The Lesser-Used Sounds

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TomHChappell
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Post by TomHChappell »

Nuntar wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:My own favorite "exotic" sounds are linguo-labials and lateral plosives. But I don't think I'll use them in my first conlang.
Aren't lateral plosives impossible by definition (unless you mean laterally released)? Lateral means there's more airflow round the sides of the tongue than in the centre, whereas plosive means the airflow is stopped altogether.
I meant like what I thought was the tlhIngan "tlh /t͡ɬ/", but I see it's a voiceless alveolar lateral affricate.

Sometimes people differentiate between a plosive and a stop.

In a plosive the airstream is released suddenly.
By a "lateral plosive", I did indeed mean a laterally-released plosive.

In a stop, the airstream is stopped completely.
A "lateral stop", if there were such a thing, would be difficult to distinguish from certain other stops, IMO.

What some terminologies call "an intervocalic stop", other terminologies call "a stop followed by a homorganic plosive".

Anyway, I like linguolabials and I like laterals that aren't approximants (nor liquids of any sort). Unless I like lateral trills? and maybe lateral taps and/or lateral flaps? If they exist.

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Post by Whimemsz »

That's a lateral affricate, /tɬ͡/ (/tK)/).

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Post by Rory »

TomHChappell wrote:Sometimes people differentiate between a plosive and a stop.
A plosive is a form of a stop. A stop is a sound made when there is complete closure in the oral cavity. A sound is then released orally (an oral stop, AKA a plosive, such as [p, t, d, c]) or nasally (a nasal stop, AKA "nasal", such as [m, F, n`, N]).
Although sometimes people say "stop" when they really mean "plosive".
and maybe lateral taps and/or lateral flaps? If they exist.
Some dialects of Japanese have an alveolar lateral flap, by some analyses.
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Post by TomHChappell »

Rory wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:Sometimes people differentiate between a plosive and a stop.
A plosive is a form of a stop. A stop is a sound made when there is complete closure in the oral cavity. A sound is then released orally (an oral stop, AKA a plosive, such as [p, t, d, c]) or nasally (a nasal stop, AKA "nasal", such as [m, F, n`, N]).
Although sometimes people say "stop" when they really mean "plosive".
and maybe lateral taps and/or lateral flaps? If they exist.
Some dialects of Japanese have an alveolar lateral flap, by some analyses.
But some French terminology distinguishes between "explosif" and "implosif".
"Implosif" is what I was calling "stop" above; the pulmonic egressive airstream is sounding and then stopped completely. An utterance-final "implosif" would not be followed by an "explosif".
"Explosif" is what I was calling "plosive" above; the pulmonic egressive airstream is stopped completely while pressure is built up and then released. An utterance-initial "explosif" would not have been preceded by an "implosif".

That terminology makes no provision for stops and plosives on ingressive airstreams; so there is an alternate terminology in which an "implosif" occurs whenever an ingressive airstream is stopped completely while pressure builds, and then is released.

Yes, the terminology you used is consistent with itself. Yes, it's one of the commonest terminologies, and maybe even the commonest. But it's not the only one. In fact, Lavere called [m] and [n] and [N] and such like "nasal stops" because the oral part of the airstream was stopped, even though the airstream continued through the nose. This produced a terminology in which some continuants were stops and some stops were continuants, which produces cognitive dissonance in some people. (But no continuants were plosives.)

But whatever you call them, I like those lateral affricates or whatever they are. And linguolabials.

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Post by TomHChappell »

Rory wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:and maybe lateral taps and/or lateral flaps? If they exist.
Some dialects of Japanese have an alveolar lateral flap, by some analyses.
Oh, wow. Thanks!

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Post by Salmoneus »

No lateral trills...
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Post by schwhatever »

Does anyone else use /P/? I thought it was pretty rare (outside of Dutch).

Are we talking about Natlangs or Conlangs?
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Post by TomHChappell »

schwhatever wrote: Are we talking about Natlangs or Conlangs?
I think "both"; saying which is which in each case.
Right?

