because
of their linguistic backgrounds such as English and French,
fail to understand the nature of the abugida which is based
on sound phonemic principles. In Burmese-Myanmar there
is an almost one-to-one correspondence between
the akshara and the phoneme.
• This generalization "phonetic transcription
can provide a service that orthography cannot"
is only true for the alphabetic system of writing.
In Burmese-Myanmar, an abugidic system of writing,
pronunciation and orthography has almost one-to-one correspondence.
• Windows XP character map uses "Latin letters"
instead of "Roman letters". Now which is which?
Which is the spoken language "Latin" or "Roman"?
Whatever the case may be, since we are using computer character maps,
we have to go along with them and say "Latin letters"
instead of "Roman letters". In other words,
we have to accept that Roman is the language and
Latin is the script, and so I would write: Roman-Latin.
Narrow vs. broad transcription
Phonetic transcription may aim to transcribe the phonology
of a language, or it may wish to go further and specify
the precise phonetic realisation. In all systems of transcription
we may therefore distinguish between broad transcription
and narrow transcription. Broad transcription indicates
only the more noticeable phonetic features of an utterance,
whereas narrow transcription encodes more information
about the phonetic variations of the specific allophones
in the utterance. The difference between broad and narrow is a continuum.
One particular form of a broad transcription is a phonemic transcription,
which disregards all allophonic difference.
For example, one particular pronunciation of the English word
<little> may be transcribed using the IPA as /ˈlɪtl̩/
or [ˈlɪtɫ̩]; the broad, phonemic transcription,
placed between slashes, indicates merely that the word ends
with phoneme /l/, but the narrow, allophonic transcription,
placed between square brackets, indicates that
this final /l/ ([ɫ]) is dark.
The advantage of the narrow transcription is that it can help
learners to get exactly the right sound, and allows linguists
to make detailed analyses of language variation. The disadvantage
is that a narrow transcription is rarely representative of
all speakers of a language. Some Americans would pronounce the
/t/ of <little> as a tap [ɾ]. Many people
in England would say /t/ as [ʔ] (a glottal stop)
and/or the second /l/ as [w]. A further disadvantage
in less technical contexts is that narrow transcription
involves a larger number of symbols which may be
unfamiliar to non-specialists.
The advantage of the broad transcription is that it
allows statements to be made which apply right across
a relatively diverse language community. It is thus
more appropriate for the pronunciation data in foreign language
dictionaries, which may discuss allophones in the preface
but rarely give them for each entry. A rule of thumb
in many linguistics contexts
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UKT:
• The figure on the right is from: ESL Start-up Kit,
ed O. Ebert and W. Hawk,
http://cls.coe.utk.edu/lpm/esltoolkit/.
I have re-edited the figure. The letters in red
(in the original figure) are in ordinary English and
are neither in IPA phonetic characters nor the so-called
machine-readable phonetic letters. e.g.
< th > is:
[ θ ] (U03B8) in IPA and
[ T ] in machine-readable letter
• Note that the "letters" of the alphabet <th> is a digraph. In old English it
is written as <þ> -- a single glyph.
• Note that in pronunciation <ng> does not represent <n> and <g> separately. It
represents a single sound segment. Similarly, <ch>, <sh>, <th>, <wh>, and <zh>,
represent single sound segments.
• There is a rule that states: a regular English word does not end in "h".
Yet, there are words that end in <h>, e.g. <church> and <wish>. However,
because, the "h" is just a part of the "digraph" representing a single sound,
the rule is not violated. (I am waiting for comments from my peers.)
• I agree with the source on the POA of <ng>
and <k> (both in red). Now, I - a Burmese-speaking Myanmar -
would like to indicate (approximately) where (I think) I pronounce r1c2 {hka.}
and r1c4 {Ga.} (in blue). However, I must admit, in spite of my careful
observation, it is very difficult to pin point where I pronounce my consonants,
and the reader should take it only as an approximation.
• Please remember that I was raised
by Burmese-Myanmar parents (they were both bilingual in Burmese
and English). I was educated in Burma (now Myanmar) in my childhood
and teens. I, even had the chance to go to a vernacular
(Burmese) school on the premises of a Burmese-Myanmar
Buddhist monastery in a small town just outside of Rangoon
(now Yangon). And I had taught in the various universities in Myanmar.
Now, I must insist that {hka.} (r1c2) is not just an aspirated {ka.} (r1c1),
but a consonant in its own right. Remember, English <k> with broad
transcription /k/, has two allophones [k] and [kʰ].
