21.3508, Qs: Typology of Vocalic Fricativization

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LINGUIST List: Vol-21-3508. Fri Sep 03 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.3508, Qs: Typology of Vocalic Fricativization

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1)
Date: 01-Sep-2010
From: Matthew Faytak < mfaytak at uchicago.edu >
Subject: Typology of Vocalic Fricativization
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:51:30
From: Matthew Faytak [mfaytak at uchicago.edu]
Subject: Typology of Vocalic Fricativization

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I am a fourth-year student at the University of Chicago currently 
performing research that will be put toward writing my honors thesis. In 
the course of this research, I aim to investigate potential correlations 
between a type of vocalic fricativization and various other aspects of 
language (lexical tone, isolating morphology, the presence of complex 
consonants, etc).

The type of vocalic fricativization I hope to investigate defines what Bell 
(1977), in his study of syllabic consonants, dubs an "apical [vowel] 
system". This phenomenon is present when a language *consistently* 
realizes some vowel phoneme, frequently from the close front/central 
set /i ? y ?/, as a fully-voiced syllabic coronal obstruent in a given set of 
conditions. 

As I see it, it is crucial to differentiate this sort of phonological pattern 
from other lower-level phenomena: in an "apical" vowel system, the 
relevant fricativization does not vary with rate of speech, and voicing is 
retained. This excludes phonetic processes along the lines of vowel 
elision and alternation of high devoiced vowels with fricatives (as in 
some Central Asian Turkic languages, see Kaisse 1992, in Language), 
which tend to vary with rate of speech. Additionally, spirantization 
processes (phonological though they may be) are not of interest here.

I hope to include additional types of fricativization in my eventual 
analysis, moving beyond Bell's limited "apical" system: labiodentalized 
vowels, for instance, have been reported in the Grassfields Bantu 
languages of West Africa (see Connell 2000, "Fricative Vowels in 
Mambila"). 

The languages I plan to analyze, then, include such examples as 
Mandarin Chinese, with its syllabic alveolar and retroflex fricatives 
consistently realized in place of *[i] when preceded by alveolar or 
retroflex fricates, and Len, where a "fricative vowel" identified with /?/ is 
realized consistently as [v?] before "a subset of consonants" that "have 
labiodentality associated with them" (see Connell 2000: 237).

I would like to request, then, that any of you familiar with any and all 
languages fitting (or nearly seeming to fit) the above specifications 
point out their existence. One of the problems I have begun to confront 
(and the reason for this query) is that no typology of fricativization in 
general exists. Furthermore, the genetic location of such languages is 
somewhat unpredictable beyond an abundance of examples in the 
Sino-Tibetan family, Ngiti and Lendu among the Nilo-Saharan 
languages, and the aforementioned Grassfields Bantu languages. I 
hope to take steps toward a typology of phonological fricativization in 
the course of this research, and any and all suggestions as to the 
contents of this typology would be greatly appreciated. 

Linguistic Field(s): Phonetics
                     Phonology
                     Typology




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