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Post by Tropylium »

I tend to dabble much with phonology, and thus tend to end up with all sorts of weird things…
  • uwjge is relativly vanilla, but at least it has sibilant "flaps" or "difthongs" [ss` s`s] (both as allophones of /s`/), and, arguably, unitary phonemic /pr tr tl qr/. I'm however planning on deleting or transferring elsewhere the former, and the latter are due to a diachronic change that messed up the plosiv allophony: in a nutshell, /p t k q/ voice medially, but then new medial /t k q/ were introduced. But the rhotic changing its realization might be another argument there: /tr qr/ have homorganic trills and /pr/ has an uvular trill co-articulated with a bilabial flap (which should be pretty unusual too.)
  • Zöng doesn't actually have all that much either. Prenasalized (technically rather "postdenasalized") stops, implosivs as initial allophones of blosivs*, and a nasal affricate are the only parts that might count as "unusual".
  • Project #3 has a labial-velar series plus aspiration thru the entire inventory. Aspirated continuants are phonetically voiceless fricativs; as a result, one of the phones included is a labial-velar nareal fricativ and another a palatal lateral fricativ. There's also an aspirated flap /4h)/ (which however patterns as a plosiv).
  • Project #4 has laterally released/affricated labials and dentals, medial preaspirates, and lots of labialized consonants.
  • My "crazy" plan, which I certainly intend to make into a complete lang eventually, consists entirely of clicks, namely the analogs of /p f l\_t\ t ts tK t4`/. Yes, that's one fricativ click and two rhotic clicks in there. No voice or release distinctions, but there's three degrees of labialization. There are also the "anticlick" and maybe the "anti-implosiv", produced by releasing the velar resp. glottal closure rather than the anterior one. (I don't think I've met these anyelsewhere at all.)
  • Of my numerous other sketches, the most batshit insane one — which turns out to be a distant relativ of uwjge actually! — includes eg. six epiglottals, 11 flaps at 6 POAs, and four distinct glottal stops. I've got various further stuff in other sketches, from retroflex affricates to linguolabials, but they're rather subject to change or get abandoned so I'm not bothering to list them.
*"Voiced plosivs". Similarily for "vricativs".

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Post by Nuntar »

TomHChappell wrote:I think "both"; saying which is which in each case.
Right?
No, this topic was original a survey of the sounds people used (and by extension didn't use) in their conlangs. I decided it was worth saving even though it's not directly natlang-related as it does remind us of what sounds used by natlangs we might not be considering.
Tropylium wrote:Yes, that's one fricativ click and two rhotic clicks in there
You do know those are impossible? Clicks by definition have to have a complete, i.e. plosive, closure.
There are also the "anticlick" and maybe the "anti-implosiv", produced by releasing the velar resp. glottal closure rather than the anterior one
Since the airflow can't continue until the anterior closure is released, that wouldn't make any sound at all....
four distinct glottal stops
What's the difference between them?
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Post by Tropylium »

Nuntar wrote:
Tropylium wrote:Yes, that's one fricativ click and two rhotic clicks in there
You do know those are impossible? Clicks by definition have to have a complete, i.e. plosive, closure.
OK, technically they're velaric egressiv continuants - but I call them "clicks" for brevity.
There are also the "anticlick" and maybe the "anti-implosiv", produced by releasing the velar resp. glottal closure rather than the anterior one
Since the airflow can't continue until the anterior closure is released, that wouldn't make any sound at all....
Wouldn't, schmouldn't. The oral cavity is still depressurized by the lowering of the velar / glottal closure, and after it's released, you still get the "pop!", only more muffled as the sound cannot escape thru the mouth. The former comes out along the nasal passage instead (a non-nasal version is also possible, but it's quieter.) The latter cannot escape anywhere & is thus in its basic form only very faint - compareable to a glottal stop in isolation - but it can be voiced by addition of a glottal "trill" on release (just as in normal voiced implosivs), producing this really deep bass-drum-like OOMPH sound.

I can make all these 4 sounds fairly easily in isolation or next to other non-pulmonic sounds, but it took me the longest time to figure out WTH they are...
four distinct glottal stops
What's the difference between them?
Plain, nasalizing, glottalizing (b > ɓ etc.) and both-izing. They also have different sandhi behaviour.

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Re: The Lesser-Used Sounds

Post by Chuma »

¡Papapishu! wrote:additions welcome
My conlang uses an uvular lateral fricative. I think that's pretty unusual?
Some retroflex and uvular affricates have also been known to pop up.

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Re: The Lesser-Used Sounds

Post by Nesescosac »

Chuma wrote: My conlang uses an uvular lateral fricative.
One of my conlangs uses that. It also uses a retroflex voiceless/voiced lateral affricate and a voiced alveolar lateral affricate and a uvular lateral approximant.

Also uses alveo-palatal plosives and nasals.
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Post by dhok »

Could someone post a link for a recording of a bilabial approximant?

