Re: Nasal/liquid verbs
Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Tue, 03 Dec 1996 21:21:27 -0500
At 06:18 PM 12/3/96 -0600, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>At 4:04 PM -0600 12/3/96, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>>Some verbs roll off your tongue, others drip down your nose, eh? I do find
>>this grammatical category somewhat gross...
>
>Well, of course, YOU'RE the one who's defining what they do. But of course
>when you've got a stopped-up nose, then nasals turn into labials and
>dentals, hopping over the lips or tripping over the teeth: "My Nose"
>becomes "By Doze."
>
>Of course, this whole business of phonological description of consonants
>can't very well avoid the part of the mouth responsible for the distinctive
>category of sound: liquids, nasals, gutturals, dentals, labials,
>labio-velars, sibilants, sonants, fricatives--wonderful terms, every one of
>'em!
I'm trying to imagine Peter addressing the crowds in Jerusalem in Greek with
a stuffed-up nose...
I once had a class in descriptive phonetics where we spent two thirds of the
time figuring out how to pronounce the unpronouncable, and one third of the
time notating it. It was lots of fun!
Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie
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