• In Romabama, I have used {hk}, and in common transcription <kh> is used to
represent r1c2. Please remember that, it is a digraph just like {ng}, {þa.}/{tha} because English-Latin
does not have "single letters" for these sounds.
• With r2c5, we are lucky because instead of <ny>, we could use the Spanish Ñ,
which the Spanish insist is not an <N> with a
"diacritic", but a letter in its own right.
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From:
-- Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_consonant download 070812.
They are articulated with the root (base) of the tongue
in the throat. They include the pharyngeal and
epiglottal places of articulation. Glottal consonants
(UKT: [h] is said to be one of three glottal consonants),
are also sometimes considered radicals, but they are
more accurately described as having no POA
other than their phonation.
UKT:
• Radical (from Latin radicis,
genitive of radix "root")
can refer to many different things and concepts.
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical download 071020.
• Three consonants were given as radical consonants:
/ ʔ, ɦ, h/. /h/ is the only consonant given for English:
<hat> [hæt]
The term radical was coined to disambiguate
pharyngeal, which had come to mean any consonant
articulated in the throat, whether the articulator was
the back of the tongue ("high" pharyngeals) or
the epiglottis ("low" pharyngeals). However,
radical has not completely taken over, and
pharyngeal is still commonly used in this broader sense.
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From: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segment_(linguistics) download 071020
In linguistics (and phonetics), segment is used
primarily "to refer to any discrete unit that can be identified,
either physically or auditorily, in the stream of speech"
(after A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics,
David Crystal, 2003, pp. 408–409).
In spoken languages, a segment may be a consonant,
vowel, tone, or stress. It is not clear
whether sign languages have equivalent segments.
In phonetics, the smallest perceptible segment
is a phone.
In phonology, there is a subfield of segmental phonology.
It deals with the analysis of speech into phonemes
(or segmental phonemes), which correspond fairly well
to phonetic segments of the analysed speech.
A word of caution, though, must be taken when analyzing
the inventory of segmental units in any given language.
Some segments may be simply marginal segments. This is
the case with onomatopoeic words, or with loan words,
where sounds exist only in a few specific words, but are not
generally found throughout the entire language. In fact,
onomatopoeic words and especially loan words are often
the source of new segments being accepted into
the general phonology of a language.
UKT: Examples from Burmese-Myanmar of words spelled according to sound:
• An example of onomatopoeic word: {being:being:lè:}
or {boan:boan:lè:} - v. collapse -- MEDict314-315
(UKT: referring to a person falling with a thud never to get up again)
• An example of loan word: {da.reing-Ba} - n.
driver (English <driver>) -- MEDict208
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From:
• Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant download 071021
• Online Phonetics Course (UNIL),
http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html 070823
• J. Honová et.al., Analysis of articulation of fricative praealveolar
sibilant "s" in control population, in Biomed. Papers 147 (2), 239-242
(2003),
http://publib.upol.cz/~obd/fulltext/Biomed/2003/2/239.pdf download 071021
UKT:
• From the following, I have to conclude that Burmese-Myanmar
{sa.} and {za.} are sibilants. We should not confuse the r6c5 akshara
({þa.}/{tha.}
with <s>.
Burmese-Myanmar (also the Pali-Myanmar)
({þa.}/{tha.} has the pronunciations [θ],
whereas the Hindi-Devanagari (also the Sanskrit-Devanagari) akshara
corresponding to r6c5 has the pronunciation [s].
UKT: Sibilants form an
important subset of fricatives,
and I may have to rewrite the two sections together.
From the point of view of Burmese-Myanmar, the superset
to which the two sections belong is the {a.wag}-consonants,
which also has approximants as a subset.
A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant,
made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in
the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth.
The Term
The term sibilant is often taken to be synonymous
with the term strident, though this is incorrect
- there is variation in usage. The term sibilant
tends to have an articulatory or aerodynamic definition
involving the production of aperiodic noise at an obstacle.
Strident refers to the perceptual quality of intensity
as determined by amplitude and frequency characteristics
of the resulting sound (i.e. an auditory,
or possibly acoustic, definition).
Sibilants are louder than their non-sibilant counterparts,
and most of their acoustic energy occurs at higher frequencies
than non-sibilant fricatives. [s] has the most acoustic strength
at around 8,000 Hz, but can reach as high as 10,000 Hz.
