LINGUIST List 15.2011

Wed Jul 7 2004

Qs: Lateral Fricatives; Conditional Concessives

Editor for this issue: Naomi Fox <foxlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Aaron Lee, Lateral Fricatives
2. Hiroaki Tanaka, Conditional concessives

I am doing research on lateral fricatives and affricates from both a
phonetic and phonological standpoint. I am investigating both what
these sounds are derived from (historically) and what these sounds
become. The goal is to get a better understanding of their
phonetic/phonological features.

Unfortunately, lateral fricatives and affricates are not one of the
world's most common sounds. I am looking for as many languages as I
can find with lateral fricative(s)/affricate(s).

The more languages I can retrieve the better. I am recording these
languages in a database to make an aerial map of where lateral
fricatives are distributed in the world. Note that I am *not* looking
for voiceless lateral approximants.

Some languages and language families that I have collected: Welsh,
Athabascan family, Muskogean family, Cherokee, Chadic family, Nguni
family, Toda, Black Miao, Putian-hua, Huangshan-hua, Yue/Cantonese
family...

I am particularly short on languages from the Indo-European family,
the Austronesian family and also Central and South America.

Thanks,
Aaron Lee 

Dear all,
 Help me investigate my project, ''concessive conditionals''.

(1)''If'' you wait here, the bus won't pick you up. But if you 
wait at that bus stop over there, it will.

(2)''What do you want from me?'' ''I want you to do it(i.e. make 
love) to me.'' ''No. It is impossible. If your father found out, 
he would kill me.'' ''And ''if'' you leave here, he will kill you. 
You haven't got much choice, have you?''

(i)To native speakers of English: do you think that these two 
ifs quoted by '' '' are read as concessive?

(ii)To non-native speakers of English: how do you translate 
the quoted two ifs (the first in (1) and the second in (2)) 
into your own languge? Do you use a word or phrase equivalent 
to English ''even if(even though)''?

Thanks a lot in advance. I will post a summary.

Best,

Hiroaki Tanaka
Professor, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan