Omaha and Ponca to Arabic: You're not so unique after all!

[Catherine Rudin]

Interesting!  (And here I thought O-P was unique.)  :-)
Catherine

>>> shokooh Ingham  02/02/11 5:18 AM >>>
Interesting to hear of the Omaha Ponca sound.  The Arabic one, or
possibly something similar, still occurs in dialects of the South West
ie some parts of 'Asir in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen.  The Arabs used to
refer to their language as Lughat al-[ḍād], the Language of [ḍād] or
Lughat al -'Ain the Language of 'Ain (the pharyngeal voiced sound,
fricative, continuant or plosive, depending on who you believe),
presuming that these sounds were not used by other people.  The latter
is less rare, also occurring in Somali and Amharic and I think some
Caucasian languages.

Ethnocentricity is widespread.  I remember as a boy in primary school
being shown a map of the world and being told proudly by the teacher to
note that England was in the middle of the world. The Chinese obviously
used a different map.

Bruce

--- On Wed, 2/2/11, Bryan James Gordon  wrote:

From: Bryan James Gordon 
Subject: Omaha and Ponca to Arabic: You're not so unique after all!
To: "Siouan Listserv" 
Date: Wednesday, 2 February, 2011, 2:10

Kees Versteegh, writing on /ḍ/ in the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language
and Linguistics:

Sībawayhi (Kitāb II, 405.8-9) describes [ḍād]'s place of articulation as
being "between the first part of the side of the tongue and the adjacent
molars" (min bayna ˀawwal ḥāfat al-lisān wa-mā yalīhi min al-ˀaḍrās).
The exact interpretation of this passage remains controversial. ...
Cantineau (1960:55) is probably right in interpreting it as a lateral or
lateralized velarized voiced interdental fricative ... IPA [ðˡ] ....
This would make it, indeed, a unique sound among the world's languages
(cf. Ladefoged and Maddieson 1966:154-56).


Ha!


Of course I use [ðˡ] or [ɫð] all the time when I use IPA to represent
Omaha and Ponca words. Unique indeed. If the CSG has a phonology
section, this should definitely be in it.


Sībawayh's description is over 1200 years old, of course, so it is not
true of most forms of Arabic today, although many Arabic loanwords in
other languages have laterals where ḍād should be.

-- 
***********************************************************
Bryan James Gordon, MA
Joint PhD Program in Linguistics and Anthropology
University of Arizona
***********************************************************





      
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