[ʃ] has the bulk of its acoustic energy at around 4,000 Hz,
but can extend up to around 8,000 Hz.
The spin-off terms shibilant, and rarely thibilant, are used to
describe particular kinds of sibilant.
Symbols
Of the sibilants, the following have IPA symbols of their own:
• Alveolar: [s] , [z] (either apical or laminal)
• Postalveolar:
- [ ʃ ] , [ ʒ ] (Palato-alveolar:
that is, "domed" (partially palatalized) postalveolar,
either laminal or apical)
- [ ɕ ] , [ ʑ ] (Alveolo-palatal:
that is, laminal palatalized postalveolar; these are
equivalent to ʃʲ, ʒʲ)
- [ ʂ ] , [ ʐ ]: (Retroflex,
which can mean one of three things:
(1) non-palatalized apical postalveolar,
(2) sub-apical postalveolar or pre-palatal, or
(3) non-palatalized laminal ("flat") postalveolar,
sometimes transcribed [ s̠ z̠ ] or
[ ʂ̻ ʐ̻ ].
Diacritics can be used for finer detail. For example,
apical and laminal alveolars can be specified as
[s̺] vs [s̻];
a dental (or more likely denti-alveolar) sibilant as
[s̪]; a palatalized alveolar as [sʲ]; and
a generic postalveolar as [s̠], a transcription
frequently used when none of the above apply (that is,
for a laminal but non-palatalized, or "flat", postalveolar).
Some of the Northwest Caucasian languages also
have a closed laminal postalveolar, without
IPA symbols but provisionally transcribed as [ŝ ẑ].
Inventories
Only the alveolar and palato-alveolar sibilants are
distinguished in English; the former may be either
apical or laminal, while the latter are usually apical,
slightly labialized and generally called simply
"postalveolar": [s̺ z̺] or
[s̻ z̻] and [ʃʷ̜ ʒʷ̜]),
as in sin [s̻ɪn] and shin
[ʃʷ̜ɪn]. Laminal and apical sibilants
are not distinguished in English. Basque does distinguish
these two phonemically, as well as having true
postalveolars ([s̺] [s̻] [ʃ]).
Polish and Russian have laminal denti-alveolars, palatalized
denti-alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals
([s̪ z̪] [s̪ʲ z̪ʲ]
[s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]), whereas Mandarin
has apical alveolars, flat postalveolars, and alveolo-palatals
([s̺ z̺] [s̠ z̠] [ɕ ʑ]).
Few languages distinguish more than three series of sibilants
without secondary articulation, but Ubykh has four series
of plain sibilants, [s z], [ŝ ẑ ŝʷ ẑʷ],
[ɕ ʑ ɕʷ ʑʷ], [ʂ ʐ],
as does the Bzyp dialect of the related Abkhaz,
and the Chinese dialect of Qinan, in Shandong province,
is said to have five. Toda has a laminal alveolar,
an apical postalveolar, laminal domed postalveolars,
and sub-apical palatals. Since two of these could be
called 'retroflex', Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996
have resurrected the old IPA diacritic for retroflex,
the underdot, for apical retroflexes, and reserve
the letters <ʂ, ʐ> for sub-apical retroflexes.
Thus the Toda sibilants can be transcribed [s̪]
[ṣ] [ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ],
although the official IPA symbols [s̪] [s̠]
[ʃ̻ ʒ̻] [ʂ ʐ] are
also sufficient. (In some publications the underdot
and underbar are interchanged.)
Toda : Dravidian language of about 1000 persons living in Nilgari
hills in southern India
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toda_language download 071021
Other definitions of sibilant
Some authors, as for instance Chomsky & Halle (1964),
group [f] and [v] as sibilants. However,
they do not have the grooved articulation and high frequencies
of other sibilants, and most phoneticians (for instance
by Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996), continue to group them
together with the bilabial fricatives [ɸ,
β] as non-sibilant anterior fricatives. Some researchers
judge [f] to be strident in one language, e.g. the
African language Ewe, as determined by experimental measurements
of amplitude, but as non-strident in English.
The nature of sibilants as so-called 'obstacle fricatives'
is complicated - there is a continuum of possibilities
relating to the angle at which the jet of air may strike
an obstacle. The grooving often considered necessary
for classification as a sibilant has been observed
in ultrasound studies of the tongue for supposedly
non-sibilant [θ] voiceless alveolar
non-sibilant fricative (Stone and Lundberg, 1996,
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 99: 3728-3737).
