I was struck by Lameen’s recent post on Jabal al-Lughat about a language of South Sudan:
The least well documented subgroup of West Nilotic is the Burun group, spoken around the borders between Sudan, South Sudan, and Ethiopia. The largest language in this subgroup is Mabaan, spoken in South Sudan, for which there exists at least one dictionary (available without bibliographic information on Roger Blench’s site), and several very interesting articles by Torben Andersen. But we are no longer in the era where a non-field linguist could be content to look at printed sources alone; there is a fair amount of Mabaan content on YouTube, including a channel by a BA-trained linguist and first language speaker of Mabaan, Thomas Anour: Learn Maban, African Language with Thomas Anour. (Like and subscribe, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do on YouTube to encourage creators.) Between these, that makes enough material to observe an interesting phonological difference.
In Mabaan as described by Torben Andersen and in the aforementioned anonymous dictionary, /h/ seems to show up only in interjections or loans, and /ħ/ is not mentioned at all. The variety spoken by Thomas Anour, however, features a number of words with initial [ħ] (occasionally varying with [h]). A single cognate in a North Burun language, Mayak, suggest that this is the reflex in his variety of *r, which otherwise becomes a semivowel in Mabaan; more would be desirable. […]
Edit (12/12/2024): The Elenchus comparativus (von Hurter, 1800) records, s.v. “souris” (mouse), <hén> for “Abugonos Burun” vs. <rine> for “J. Kurmuk”. This is the only word in the list transcribed with initial h – and the only word on the list corresponding to any of the ones above – but seems sufficient to suggest that this pronunciation is indeed old. Among words with *r, one notes Abugonos <yonga> “meat” and <ímaghi> “blood” (Kurmuk <rin>), which do not support the hypothesis of *r > ħ, but, given the imprecise transcription, do not disprove it either. My thanks to Shuichiro Nakao for sending me a link to this exceptionally early source.
Isn’t that great? Of course there’s material on YouTube for all sorts of languages, but it still surprises and pleases me that a linguist can use it for this kind of historical analysis. (If you’ve developed an interest in Mabaan pharyngeals, there’s a follow-up post.)
DM has actually pointed out on Lameen’s site that r -> h happened in Brazilian Portuguese, too.
I was thinking, that although [ʕ] strikes Europeans as a quintessentially exotic sound, this is a bit parochial of us. Egyptian seems to have changed proto-Afro-Asiatic *d to /ʕ/. Even. So much for the principle of least effort.* Maybe.
[Western Oti-Volta has non-initial proto-Oti-Volta *d -> /j/, and Hausa has proto-Chadic non-initial *r -> /j/, but those are pretty small potatoes in comparison. Pre-proto-Oti-Volta may have had non-initial *j -> *ʔ, though, which is a bit more enterprising …]
* Not taken seriously for some time now, on account of not actually working.
And of course Spanish has managed /j/ -> /x/.
Does Mabaan actually permit full words to begin with a vowel?
In other words, could one of these initials be there just to repair the phonotactics?
Gurma has done that, which is why POV initial *s seems to have become /ŋ/: the actual change was *s -> zero, and the the /ŋ/ was added because Gurma full words can’t be vowel-initial.
Is there any evidence of vowel pharyngealisation as an earlier feature of the Burun group?
(I’m wondering if the initial ʕ as opposed to ʔ could go back to an older vowel contrast. Western Oti-Volta languages with contrastive glottal vowels don’t permit them word-initially, presumably because such words formerly began with /ʔ/ and there has been dissimilation.)
Well, there are sound changes that make things easier for the speakers, and there are sound changes that make things easier for the listeners. These two often go in opposite directions.
Notably, if a language has an independent /ʔ/ and doesn’t permit vowel-initial words, that doesn’t automatically mean it adds initial /ʔ/ for repair. Arapaho adds initial /h/ instead.
