LINGUIST List 10.1677

Thu Nov 4 1999

Qs: Nasal Release, Hebrew/Phonology, Syllables

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Jonathan Centner, Nasal release in Russian
2. Melissa Barkat, Hebrew phonological/phonetic description references
3. Anatol Stefanowitsch, Syllables: English/French/Japanese/Spanish

Listmembers

I have been listening to spoken and recorded Russian for some time and
I noticed a pattern in some words like the word for _teacher_.

Female speakers seem to uniformly pronounce the _chya_ regardless of
whether the the word is masculine or feminine, males will pronounce it
as the females do for the masculine form but will optionally release
the _chya_ nasally if it is feminine. Females seem never to do this.

Have others noted this?

Is there a sound inventory of Russian which mentions such differences among
male and female speakers?

I heard such a sound which happens willy-nilly among male and female
speakers of a variety of English spoken on Long Island. Where I am
now. The word _ordinary_ is where it is most likely to occur. I
thought here on Long Island it might be a performance constraint (damp
air, lots of allergens), but the Russian seems not the case.

Thanks for any responses, I'll post a summary.


Jonathan Centner

I'm looking for recent references dealing with phonological / phonetic
desciptions of modern Hebrew and comparative descriptions of semitic
languages Does anyone have any useful idea ?

Many thanks

Please reply directely to the e-mail adress below.

___________________________________

Melissa BARKAT
Laboratoire de Dynamique Du Langage UMR 5596
Institut des Sciences de l'Homme
14, Avenue Berthelot
69363 Lyon Cedex 07 (France)
Tel : 04 72 72 64 77
Fax : 04 72 72 65 90
e-mail : Melissa.Barkatish-lyon.cnrs.fr
http://www.ddl.mrash.fr

Dear colleagues,

	I am looking for information on how many different syllables there
are in English, French, Japanese, and Spanish respectively. I would also
be interested in type and token frequencies. If you know of any
references, please let me know. As always, I will post a summary of the
responses.

Best regards,

Anatol Stefanowitsch
Rice University, Dept. of Linguistics