Topical question

[A. Maberry]

On Mon, 8 Oct 2001 Mark_Mandel at dragonsys.com wrote:
>
> What does the t-underdot represent? I had gotten the idea somewhere that
> the initial stop was a "strong" (velarized) Arabic t.
>

There are 2 "t" sounds in Arabic. Ta' which is almost like the English t
and [dot below]Ta' which is "the 'emphatic' velarized correlative" of the
former. (Ziadeh and Winder, Introduction to modern Arabic, 1957). I don't
think I would characterize it as an initial stop.
BTW the same situation holds with s and [dot below]s.

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu