[Lexicog] The flapping in African languages creates a buzz

[Rudolph C Troike]

(I'm happy to see SIL getting some proper credit here. I first heard
about an interlabial stop from Floyd Lounsbury, who said that he had
regularly included this in his lectures as an example of a possible
sound that was not used in any language, until he heard (or heard of)
it being used in an Amazonian language, but he didn't mention which
one. So perhaps the Philippine use is a second occurrence. Thanks
to Phil Cash Cash for finding this and forwarding it. -- Rudy)


---------- Forwarded message ----------

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

The flapping in African languages creates a buzz
New consonant added to the phonetic alphabet

By MICHAEL ERARD
THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/251795_alphabet13.html

For the first time in 12 years, the International Phonetic Association
is amending its official alphabet. A sound called the labiodental flap
will be granted its own letter, one that looks something like a v with
a hook.

The sound, a buzz sometimes capped by a faint pop, is present in more
than 70 African languages.

It is produced by the lower lip moving back and forward, flapping on the
inside of the upper teeth.

"The labiodental flap sound is as important as any other sound to
speakers of languages that use it," said Peter Ladefoged, emeritus
professor of linguistics at UCLA. "Think how Americans would protest if
there were no way of transcribing the vowel in 'bird,' which in the
usual U.S. pronunciation is almost as rare among the sounds of the
world's languages as the labiodental flap."

Until now, linguists have recorded the labiodental flap with made-up
symbols, usually the letter v modified by accents.

The venerable phonetic alphabet was established in 1886, and now, after
slow increments of change, includes 28 symbols for vowels, 86 for
consonants and 75 other marks for tone, stress, aspiration and other
phonetic details.

One of the most recent sounds to win a symbol was the bilabial click,
used in two African languages. The labiodental flap is much more widely
used but took longer to be recognized.

One reason, said Ladefoged, is that clicks, often considered to be the
most exotic of speech sounds, have been noticed by Europeans since the
17th century. They also occur in politically important languages such
as Zulu and Xhosa.

"None of this is true about labiodental flaps," Ladefoged said in an
e-mail message. "Even now, some people think they are a minor effect in
a few words in a few languages."

Last spring, he encouraged Kenneth Olson, a linguist at SIL
International who has studied the extensive use of the labiodental flap
in Africa, to propose officially that the sound, first observed in 1907,
have its own symbol.

SIL International is a Christian organization based in Dallas that
studies, documents and helps in developing lesser-known languages.

Olson encountered the sound while conducting research in Congo and had
performed extensive acoustic analysis to determine that the sound was,
in fact, a flap, not a fricative consonant like the "f" of English. Nor
did it involve a sharp intake of air like the clicks.

The new symbol had been recommended by a fellow linguist, Geoff Pullum,
who described it "as if a fishhook R had been slammed leftward into a
lowercase v so hard its vertical had merged with the right leg of the
v, and the dangly bit had been left hanging there like the drain pipe
out of an upstairs toilet in a partially demolished building."

In June, Olson received a note from the association, informing him that
the proposal had been voted on and accepted.

Mono speakers are pleased, Olson said. "The idea of an IPA symbol would
offer some prestige to the language, that this oddity is valued by
people around the world."

Other language oddities wait for their moment. There is a bilabial trill
in two Brazilian languages, Oro Win and Wari'
(phonetics.ucla.edu/appendix/l anguages/orowin/orowin.html) and what
Ladefoged called "hissing-hushing fricatives" of Ubykh, once spoken in
Turkey (phonetic s.ucla.edu/appendix/languages /ubykh/ubykh.html).

Olson plans to visit the Philippines to study a sound that speakers
produce by sticking their tongues out of their mouths, a sound that
outsiders ridicule.

Olson says an official symbol might raise the status of the sound and
the people who pronounce it, though perhaps not with the symbol from
rock 'n' roll marketing he jokingly proposed -- the Rolling Stones'
lips.


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