[Lexicog] Re: consonant cluster words

[Peter Kirk]

On 12/04/2004 11:05, Lameen Souag wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> You might be interested in the case of Tashlhiyt Berber, which is
> alleged (Dell & El-Medlaoui) to have many words consisting entirely of
> consonants.  A sceptical paper on the subject is available online,
> http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/~jcoleman/TPS.html;
> <http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/%7Ejcoleman/TPS.html;> it has recordings, so
> you
> can judge for yourselves whether there's any vowel or not...


I know that attempts have been made to analyse Abkhaz (NW Caucasian) as
having no vowels at the phonemic level. There clearly are phonetic
vowels, but the suggestion was that their position and quality is
entirely conditioned by the surrounding consonants. But I think the more
normal analysis is for two distinct vowel phonemes, one high and one
low, with further distinctions dependent only on the consonantal context.


--
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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