tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 13 17:15:56 1996
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Re: chIagu
- From: "Dr. Maciej St. Zieba" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: chIagu
- Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 20:15:23 EDT
"Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>Sanskrit doesn't accept hiatus and avoids it either through elision of one
>>of the vowels, or combining two similar vowels into one long vowel, or
>>through combinning them into a diphtong, or into a cluster [semi-vowel +
>>vowel], or ... (enough).
>>Contrary to what you have written to Thiago it's just the contrary with
>>Klingon. It accepts hiatus and always marks it with a special letter,
>>namely {'}.
>
>>You should have rather said: "Klingon doesn't accept smooth passage
>>from one vowel to another and always demands a hiatus, i.e. a glottal stop."
>
>>Let me quote from a dictionary: "Hiatus: a slight pause between two vowels
>>that come together in successive syllables or words, such as
>>between the e's in preeminent (<Latin: hiatus, gap)".
>>Maybe you understand something else by this, but that's what I
>>have learned about it - hiatus is a glottal stop.
>
>>Qapla'
>
>
>You made a few errors here.
>
>First of all, Sanskrit DOES accept vowel-hiatus, though only between
>words. It's rare to be sure, but it happens (the exammple I remember from
>my Sanskrit class: svarge + indra -> svarga indra; the "i" component of "e"
>drops out. There are other instances as well). (Klingon has no interword
>vowel-hiatus because all its words start with consonants, and very few end
>with vowels).
>
>The other is more a misunderstanding. The term "vowel hiatus" as I used it
>(and indeed as my Sanskrit text uses it) is meant to mean "the abutment of
>two vowels next to each other with no intervening consonant or semivowel."
>The Klingon ' is a consonant, and thus "chI'a" would not be an instance of
>hiatus but rather simply two vowels separated by a consonant.
>
>~mark
Your exaple doesn't convince me. Sanskrit indeed in some cases like the one
described by you (and with accuracy told as rare) "resigns" and accepts
hiatus and in 90% avoids it by introducing semivowels, vowel-contraction (or
whatever you call it in English, when two vowells form one longer) or elision
in betwenn. But what happens here? a slight pause is introduced between the two
vowels which results in a glottal closing of vocal organs, i.e. a stop.
The term "abutment" is void of connotation, explains nothing.
I see that you cannot convince me so far, neither can I convince you.
If you have no other arguments let's give up here and not make other
members of the tlhIngan-Hol list get bored. I know that the minutest
questions of phonology can raise the highest emotions (I remember it from
my phonetics classes, as a student, when we were able to discuss for
hours about the pronounciation of the palatalised "k" in Polish
(*k* before an *i* followed by another vowel).
Let's not make the war for the smallest of all the letters.
macheq noychoH jembatoQ
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