tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 13 20:02:22 1996
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Re: Phonology & surroundings
- From: "Dr. Maciej St. Zieba" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Phonology & surroundings
- Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 23:01:48 EDT
"William H. Martin" <[email protected]> wrote:
>According to Consulat General de Pologne:
>> Yesterday I could't fall asleep as I was thinking all the time about Klingon
>> phonology. And I came out to a conclusion, that there is something more
>> special to {-'} than what I have written before.
>>
>> TKD p. 16: "Occasionally the echo is quite audible, with a guttural sound
>> like {gh} preceeding the echoed vowel. Fo example {yIlI'} "transmit it!"
>> ���������
>> can sound more like {yIlI'ghI}. This extra-heavy echo is heard most
>> often when the speaker is particularly excited or angry."
>
>When I read this sort of thing in TKD, I imagine Okrand, having
>coached the actors and coached the actors and COACHED the
>actors, then looking at the film clip of a scene where an actor
>did something he didn't tell them to do, wincing, covering his
>eyes, moving his hand to his chin, staring at the ceiling and
>then muttering, "How can I explain THIS one? I mean, I made up
>{HISlaH} to cover the actor who couldn't say {HIja'}. I made up
>{rIntaH} to explain why Valkris, who was filmed speaking
>English, kept moving her lips when she had already had enough
>syllables to speak her line. How can I explain this weird sound
>the actor just made when I told him to use a glottal stop?" He
>then takes another note for his unpublished dictionary.
>
I am not interested in any kind of those extra-lingusitic explanations,
I'm afraid. I've already expressed my point of view that I do not
find Star Trek in any important way related to tlhIngan Hol (except
perhaps in Copyright ;-] ). I am interested in tlhIngan Hol internally,
I accept TKD as the basic description of the language, Marc Okrand
(reH yInjaj! 'ej reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!)
on the cassettes as the only recorded native speaker of tlhIngan Hol
and that's all. I do not watch ST and I don't even know what you are
talking about. Coaching? Which page or rule of TKD are you talking
about?
}:-{))
>> Wow! Don't you realise that this would be the only case of a voiceless
>> stop that when voiced changes also the place of articulation from
>> glottal into guttural?
>
>Or an actor who doesn't have a clue how to say what he has been
>told to say...
tlhIngan Hol's phonology is weird enough not to demand any extra-linguistic
factor (some Terran trying to impersonate a Klingon on a TV show): Why not
want to accept it might be weirdier even than you have dreamed of?
>> I always supposed there is something special about {'}. Duj tIvoqtaH!
>>
>>
>> Of course this "new" {gh} is only like the old {gh} we already know.
>> I would prefer to write this new sound as {'gh}.
>
>I'd actually prefer to not write it at all, since it is just a
>description of a common mispronunciation, and not an alternate
>spelling of the word.
How do you know that this is a description of a *common mispronounciation*?
���
and not an alternative pronounciation? Does TKD mention it in any place?
Or maybe it has been revealed afterwards by Marc Okrand (reH yInjaj! 'ej
reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!) in some volume of HolQeD as such? I doubt it.
On the contrary: It's same serious as telling that {b} and {D} have
two (or even three with {b}) ways of being pronounced by different
speakers of Klingon. It's NOT written: "Some Klingons mispronounce this
���
sound [scil. {b}] as if it were {m} and {b} articulated almost
simultanoeusly" (TKD p. 13). Nor is it written: "Occasionally, the echo
is falsely quite audible ... For example, {yIlI'} "transmit" can be mispro-
������� �������
nounced more like {yIlI'ghI}." On the contrary, Marc Okrand (reH yInjaj! 'ej
�������
reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!) gives even a description of situations,
when it happens.
************
A more general remark to this point will be in my next posting.
************
>Note that {'gh} is not a consonant
>cluster within a syllable in any word in the word list, nor is
>it a syllable unto itself.
