Re: THEORY: h huffnpuffery (was: RE: varia)

On Mon, 7 Feb 2000, BP Jonsson wrote:

> At 13:31 -0700 6.2.2000, Ed Heil wrote:
> >
> >Yes, voiceless lateral approximants are phonemes in some languages; I
> >can't remember which ones but Ladgefoed mentions some; I think Tibetan
> >is one of them, so maybe Boudewijn can confirm this for us.
>
> Those Tibetan "lh"s I've heard didn't differ appreciably from the Icelandic
> sound, and it is a fact that when I used voiceless lateral approximants in
> Icelandic words like "hleypa" Icelanders told me I was pronouncing the
> sound too weak.  According to them it "came out as /h/".  I think that sums
> up pretty well why phonemic voiceless laterals tend to be fricative.  BTW
> the sound written "hr" in Tibetan is actually a voiceless retroflex
> sibilant, so /hl/ being fricative makes sense systemically.
>
I was kind of hoping you would answer before me, not only
because you're far more knowledgeable than I am, but also
because my study is in a mess (again!). We'll be moving
house in two weeks...

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://www.valdyas.org