Subject: Re: [lojban] Re: learning lojban [2]

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 11:35:41 +0300

John Cowan wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Sep 2000, Ivan A Derzhanski wrote:
> 
> > It still amazes my Slavic mind that the distinction between
> > a monophthong and a falling diphthong should count as fine.
> 
> Probably because English has no tense monophthongs, near enough.

There is that, and more. When a word such as _ghetto_ appears,
why does it get pronounced as ['getoU]?

It's not (just) because _o_ occasionally stands for [oU] in native
English words. It's (also) because of certain restrictions on the
occurrence of the phoneme /o/ (which is a rounded vowel in part of
the anglophone area).

English (1) requires that certain vowels be `long'; and (2) makes
`long' vowels be realised as falling diphthongs. So because of its
position in the word, the vowel in _ghetto_ can't be /o/, it must
be /o:/, which is pronounced [oU] (or [ow] as some would say).
Ditto for /e/ becoming /e:/ [eI] (or [ej]).

In effect, there is a tendency to close syllables.

This is sort of similar to other languages' tendency or requirement
to cover syllables, which gives /o/ an on-glide in Russian (making
it sound as [Uo] or even [U@]) and prefixes a glottal stop to all
initial vowels in Arabic and German; but it is much, much less common.
Note that there are many languages that require syllable-initial
consonants or ban syllable-final ones, but none the other way around;
so a language that turns /o/ into /wo/ or /?o/ is doing something
normal, whereas one that turns /o/ into /ow/ is doing something weird.

An old (of the early '60s) article by V V Shevoroshkin relates the
Germanic languages' preference for closed syllables to the fact that
the world's most consonantal languages (close to the theoretical
extreme) are of that branch.

And extremes are always amazing.

--Ivan