Typology and the phonetics of laryngeals

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen" <jer at cphling.dk>
To: <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 4:42 PM
Subject: Typology and the phonetics of laryngeals


> On Wed, 4 Oct 2000, Herb Stahlke wrote:

>> [...] but the resulting fricative series /s, x', x, x^w/ is, as a fricative
>> series, bizarre.  I looked through Hockett's Manual of Phonology and
>> couldn't find anything even close.  Why no labial?

> If you call /H1/ a simple /h/ which it must have been, at least some (or
> most? or all?) of the time, and take the voicing of /H3/ as reason to call
> it /gh/ (gamma, voiced velar spirant), but keep /s/ and /x/, you get VERY
> close to Dutch.

> Jens E. Rasmussen

[Ed Selleslagh]

I don't want to be facetious, but you should mention that you refer to the
classic and historic pronunciation of Dutch, still in use in the Brabant
(mostly acheless though) and Limburg (i.e. Frankish) dialect areas in Flanders
and southern Netherlands, as well as in official Flemish Dutch on TV etc.
Within this context, you are note close to, but right ON the mark.

Matters are more complicated because in the provinces of the Netherlands north
of the great rivers (Schelde, Maas, Rhine), including Amsterdam, pronunciation
has shifted considerably: /s/ has become slightly 'chuintante', /h/ is intact,
and /gh/ has become DEVOICED in most positions and a lot more guttural as is
the new /x/ (originally ach-laut) which is often hard to distinguish from the
new /gh/. This evolution is fairly recent (much less than a century), at least
in 'official' speech. [Devoicing is also frequent in other consonants, and /r/
has become relatively close to the American one. On the other hand, voiceless
consonants are voiced in certain positions: 'universiteit' is pronounced
/uniferzite at t/; the rules are reminescent of High German].

Apart from that, I suppose you only meant to mention pronunciation facts, not
origin since e.g. many (most) initial /h/ (like in all Germanic) stem from /k/,
not H1.

Ed.