Czech "h" sound

[Loren A. Billings]

I'd like to follow up on John Dunn's impressive response. I repeat the first
part of his posting:

On 2003/09/10 23:10, "John Dunn" <J.Dunn at SLAVONIC.ARTS.GLA.AC.UK> wrote:

> A quick look at various reference works produced some surprising
> variations, but the clearest explanation I have been able to find is
> in Hanna Dalewska-Gren, Jezyki slowanskie, PWN, W-wa, 1997, Section
> 3.4.4, p.103, according to which the 'h' sound is laryngeal in Czech

Indeed, I also did some work in an unpublished term paper during grad school
which determined that Cz _h_ is a voiced laryngeal fricative. (Another
colleague pointed out that the voicing is often slight, even breathy.) As it
so happens, I've been re-reading the following (which does not talk
specifically about Cz), explaining why voiced _h_ is an unusual thing:

"[...] Voicing of [h] may appear impossible, since the organ responsible for
the friction of [h], the vocal folds, is also the organ responsible for
voice: it would seem out of the question to have one and the same instrument
execute two apparently incompatible actions simultaneously. Surprising
though it may seem, we can indeed perform this feat, given a bit of vocal
fold gymnastics: the vocal folds must be placed close together at one end
whilst held a little further apart at the other end. The closed end
vibrates, while at the more open end there is air friction [...]"
Roca & Johnson, 1999, _A course in phonology_ (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 17-18

R&J go on to confirm that intervocalic _h_ is voiced in English (R&J give
_ahead_ and Dunn gives _behave_). By the way, the IPA transcription for
voiced _h_ involved bending the vertical part of a lower-case "h" to the
right (often called "hooktop H"). Alas, I cannot show this on e-mail.

My other observation has to do with the place of articulation of English /h/
(which, I agree, is certainly not pharyngeal). Prior to a high, front vowel
(or [j]) _h_ is realized as a palatal fricative (transcribed in IPA as [c]
with a leftward-trailing tail underneath). Some accents have furthermore
simplified /hj/ to just [j]. I recall having had a conversation with the
linguist Bill Bright; he was talking about "[j]uman" languages and I wasn't
sure he meant _human_ or _Yuman_! This simplification is the front variant
of /hw/ becoming [w] in almost every accent of English (except that of
Horace Lunt, as he has pointed out in two talks I've heard him deliver).

--
Loren A. Billings, Ph.D.
Associate professor of linguistics
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Chi Nan University
Puli, Nantou, Taiwan 545 Republic of China

E-mail: billings at ncnu.edu.tw

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