LINGUIST List 5.242

Wed 02 Mar 1994

Misc: Lateral fricatives, Ergative verbs, IPA policy

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1. Jacques Guy, Re: 5.220 Sum: Lateral fricatives
2. bert peeters, Ergative verbs and Chomskyan grammar
3. , IPA policy

Message 1: Re: 5.220 Sum: Lateral fricatives

> From: MARC PICARD <PICARDVax2.Concordia.CA>
> Subject: Lateral fricatives summary
>
> A couple of weeks ago I asked whether lateral fricatives were
> considered to be [+strident] or [-strident].
> There were a couple of other references to Peter Ladefoged's
> A COURSE IN PHONETICS but since there were important differences between
> the three editions, I decided to ask him personally, and he replied:
> My problem with a direct answer is that I do not use the feature Strident.
> I prefer Sibilant, which is nearly the same, but is defined as the
> property of fricatives that have energy made by a jet of air striking
> an obstacle.

The Austronesian language spoken in Shark Bay, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu,
has the following fricative phonemes:

/f/ an unvoiced, rounded, labiodental
 (one allophone: /<beta>/ a voiced bilabial)
/<theta>/ an unvoiced interdental
/s1/ an unvoiced, grooved, apico-alveolar
/s2/ an unvoiced, grooved, lamino-alveolar (the apex is held
 behind the lower teeth)

This system cannot be accounted for within the existing set of
binary features. It would seem to me, then, that the problem
of lateral fricatives is a problem only due to the inadequacy
of the binary-feature model.

A recent LINGUIST summary contains the claim that categories in Chomskyan-
style linguistics are by definition clear-cut and that no vagueness or
fuzziness is acknowledged. Now, ergative verbs have never been identified,
as far as I know, with the help of just one clear-cut criterion. Most
people seem to argue that there are several sufficient but not necessary
conditions for ergativity. Legendre, for instance, posits about 8 or 9
such criteria and proclaims that once 1 criterion is met the verb is
ergative. Others (Ruwet for instance) do not go that far, but still
propose 2 or 3 criteria. Isn't it the case then, that ergative verbs are a
fuzzy category in generative grammar, and that a verb can be more or less
fuzzy according to the number of criteria for ergativity that apply to it?
Just curious.
Bert Peeters

John Koontz (koontzalpha.bldr.nist.gov) asks:

> Why would it be a policy mistake to include in a
> phon<emphasis on>etic<empahsis off> transcription system

(i.e.) the IPA

> a symbol for
> transcribing a phone that is never a phon<emphasis on>eme<emphasis off>?

The reason is that IPA policy is to reserve letters of the alphabet for
those sounds which are phonemic in some language, in the hope that it
will then only be necessary to use diacritics for subphonemic detail.

--- John Coleman