That, on the other hand, does strike me as *j dropping out and the hiatus being filled with *ʔ. Same for the ʕ-ʔ “merger” of most kinds of Hebrew.
That, on the other hand, does strike me as *j dropping out and the hiatus being filled with *ʔ
That’s actually happened (though about a couple of millennia later) in Farefare: cf Kusaal nɔɔr “mouth” pl nɔya, Mooré noore pl noya but Farefare nõorɛ pl nõa.
(There are cases among single-aspect verbs, too, where the medial y /j/ is probably of a different origin from the one seen in nouns like these. Not many examples, though, as Kusaal preserves those verbs much better than Farefare, even though Farefare is much more conservative in most respects. Still has grammatical gender, for example.)
there are sound changes that make things easier for the speakers, and there are sound changes that make things easier for the listeners.
*penny drops*
For the sake of my soft tissue, I’m glad mathematicians chose Aleph to be that thing, not Ayin. Ayin and Yesh, Being and Nothingness. מה לעשות
Glad you liked it!
Whether it turns out to apply here or not, a conditioned change of r to ʕ (and indeed ħ) is solidly attested in Taznatit Berber at least…
Something similar to Spanish [ʃ] > [x] is probably the existence of “dark” realizations of the much debated Swedish /ɧ/, like [x] — “light” realizations like [ʃ] overlap with those of /ɕ/, but there are salient minimal pairs like kärna~stjärna that need to be kept apart so it’s a bona fide phoneme. The debate is about what the “core” realization is, which I think is a question without an answer.
Personally, I just used [x] thoughout the last years I lived there, but in Central and Northern Swedish there’s also a [ʂ] that can be used–it’s otherwise the assimilation product of /-rs-/ and cannot stand in absolute Anlaut, and I find it very hard to produce it in that position.
Why would there be a core realization across Swedish as a whole? Why not simply a different one in every accent?
(Boy, do they have different ones.
Far out, man.dude weed lmao)Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушку.
different ones
A fascinating read; thanks!
Why not simply? Because ɧ as an IPA symbol has to mean something innit. As variable as it is, no sane phonetician would use in a narrow transcription, and how French is that now? I think that’s the core of the debate.
(Imma practice that labioalveolar thing pour épater les suedois).
Шла Саша по шоссе и сосала сушку: I didn’t know Russian had retroflex sounds.
As the linked post says: “Official IPA charts do attempt to define [ɧ] as a specific sound, the coarticulated fricative [ʃ͡x]. And yes, that is one possible realization of /ɧ/. Which would be wild enough on its own already” – indeed, the very existence of coarticulated fricatives has been denied pretty often, apparently just by Argument from Personal Incredulity.
It’s probably the most famous example of [ʂ] and [ʐ].
most famous: I was just riffing, I have no clue about how to pronounce Russian in real life. I know the letter values and they are not retroflex AFAIK.
Now I’m confused. en.WP on Russian phonology uses /ʂ/ for a post-alveolar sibilant, which I’d normally write as /ʃ/. The [ʂ] in Swedish is retroflex, but nothing is said about retroflexion for the Russian sound.
I’ve always seen ш given the value [ʃ]. Have they been lying to me?
I think that’s old-fashioned.
Then wipe shouldn’t call the modern Russian realization a post-alveolar sibilant plain and simple. (Well, I suppose they are post-alveolar retroflex, but then all retroflex sounds are post-alveolar, right? And it implies “plain” post-alveolar, so it’s confusing because those contrast with retroflex ones in other languages [e.g., Swedish]. If Russian phonologists thinks it’s enough to say post-alveolar because tradition or something, well good luck to them, but don’t do that if you want the rest of the world to understand).
WP article “Russian phonology”:
Retroflexes come in three flavors worldwide: laminal, apical, subapical (meaning the tongue is curled all the way over so the lower side of the tongue touches the palate). Subapical ones are probably limited to southern India, but I bet some people think these are the only ones that deserve to be called retroflex.