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Post by jmcd »

Rory wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:Sometimes people differentiate between a plosive and a stop.
A plosive is a form of a stop. A stop is a sound made when there is complete closure in the oral cavity. A sound is then released orally (an oral stop, AKA a plosive, such as [p, t, d, c]) or nasally (a nasal stop, AKA "nasal", such as [m, F, n`, N]).
Although sometimes people say "stop" when they really mean "plosive".
and maybe lateral taps and/or lateral flaps? If they exist.
Some dialects of Japanese have an alveolar lateral flap, by some analyses.
There's also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwaidja_language which includes contranstive lateral flaps.

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Post by TomHChappell »

jmcd wrote:
Rory wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:and maybe lateral taps and/or lateral flaps? If they exist.
Some dialects of Japanese have an alveolar lateral flap, by some analyses.
There's also Iwaidja which includes contrastive lateral flaps.
Two or three of them, apparently; apical alveolar, apical retroflex, and maybe laminal postalveolar.
Thanks, jmcd. (And thanks again, Rory.)

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Post by sirdanilot »

The conlang I am currently working on doesn't go more exotic than /C/ and retroflex stops and fricatives (no /z`/ though), as well as a few vowels like 3\, but I'm planning to make it evolve from a proto-lang that makes full use of the linguolabial-retroflex spectrum, with the linguolabials eventually evolving into simple bilabials (/t_N/ -> /p/, etc.). In the proto lang I could contrast linguolabial, dental, alveolar and retroflex, with voiced and voiceless plosives and voiceless fricatives, and maybe some nasals too.

Is linguolabial -> bilabial attested anywhere in the world?

Sometimes I think I should start with the proto lang first...

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Post by Aurora Rossa »

schwhatever wrote:Does anyone else use /P/? I thought it was pretty rare (outside of Dutch).
I use it in Socialese, though one could argue that it is just an allophone of /u/ since the two interchange with each other based on sandhi considerations, etc. The /P/ has a labiodental flap [b\] allophone word initially.
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Post by Koffiegast »

Eddy wrote:
schwhatever wrote:Does anyone else use /P/? I thought it was pretty rare (outside of Dutch).
I use it in Socialese, though one could argue that it is just an allophone of /u/ since the two interchange with each other based on sandhi considerations, etc. The /P/ has a labiodental flap [b\] allophone word initially.
eh dont you mean /M\/ with /M/, as /u/ isnt really close to /P/ in my eyes
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Post by Aurora Rossa »

eh dont you mean /M\/ with /M/, as /u/ isnt really close to /P/ in my eyes
Well, allophones can be pretty distant in languages with small phonologies (like Socialese). Look at how Pirahã has [n] as an allophone of /g/. In this case I see it as ua > wa > Pa (the shift from /w/ to /P/ seems pretty routine after all).
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Post by Whimemsz »

jmcd wrote:
Rory wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:Sometimes people differentiate between a plosive and a stop.
A plosive is a form of a stop. A stop is a sound made when there is complete closure in the oral cavity. A sound is then released orally (an oral stop, AKA a plosive, such as [p, t, d, c]) or nasally (a nasal stop, AKA "nasal", such as [m, F, n`, N]).
Although sometimes people say "stop" when they really mean "plosive".
and maybe lateral taps and/or lateral flaps? If they exist.
Some dialects of Japanese have an alveolar lateral flap, by some analyses.
There's also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iwaidja_language which includes contranstive lateral flaps.
Apparently, the flap(s) in Cariban languages are often lateralized. Desmond Derbyshire, in his chapter on Carib in The Amazonian Languages (ed. R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Aikhenvald) (pg. 27) says:
The quality of l, ɾ, and ɹ [listed by Derbyshire as a "palatal flap"] sounds is difficult to identify precisely in Carib languages, since the ɾ sounds tend to have lateral releases and tend to be made with the blade, rather than with the tip, of the tongue. Many of the sources [on the languages] do not give much detail. The alveolar flap is the common ɾ sound, and is sometimes described as having lateral release...and in some cases as having an l variant... WW [Wai Wai] and HI [Hixkaryana] have both the alveolar ɾ and palatal ɹ with lateral release...
It's hard for me to be sure exactly what sounds Derbyshire is describing here, unfortunately.

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Post by dhok »

Am I the only one to think of using "supralabials"?
AKA the tongue is placed between the upper gum and the upper lip. When drawn downwards, plosives and nasals can be produced. Not so sure about other manners of articulation though...

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Post by cromulent »

dhokarena56 wrote:Am I the only one to think of using "supralabials"?
AKA the tongue is placed between the upper gum and the upper lip. When drawn downwards, plosives and nasals can be produced. Not so sure about other manners of articulation though...
That is the worst phone imaginable.

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