tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 16 14:31:42 1996
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glottal stops, consonants, vowels, and canon
- From: Mark Mandel <[email protected]>
- Subject: glottal stops, consonants, vowels, and canon
- Date: Thu, 16 May 1996 17:28:36 -0500
In the ongoing dispute about glottal stops, ~mark replies to macheq:
>>>>>
You could say "without an intervening consonant or '", but that seems
needlessly complicated. ' seems to pass the duck test for being a
consonant. It walks like one, talks like one, quacks like one... why not call
it one?
<<<<<
What's more, Marc Okrand TELLS us it's a consonant. TKD Chapter 1,
"The Sounds of Klingon": Section 1.1, "Consonants"; p. 16, <'>.
And, while we're at it, w and y are also in Section 1.1. The next section,
"Vowels", begins: "There are five vowels in Klingon" and then lists them
with their pronunciations: a e I o u. The following paragraph begins,
"Note that when a vowel is followed by <w> or <y>...". It does NOT say
that w and y are vowels. It does not say that aw, ay, etc., are vowels.
When we as linguists try to amplify or clarify the description of Klingon
phonology, we can call w and y glides, and we can call aw, ay, etc.,
diphthongs, TO THE EXTENT THAT THESE NAMES HELP US DESCRIBE
THE LANGUAGE ACCURATELY. But in doing so we cannot supersede
the canonical descriptions. If macheq, marqem, or ~mark decides that he
can usefully describe Klingon phonology by treating w and y one way
and the other non-vowels another way, and he redefines "consonant" to
mean "any Klingon phoneme except a e I o u w y",* he has to keep in
mind that this redefined "consonant" can't be used with any canonical
statement about consonants, because Okrand is talking about one set of
phonemes and this m-linguist is talking about another.
marqem, tlhIngan veQbeq la'Hom -- Heghbej ghIHmoHwI'pu'!
Subcommander Markemm,
Klingon Sanitation Corps -- Death to Litterbugs!
Mark A. Mandel : [email protected]
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, MA 02160, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com/
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