More research on the phonetic bases of the terms sibilance
and stridency, and their interrelationship, is required.
J. Honová et.al.
UKT: Being unable to come up with a satisfactory explanation
why the sound of Burmese-Myanmar
{þa.} has been mistaken for [s] (the sound of
{sa.}), the sound of Sanskrit-Devanagari स (U0938),
I have looked into the production of sibilants not only
across languages, but also within a population speaking
the same language, and have come across a paper by J. Honová et.al.,
Analysis of articulation of fricative praealveolar sibilant
"s" in control population, in Biomed. Papers
147 (2), 239-242 (2003),
http://publib.upol.cz/~obd/fulltext/Biomed/2003/2/239.pdf download 071021.
The following are some excerpts from that paper.
Introduction
The most common and frequent speech defect in children
and adults is dyslalia, which means defective pronunciation
of one or more mother language phones, while pronunciation
of the other phones is correct. There are usually individual
differences in the articulation development: speech
of some children at the age of approximately three is
acoustically entire mature, while other children have
difficulties with pronunciation some phones still at
the age of six. With dyslalia, it is therefore important
to differentiate so called incorrect pronunciation
that adjusts itself gradually through distinctive inhibition,
by means of which pronounced words are analyzed
and create correct acoustically articulated connections.
Up to the age of 5, children's dyslalia is considered
a physiological phenomenon, (so-called physiological dyslalia),
sometimes; however, this pronunciation persists
up to the age of 7 (so-called prolonged physiological dyslalia).
Alternatively, an impaired, defective pronunciation,
when the pronunciation analomy is fixed, is of significantly
pathological character.
dyslalia n. An articulation disorder resulting
from impaired hearing or structural abnormalities of
the articulatory organs. --
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/dyslalia download 071021
dyslexia n. 1. A learning disorder
marked by impairment of the ability to recognize and
comprehend written words. -- AHTD
The phonetic aspect of speech ontogenesis is governed
by the rule of the least physiological exertion
that means that the child first generates those phones
that require the least articulatory exertion and later
more demanding phones. As the last, children learn
to handle phonemes that are characteristic for their mother language.
(UKT: I am of the opinion that a child of the age group 6 to 12
is in the process of learning how to pronounce more
physiologically demanding L1 phones. This I would call
the second stage. It is in this stage that a child
can still pick up the L2 phones, and by the onset of puberty,
the child stops to acquire the correct pronunciations
of the second language.)
According to this rule, a Czech speaking child
first generates vowels in this order:
(please note that the letters given within "..."
are not regular English letters nor IPA characters
-- most probably Czech) :
#01. articulatory basis with the greatest frequency
is the vowel "a"
(UKT: "a" is a front vowel and {ma}
is the easiest sound to produce.)
#02. this is followed by "u" and "o"
(UKT: the child is experimenting with lip rounding and back vowels.)
#03. development of "e" and especially "i" is more complicated
(UKT: visiting the front vowels once more, experimenting with {é} and {i})
#04. "au" diphthong stabilized before "ou" diphthong
(UKT: With Burmese-Myanmar {au} is a monophthong. We cannot pronounce
sounds like English <boy> and <cow>.)
The sequence of consonant fixation process is as follows:
(UKT: remember as the child is growing up his or her neck
is becoming longer which creates more resonance space
at the back of the mouth)
#01. bilabial occlusive "p, b, m"
#02. alveolar occlusive "t, d, n"
#03. labiodental fricative "f, v"
(UKT: Burmese-Myanmar and Hindi-Devanagari speakers
do not have these sounds.)
#04. velar occlusive "k, g"
(UKT: Burmese-Myanmar has {nga}, which Hindi-Devanagari
speakers sometimes pronounce {na})
#05. lateral fricative "l"
(UKT: English-Latin has only one equivalent to {la.},
whereas Burmese-Myanmar has at least 3 {la. lha. lhwa.})
#06. palatal fricative "d', t', ň "
(UKT: I made an extra effort to identify
the given characters by enlarging the pdf text, and
you can rely on the accuracy of the characters)
#07. velar fricative "ch, h"
(UKT: [h] in IPA is glottal fricative)
#08. alveolar fricative sibilants " s, z, š, ž "
#09. alveolar semi-occlusive "c č"
#10. vibrant "r"
#11. specific Czech vibrant " ř "
is usually managed as the last.
