LINGUIST List 9.1083

Thu Jul 30 1998

Qs: Textbooks, Adjectival noun-form, Tap and trill

Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Wissenschaftliche [** iso-8859-1 charset **] Hilfskr\228fte/Wode, Introducory Textbooks Phonetics/Phonology
2. Waruno Mahdi, reference on "adjectival" noun-form
3. Francisco Dubert [** iso-8859-1 charset **] Garc\237a, tap and trill

Hello!

In the English Department of Kiel University we have been using Peter
Ladefoged's book 'A Course in Phonetics' in nearly all our introductory
courses to phonetics and phonology so far. However, apart from becoming a
little old, the drawback of this book is that it focuses mainly on
practical work.

Now, what we need is a good introductory textbook to phonetics and
phonology which finds a balance between theory and practical work and which
should not be older than, say, four years (if possible). Apart from all
that, it would be good if it also included a chapter or so about speech
perception.

Does anyone know about such a book and where we can get it ?!? I would be
extremely grateful for your help.

Comments about the books would also help a great deal, e.g. what is your
personal experience whith the book you propose etc...

I will compile a list of the book titles I received and post it.


Thank you in advance,
Sebastian Dammann

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously...!"
- N. Chomsky

Could somebody help me with a bibliographic reference?

I'm just doing final editing on a paper discussing a.o. the
non-possessive attributive use of nouns in Indonesian Malay,
and have the following passage in the introduction:

 "... the phenomenon of a noun directly serving as qualitative attribute
 (e.g. English stone in stone house) had occasionally been the cause of
 some theoretical embarassment, as a result of which analogies with
 certain de-noun adjectives were drawn (e.g. with that in wooden house),
 which suggested a noun-adjective derivational paradigm involving
 affixless conversion (stone-stone by analogy to wood-wooden)."

I'm looking for the publication in which this analogy was drawn for the
first time. References to publications expressing a contrary opinion
would also be welcome.

Please write directly to me, I'll be sure to submit a summary.
Thanks in advance,

Regards to all, Waruno

- ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Waruno Mahdi tel: +49 30 8413-5404
Faradayweg 4-6 fax: +49 30 8413-3155
14195 Berlin email: mahdifhi-berlin.mpg.de
Germany WWW: http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/~wm/
- ---------------------------------------------------------------------

As in Spanish and in some dialects of Portuguese, in Galician there exists a
contrast between an alveolar tap stop and an alveolar trill: the tap in
*caro* 'expensive' vs. the trill in *carro* 'car'.

Alveolar taps and trills are [+consonant], [+sonorant], [-lateral], [-nasal]
and (I think) [-continous]. But, what is the feature that distinguishes
alveolar tap and trill in generative phonology?

Some phonologist think that the trill is a [+tense] segment, and the tap is
a [-tense] segment.

But this description have two problems:

a) It seems to me that the feature [tense] has been abandoned in current
generative phonology.

b) An alveolar tap is produced by moving the tongue rapidly. It is like a
lash; and an alveolar trill is produced by allowing the tongue vibrate with
the airflow. In a tap, the speaker "moves the tongue"; in a trill, the
airflow "moves the tongue". So, it would be possible to think that the tap
is [+tense] and the trill is [-tense].

My question is:

How can I distinguish between the tap and the trill with the "generative
ensamble of features"? 

I think that a tap is [+consonant, +sonorant, -continuous], but, what about
the trill?

Thank you in advance

Francisco Dubert