tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 16 10:26:43 1996
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Re: chIagu
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>Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 17:21:07 -0700
>From: "Dr. Maciej St. Zieba" <[email protected]>
>"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've sort of lost track of what we were arguing over by now. I think it's
looking more like a matter of definitions and perspective. I'm looking
more at how Klingon perceives itself (and how it is perceived by Klingons),
and you're looking more at how it winds up getting pronounced. To use an
example you (I think) used, in French, the word "petit" is often pronounced
"pti", with no vowel between the p and the t. Now, do French speakers
consider that vowel to be truly absent, or simply not pronounced due to
quick speech? I suspect the latter. Ask a Frenchman how many syllables
"petit" has, you'll probably be told 2. When they need to emphasize, in
writing, that this colloquial dropping of the vowel is indicated, they'd
write "p'tit", flagging the word as nonstandard with the apostrophe. But
note that even in a transcribed speech, unless there was some reason for
representing the speaker's speech-patterns, the word would still be
written "petit" with an e. (The same could be said about the discussion
over whether or not the e in tera'ngan drops out).
So does Sanskrit have a glottal stop? Not as a phoneme. It allows, on
occasion, two vowels to occur consecutively with no intervening vowel.
What your mouth happens to decide to do in that case is pretty much
extra-linguistic. Maybe you'll pronounce it with a glide. Maybe you'll
introduce an epenthetic semivowel (though in that case Sanskrit at least
probably would have done so for you already). Maybe you'll stop your voice
briefly and maybe even hold your breath WITHOUT closing your glottis or
anything else (it's possible.) Hawai'ian has vowels that abut (meaning to
follow one another consecutively with no intervening material) with no
glottal stop between (since glottal stop is phonemic in Hawai'ian, and
introducing one would change the meaning).
Klingon, on the other hand, DOES grant phoneme status to the glottal stop
(viz. minimal pairs like tI and tI'). From what we've seen of the
language, it seems that it strongly discourages (or just disallows) the
following of one vowel by another eithout an intervening consonant of some
kind, counting the glottal stop as a consonant (See Okrand's comment on
- -oy, that it is suspected that an epenthetic ' is introduced to prevent
vowels from touching. This implies that Klingon doesn't let this happen.
It does, admittedly, appear significant that it was ' that was chosen as
being the epenthetic consonant. This may or may not be meaningful. After
all, if an epenthetic consonant was to be added, it had to be SOMEbody).
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? It has a few features which make it a little unusual? So
does gh. If you'd rather not call it a consonant, then go back to what I
was saying before with Sami: make up your own words for the things and call
it that. It still behaves the same.
~mark
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