Dyslalia
The dyslalia may effect individual phones, syllables,
as well as words and according to this we recognize
phone, syllable and word dyslatlia.
The phone dyslalia has one of three basic forms:
• Magilalia is a type of dyslalia when
a child skips one of the phones.
• Paralalia is a substitution of a phone
by another, less demanding on articulation.
• Distortion of individual phones - the most
common type of dyslalia. Here the phone is generated
in a different way and in a different articulatory position,
so its sound is outside the usage of the given language community.
Adding the suffic -ism (indicating accidental characteristics)
indicates a phone generated in a similar way to
the Greek phone and by the Latin name of the generation position
(e.g. sigmatism interdental).
Orthophony of consonants "s" and "š"
Regarding a relatively complex and delicate articulatory mechanism
and mainly due to high hearing differentiation, the sibilants
develop over a relatively long period of time.
Defective generating of the series "s" consonants
(s, z, c consonants) and "š" (š, ž, č consonants)
are summarily designated as sigmatism (lisp).
lisp n. 1. A speech defect or
mannerism characterized by mispronunciation of
the sounds (s) and (z) as (th) and ( th ) -- AHTD
Go back prop-con.htm#sibilant-wiki-b
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syllable n. Abbr. syl. syll. 1.
Linguistics a. A unit of spoken language
consisting of a single uninterrupted sound formed
by a vowel, diphthong, or syllabic consonant alone, or
by any of these sounds preceded, followed, or surrounded
by one or more consonants. b. One or more letters
or phonetic symbols written or printed to approximate
a spoken syllable. 2. The slightest bit of spoken
or written expression: Do not alter a syllable of
this message. [Middle English sillable
from Anglo-Norman alteration of Old French sillabe
from Latin syllaba from Greek sullabē
from sullabein, second aorist of sullambanein
to combine in pronunciation sun-
syn- lambanein to take]
-- AHTD
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From: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvular_consonant download 070918
UKT:
In works on Pali language written in English, such as
An Elementary Pali Course, by Ven. Narada Thera,
http://www.vipassana.info/pali%20contents.htm (in Tipitaka font) /
www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/ele_pali.pdf ,
the group of consonants of the row 1 of the akshara matrix
is known as the {ka.}-group. The consonants are described as
the gutteral consonants. Since that was my first book
on Pali, I have made extra care to find out what
the "gutteral consonants" are in terms of the IPA alphabets.
Since, [k g ŋ] are described as "velar consonants",
I had taken "velar" and "gutteral"
to be nearly synonymous. However, after running into
an alternate spelling "Quran" (sound of [q] - uvular),
which we used to spell "Koran" (sound of [k] -
velar), I started wondering whether {ka.} should really be
called "uvular". The following is what is meant by:
gutteral consonant
• from:
http://www.123exp-comm.com/t/23394114739/ download 071021
In articulatory phonetics, the term guttural consonant
is sometimes used to describe any of several consonantal
speech sounds whose primary place of articulation is near
the back of the oral cavity, and include some velar consonants,
uvular consonants, pharyngeal consonants, and epiglottal consonants.
• from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural download 071021
Guttural is a term used to describe any
of several consonantal speech sounds whose primary POA
is near the back of the oral cavity, and include
some velar consonants, uvular consonants, and
pharyngeal consonants. The word guttural is derived
from the French and Latin denoting a sound coming from
the throat. The concept of gutturality is
not entirely objective, but a guttural sound is
generally considered to be one which is pronounced with
the dorsum of the tongue and/or at any point behind
the hard palate, including the soft palate, the uvula
or the pharynx. In scientific discourse, the more precise terms
indicating the POA, such as uvular consonant,
are generally preferred.
Uvulars
are consonants articulated with the back of the tongue
(dorsum) against or near the uvula, that is, further back
in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be plosives,
fricatives, nasal stops, trills, or approximants,
though the IPA does not provide a separate symbol
for the approximant, and the symbol for the voiced fricative
is used instead. Uvular affricates can certainly be made
but are very rare: they may occur in a few African
and Native American languages.
The uvular consonants identified by the IPA are:
[ɴ q ɢ χ ʁ ʀ]
English has no uvular consonants, and they are
unknown in the indigenous languages of Australia
and the Pacific. Uvular consonants are however found
in many African and Middle-Eastern languages, most
notably Arabic, and in Native American languages.
In parts of the Caucasus mountains and north-western North America,
nearly every language has uvular stops and fricatives.