You don't understand me at all. I am not writing of any CLUSTER. As for
a linguist it's a cardinal mistake to mix letters with sounds. {'gh}
in my opinion is no more a cluster than English {sh} is.
>> And so I come to a conclusion (a hypothesis) that maybe {rgh} is in fact
>> not a cluster of {r} + {gh} but a cluster of {r} + {'gh} i.e. voiced {-'}.
>
>Except, of course, that {rgh} appears at the end of a lot of
>syllables in the word list and {r'gh} doesn't appear anywhere
>at all...
Except of course that in my hypothesis {rgh} = {r'gh} if you have read me
with enough attention. Question of notation.
>> (The second hypothesis I take into consideration is that {rgh} is a phoneme
>> of its own and not a cluster at all).
>
>While that may be an interesting thought, the truth is that if
>you stack {r} next to {gh} at a syllable boundary where {r}
>ends one syllable and {gh} begins the next, it sounds exactly
>like {rgh} at the end of a syllable. So, if you have one
>phoneme which sounds exactly like a sequence of two existing
>phonemes, one usually refers to it as a compound of those two
>phonemes, qar'a'? I don't know any other phonemes in Klingon
>which sound exactly like a sequence of two other phonemes
>existing in the language. Phonemes are supposed to be
>elemental, not compound.
Not necessarily. First I do not agree (based on my ear) that
they sound exactly the same. At a syllable boundary there is a "slight
-slight-slightest" puse between the two which makes you able
to distinguish that there are two syllables. Second, from my own language
(Polish, if you don't remember} I have a pair of examples of just
the contrary:
We have in Polish a very complicated system of affricates:
1 2 3 4 5
c c' cz trz dsz - voiceless
dz dz' dz. drz dz. - voiced
(a dot after "z" is not a punctuation sign, but it should stay on the
top of "z" as a diacritical mark, to make it sound a bit like French
"j", which in fact lies somewhere betweeen our column 2 and 3).
1-dental, 2-palatal, 3-apico-alveolar, 4-alveo-cerebral, 5 cluster:
dental stop + apico-alveolar sibilant.
The last three in each line are pronounced very similarly. So much that
in uneducated strata of Polish population (especially in the jargon
of Polish Jews) they were mixed and all three pronounced as the middle
one (or even as the second one, especially in mountain rural areas,
by the children and ... foreigners). That is a subject of funny puns.
In fact the 4th one historically is developped from a cluster: t+r'
(palatalised) > t+(rsh) (as in Czech now, where {rsh} written "r" with
a "v" above - is a phoneme) > t+(zh) > what it is now. Some of the Polish
linguists still argue whether they have already become one phoneme or not.
For me personally it is evident that yes.
They appear in the context where there is no doubt they do not originate
from a composition of two syllables (just like Klingon final {-rgh}.
If carefully pronounced it differs from the 3rd one in the place of
articulation and length (sounds a bit like geminated), otherwise only the
gemination (lenghthening) occurs. When followed by another consonant
(e.g. "drzwi" where "w" is English "v") it is difficult even to
maintain the gemination.
On the contrary the fith one is evidently a cluster occuring on the border
prefix-root. The two sounds should be pronounced separately.
With the "slight-slight-slightest" pause mentioned above.
What more, as you see the spelling of the voiced 3rd and 5th is identical.
The third and fourth are phonemes, the fifth is a cluster.
All of them are compound, although the 5th one is the "most compound".
This of course doesn't prove anything for Klingon, but it proves that
such things happen in languages, so a hypothesis for Klingon as well
cannot be rejested a priori, must be judged a posteriori.
Only Marc Okrand (reH yInjaj! 'ej reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!) can
resolve our dispute. You can't convince me, I probably can't convince you.
>charghwI'
>--
>reH lugh charghwI' net Sov.
rut lughbe' charghwI'.
Qapla'
macheq
macheq noychoH jembatoQ
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