LINGUIST List 7.1545

Sat Nov 2 1996

Qs: South-East-Asian lang's, Corpus development, Clicks

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. bartos, South-East-Asian lang's -- query
2. Adrian Clynes, query: corpus development
3. Miguel Carrasquer Vidal, Clicks

Dear Listers,

I need some info on a handful of South-East-Asian lang's, for inclusion
in an encyclopedia of languages.
The data I need is:

- the name(s) of the language as used by its speakers, with gloss if
it has any other meaning than the reference to the language itself
- the name(s) of the people as they use it in refernce to themselves
- standard literature reference on these languages, incl. reference
grammars, introductory descriptions, coursebooks, important books or
papers on the grammar/phonology/history of the language (provided
they are accessible for a relatively wide public), in English, German,
French, or Russian

The languages in question are:

Khmer
Mon
Palaungic
Karen
Burmese

Plus a side-issue: what is the current stand on the relatedness of
Vietnamese to the Mon-Khmer languages?

Please reply to me directly. Thank you, in advance.

Huba Bartos
Research Institute for Linguistics
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
(bartosnytud.hu)

Some colleagues would like to compile a corpus of written (and
ultimately, spoken) English used in Brunei. We will begin with a
corpus of learner English. We would be _very_ grateful if people
could send information on one or more of the following topics:

1) concordancing software - Mac or Windows based: your experiences
with this/preferences.
2) tagging software - ditto. including software which can cope with
interlanguage/learner english data.
3) Other useful software
4) Hardware: what do we need? 
5) Useful, up-to-date references in the literature on corpus design
6) Any other sources for further, up-to-date, information we should
try

Please send replies to me. I will post a summary of replies in due
course. With thanks,

Adrian Clynes
aclynesubd.edu.bn
Dept of English & Applied Linguistics			
Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Brunei					
					

Dear Linguists,

	The latest revision of the IPA charts lists the following
click sounds:

bilabial (.) [bull's eye]
dental |
(Post)alveolar !
Palatoalveolar =|=
Alveolar lateral ||

Not having been exposed directly to languages with clicks in them, 
I'm still not too sure about the difference between ! and =|=.
My guess would be that ! is apical (post)alveolar, and =|= laminal
(pre)palatal, but if anyone knows the full story, beyond the
brief discussions in Pullum & Ladusaw's "Phonetic Symbol Guide",
I'd be happy to hear.

My main enquiry is the following. In the European languages, clicks
are used non-phonemically, as "affective" sounds. I guess this is
also the case in non-European non-click languages. There is one click
I'm familiar with in that context, "clacking with the tongue", for
want of a better term, that doesn't seem to fit in the above IPA
classification. It might be called a click affricate, or cluster,
because it starts with the !-click (or the ||-click?), but an
important acoustic effect ensues when the tongue "flaps" against the
lower teeth or jaw, the place where the tongue rests. Three
questions:

1. Is this analysis correct?
2. If so, is this "clu[ck]ster" used phonemically anywhere?
3. How would one call such an articulation? Sub-lamino-sub-dental?
 sub-lamino-sub-alveolar flap?


Regards,

- -----------------------------------
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
Amsterdam
mcvpi.net
- -----------------------------------