tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 14 08:38:36 1996
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Re: chIagu
- From: "Doy'wI'" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: chIagu
- Date: Tue, 14 May 96 08:54:57 EST
according to Mark Shoulson:
>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.
according to Dr. Maciej St. Zieba:
>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.
One the one hand, you aren't convinced by a valid example of Sanskrit
vowel-hiatus. On the other hand, you agree that Sanskrit indeed does
accept hiatus in some cases. I no longer follow your argument.
>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.
A hiatus is not the same thing as a stop. When I pronounce the word
"react", I certainly do not close my "vocal organs" between the two
syllables.
>The term "abutment" is void of connotation, explains nothing.
The explanation is explicit in the rest of the definition: "...with no
intervening consonant or semivowel." A vowel hiatus does not include
a glottal stop, or any stop (or affricate or glide or...).
>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).
How would you resolve a pronunciation issue of this sort? You would
listen to "accepted" speakers of the language and compare the way they
speak with the way they say they should speak. You can do the same
thing here. Listen to the descriptions given by the only fluent
speakers of Klingon in the known universe. By default, they define
correct pronunciation. There are no "real" Klingons to ask.
>Let's not make the war for the smallest of all the letters.
The apostrophe may be physically the smallest letter, but it is not a
minor letter. It is a full-fledged consonant, with all the duties and
privileges that go along with that status. It is as much a part of
the Klingon alphabet as are the letters q and p.