LINGUIST List 5.1031

Fri 23 Sep 1994

Disc: New sound

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Dan Everett, New sound maybe not so new

It seems to me that one of the most important contributions that Linguist
can play in the linguistic community is rapid checking of claims or
answers to rather esoteric questions. This is why I posted my information
on the sound [tp~] in Wari'. I certainly had never heard of anything like
it. But now it seems that there are similar sounds in the Caucasian
languages. The main difference between Wari' 's sound and the sounds
reported below just seems to be that the labial portion of the sound in
Wari' always involves obvious vibration/trilling. Nevertheless, I do
appreciate these responses and pass them along.

First,

Bernard Comrie writes the following:

 From: Bernard Comrie
 To: deverpogo.isp.pitt.edu
 Date: 20 Sep 94
 Subject: tp~

 Dan: I saw your note on the LINGUIST list concerning a new
 sound in Wari'. It rang a bell concerning something in some
 of the NW Caucasian languages. The following is my
 translation of the relevant part of Hans Vogt's Dictionnaire
 de la langue oubykh, Oslo, 1963, p.16; the last sentence is
 the crucial one. The reference to Dumezil is to his article
 in Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique de Paris 50
 (1954). Vogt is discussing the phonetic realization of
 labialization with different classes of consonants:

 "In the third case, that of the labialized dental
 occlusives, we have complete labial closure effected at the
 same time as the supradental closure. In the labial closure
 the lower lip rests against the inner edge of the upper lip,
 raising it slightly, in the dental closure, the tip of the
 tongue seems to rest against the upper incisors. The two
 releases, labial and dental, seem simultaneous, the air
 escaping through a rather narrow orifice, narrower than in
 the case of the labialized posteriors [i.e. velars and
 pharyngals--BC], giving the stops in question an [u<umlaut>]
 quality. The labial release may be accompanied, in an
 emphatic pronunciation, by lip vibration, a fact noted by
 Mr. Dumezil."

 In Ubykh, [tp~] seems thus to be a variant pronunciation,
 but a perfectly acceptable one. I leave it to you to judge
 how comparable it is to the Wari' case. Best--Bernard.

Paul Roser referred me to the following sources, both of which
further document [tp~]-like sounds in Caucasian languages:

 On Tue, 20 Sep 1994, Paul Kenneth Roser wrote:

 > J.C. Catford (1972) "Labialization in Caucasian Languages with
 > special reference to Abkhaz" in Proceedings of the 7th International
 > Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Rigault & Charbonneau (eds)
 > Hague-Paris:Mouton. pp.679-682
 > John Colarusso (1988) The Northwest Caucasian Languages: A
 > Phonological Survey. Garland Pub.:NY (pp. 152-153, 163, 193)