ɧ on languagehat is unusually easy to Google. Fortunately never used in a post title.
@DM, I think the Central Swedish ones are as close to subapical as they come, being the result of progressive spread of rhotacism and contrasting with alveolar, apical s (not ʃ, which only occurs as an allophone of various things). Those are the ones I find it hard to do in Anlaut, because the need never comes up in Swedish. And I naively thought that was the only thing ʂ could mean.
So many things to know, as Vernor Vinge says.
That, on the other hand, does strike me as *j dropping out and the hiatus being filled with *ʔ
*ʔ as a non-initial Hiatustilger could actually shed quite a bit of light on some so-far-unexplained vowel glottalisation in Western Oti-Volta. I’ve been assuming that WOV vowel glottalisation always reflects lost velars or uvulars, but on reflection, it ain’t necessarily so. Interesting.
Yes, but Firefox lets me down: Ctrl+F on a page finds me every instance of h…
That doesn’t make them subapical; I’ll try to find some to listen to, but that’s going to be difficult in the next few weeks.
A colleague of mine does that in Polish, actually – regardless of stress (unlike in northern/central German):
na[ˈʔ]uka “science” (nom. sg.)
[ˈ]na[ʔ]uk “of sciences” (gen. pl.)
na[ʔ]u[ˈ]kowy “scientific” (m. nom./acc. sg.)
Firefox lets me down
Try checking Match Diacritics.
That doesn’t make them subapical, but as best I can tell that’s what the one I learned to produce is. Real Swedes may vary. But anyway it’s traditional to write it [ʂ]. (Make sure you listen to a Stockholmer, there’s a lot of variation. I think Trond’s Norwegian has the assimilation too, but what his result is I don’t know). It happens to all coronal consonants, including /l/, and the others are less ambiguously subapical (as far as I can tell).
When I took Russian in college, the teacher, at least when enunciating carefully, had a noticeable way of pronouncing her ш. Reconstructing from memory, I think it’s something like this: place your tongue as for a [ç], then protrude the lips and move the lower jaw forward, so the tongue body moves closer to the alveolar ridge. So call it a “dorsal postalveolar voiceless sibilant”, maybe? It sounds similar to a [ʂ], so I suppose you also could call it a “bunched ʂ”, by analogy with the AmE [ɹ].
Per Lindblad, in his Svenskans sje- och tje- ljud i ett allmänfonetiskt perspektiv, describes a sound which he calls a “labiodental velarized [ʃ]-like sound, common in Swedish”. He has his own mark for it, which looks somwhat like a ¿ without the dot, and with two curves at the bottom istead of one, like a ω. Shosted describes this sound as [ɧʷ].
Fricatives are hard to describe and to model articulatorily, and hard to interpret acoustically.
@Y, sje-ljudet is the much-debated /ɧ/. We got derailed into the question of whether it makes sense to use /ʂ/ for Russian ш which seems to be another thing than the Central and Northern Swedish result of assimilating /-rs/. That process is called retroflexion when talking about Swedish phonology. (There is no phoneme /ʂ/ in Swedish, but [ʂ] can also be an allophone of /ɧ/).
That’s rather mind-blowing. It makes nonzero sense for щ – but ш?
Her щ was definitely like шч. This is all in careful enunciation, to first-year Russian learners. She was Jewish, well-educated, I think from Moscow, and I’d guess born in the 1940s. (Also, one of the most well-liked teachers in the entire school.)
Since you are making me examine my memory carefully, I’d say I am quite certain about the lips and the jaw, less so about the dorsal vs. retroflex articulation. That’s why I mentioned AmE [ɹ]: several articulations exist, and it is not easy to tell them apart by listening (which is why those several articulations persist). I did not know much about phonetics then. Still, I remember that my impression at the time was that of dorsal articulation.
Lars: That was apropos of not bery much. I needed an excuse to mention Lindblad’s book and his special symbol, which now I realize is an amalgam of ɧ and w.