spelling that exclamation of disgust

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:57 PM -0500 12/29/03, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
>
>"ee-yoo" -- IPA [i(j)u] -- is not a diphthong, but a sequence of two
>vowels, with a glide in between that may be more or less prominent.

Exactly.  That's a bit clearer than my version last night, which
stressed the fact that it's bisyllabic while true diphthongs aren't.

>Segmentally, it's no different from the vowel sequence in "I <see you>"
>or "r<eu>nite".
>
>Of course exclamations have different prosody from other speech, and may
>contain "phonemes" not found in the ordinary lexicon. Two well-known
>examples in American English are the ingressive alveolar click of "tsk,
>tsk"

also the domal/retroflex click ("whoa!") and lateral click
("giddy-up") used (or so I'm told) to get horses to stop and start
respectively.  These three clicks correspond to the consonants
spelled "c", "q", and "x" in Xhosa.  And there's a bilabial click
used in some circles for teasing or mocking; Xhosa doesn't use such a
click but I think Zulu may.

>and the glottal stop that distinguishes the negative "uh-uh" from
>the positive "uh-huh".

The glottal stop is also crucial in uh-oh.  Actually, the positive
vs. negative signals (either the oral version or the nasal one, with
closed lips) are also distinguished by tone, upstepping in the former
and down- in the latter.  (For me, using low-high with glottal stop,
or high-low without, produces gibberish.)  I take it that it's not a
coincidence that both "uh-oh" and "uh-uh" (if that's the appropriate
spelling)--as well as mh-mh (or whatever), i.e. the closed-mouth
version of the denial indicator--involve both a glottal stop and a
downward tonal sequence, while the affirmatives have no glottal stop
and an upward sequence.

larry