Two uvular Rs are found in north-western Europe,
where they spread from northern French.
UKT: After realising that English <k> sounds more like {hka.},
I am wondering whether {ka.} might be a uvular, similar to Arabic [q].
Though English has no uvular consonant, it has <qu>
as in <quack> /kwæk/ (DJPD16-438). <quack>
is exactly the same as {kwak}, if you do not pronounce
the killed {ka.}. Note that {ka.} and {hka.} can form medials
with {wa.} to form {wa.hswè:} : {kwa.} and {hkwa.} -- UKT 070919
The voiceless uvular plosive is transcribed as [q] in both
the IPA and SAMPA. It is pronounced somewhat like the
voiceless velar plosive [k], but with the middle of the tongue
further back, against the uvula rather than the velum.
The most familiar use will doubtless be in the transliteration
of Arabic place names such as Qatar and Iraq
into English, though, since English lacks this sound, this is
generally pronounced as the most similar sound that occurs
in English, [k].
[ɢ], the voiced equivalent of [q], is much rarer.
It is like the voiced velar plosive [g], but articulated in
the same uvular position as [q]. Few languages use this sound,
but it is found in some varieties of Persian and in
several Northeast Caucasian languages, notably Tabasaran.
The voiceless uvular fricative [χ] is similar to
the voiceless velar fricative [x], except that it is
articulated on the uvula. It is found instead of
[x] in some dialects of German and Arabic.
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The Vedanga (vedāṅga,
"member of the Veda") are
six auxiliary disciplines for the
understanding and tradition of the Vedas.
1.
Shiksha (śikṣā):
phonetics
and phonology
(sandhi)
2. Chandas
(chandas):
meter
3. Vyakarana
(vyākaraṇa):
grammar
(UKT: {bya-ka.ra.Na.} -- UHS-Dict549)
4. Nirukta
(nirukta):
etymology
5. Jyotisha
(jyotiṣa):
astrology
and astronomy,
dealing particularly with the auspicious days for performing sacrifices.
6. Kalpa
(kalpa):
ritual
The Vedangas are first mentioned in the
Mundaka Upanishad as topics to be observed
by students of the Vedas. Later, they developed
into independent disciplines, each with its own corpus of
Sutras.
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Vedanga-wiki-b
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From: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_onset_time download 071002
UKT: more on this as a separate section in a later chapter. See Voice Onset
Time (VOT) -- the second variable of voicing, in prop-con2.htm. Because, VOT will be treated more extensively,
this note will be only a stub.
In phonetics, voice onset time is commonly abbreviated VOT. It is
one of the two variables of Voicing of a consonant. It is time lag
between the release of constriction and the start of vibration of the vocal folds
.
UKT: As an illustration take the case of
pronouncing <pa>. Remember /p/
cannot be pronounced. To hear its sound
let's supply it with a vowel, say /a/.
Remember, vowels are voiced. At first,
the lips are pressed together. When they
are suddenly opened (i.e. /p/ is released),
a puff of air comes out of the glottis which
produces vibration of vocal folds. (i.e.
the production of /a/). There is a small time lag
between /p/ and /a/. That time lag is VOT.
The three major phonation types of stops
can be analyzed in terms of their voice onset time.
#1. Simple unaspirated vl plosives, exemplified by the sound of {ka.}
[k]. They are sometimes
called tenuis plosives, have a VOTs at or near zero.
#2. Aspirated vl plosives, exemplified by the sound of {hka.} [kʰ].
They have positive VOTs. The length of the VOT
in such cases is a practical measure of aspiration:
The longer the VOT, the stronger the aspiration.
#3. Vd plosives, exemplified by {ga.} [g]. They have negative VOTs, meaning the vocal cords start
vibrating before the stop is released. With a fully voiced stop,
the VOT coincides with the onset of the stop;
with a partially voiced stop, such as English [b, d, g]
in initial position, voicing begins sometime during
the closure (occlusion) of the consonant.
Because neither aspiration nor voicing is absolute,
with intermediate degrees of both, the relative terms
fortis and lenis are often used
to describe a binary opposition between a series
of consonants with higher (more positive) VOT,
defined as fortis, and a second series with lower
(more negative) VOT, defined as lenis.
Of course, being relative, what fortis and lenis
mean in one language will not in general correspond
to what they mean in another.
Voicing contrast applies to all types of consonants,
but aspiration is generally only a feature of stops and affricates.
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End of TIL file.