Help with example in Linguistic class
od LyzTyphone, 24. februar 2011
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LyzTyphone (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 01:37:41
I am currently in an intro linguistic class (of course) in my University. As it is not a big class (only 30 people or so) and not exactly a weed-out class, there is room for some fun to be had. We are doing morphemes and their phonological alternation. I talked to the teacher and she said if I could e-mail her a dataset about Esperanto she could work that into our schedule.
So after a bit of reserching, I think I will go with the morpheme "ek-" and its phonological alternation in different contexts:
For example:
ekiri: [ekiri]: start to go
ekbatali: [egbatali]: start to fight
(See the phonological alternation? Is that correct?)
The question I have is with Ekkuri, the Plena Analiza Gramatiko, which I found in my school library says we should "make the position of stop for the first K and then make the explosive sound". So how would you denote this first in IPA symbols? Please help me so I can propogate Esperanto in my Linguistic class.
LyzTyphone (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 01:46:53
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreleased_stop
ceigered (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 02:38:22
thus [e'k:uri]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination#Writing
But note that the colon you'd need to use is actually meant to be ː not :. But in practice the difference is irrelevant and you can just do a normal ":" unless you have a really cool keyboard that has a triangular colon on it! The rare case when you need the triangular colon is when you need to point out the difference between certain degrees of sound length - something I doubt you'll need (I've only just found this out myself despite having read about this sort of junk for ages!)
Sometimes just doubling the letter is fine too.
As for e'kiri and egba'tali, I personally say [e'kiri] and [ekba'tali], and try not to allow the voicing to change at all (e.g. [ekza'meno] for me, not [egza'meno].
LyzTyphone (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 03:38:55
ceigered:thus [e'k:uri]Wow, thanks! So, the question will be, is [k:] considered different from [kk], thus making a real phonological alternation? Or this example won't work for the topics we are doing right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemination#Writing
As for e'kiri and egba'tali, I personally say [e'kiri] and [ekba'tali], and try not to allow the voicing to change at all (e.g. [ekza'meno] for me, not [egza'meno].
About [ekba'tali], well I guess you can do that. Again from the Plena Analiza Gramatiko, Zamenhof himself said in his FAQ that he won't recommend or discourage both cases, since the [eg-] way is more natural (and universal) and more "elegant" somehow, but [ek-] is more technically correct.
vejktoro (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 06:16:52
The /k:/ in ekkuri is okay though.
ceigered (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 07:54:35
Other langauges may do things differently, e.g. a Mandarin speaker might find "egbatali" easier to pronounce and keep closer to the written "ekbatali" because their "g"'s are closer to than (and the k is closer to [kh] - imagine that's a little "h" there
)As for [e'k:uri] and [ek'kuri] and [ek̚'kuri], I'd have to say it depends on the different speakers once again, but it seems nigh on impossible to be able to differentiate between the different sounds, with the exception of [ekkuri] which I can imagine some speakers being able to make that [ek(x)kuri], but that doesn't sound natural at all.
So, as an amateur I'd say [ek̚'kuri] and [e'k:uri] are identical, or that [ek̚'kuri] will always become [e'k:uri].
Actually, regarding [ekba'tali], after reading that thing about unreleased stops, I guess mine is closer to [ek̚ba'tali] (or perhaps with some glottal action in there, since learning Indonesian has taught me that it's always funner to pronounce final k's as glottal stops
) Chainy (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 07:57:43
LyzTyphone:I would pronounce 'ekbatali' with a clear 'k', but maybe people could slip towards the 'g' when speaking fast?
For example:
ekiri: [ekiri]: start to go
ekbatali: [egbatali]: start to fight
(See the phonological alternation? Is that correct?)
In the case of 'ekzameno', then yes, I think many people would tend towards the 'g' sound. It depends on what letter comes next!
PMEG has some information on this here
- there it mentions the pronunciation of 'akvo' with a 'g' replacing the 'k'. I find this slightly surprising, but if it's in PMEG, then it must mean that people from certain countries tend to say it this way.
The important thing to note, is that PMEG says that this kind of thing is maybe a deviation from the intended form of pronunciation, but it's still 'tolerated' (to use the PMEG word) as long as the words remain understandable!
sudanglo
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sudanglo (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 11:50:30
Many Esperantists will feel hot under the collar at the thought that this should occur in Esperanto.
It offends two principles in the language.
That from the spelling of a word you should know the pronunciation (and vice versa), and that the only limitation on the combination of roots is that the combination should make sense.
As someone pointed out there might be an occasion where you need to precede the morpheme 'eg' in a context where 'ek' would also make sense.
On the doubling of consonants and the importance of pronouncing both, it's easy to think of an opposition. One must distinguish between 'Finnaj' and 'finaj'.
A simple test of the reaction of Esperantists, would be to ask whether 'ekzameno' and 'egzameno' are two different words and how they would pronounce them.
Linguists love to think they are being like scientists and discovering general principles about languages. But they rarely test those principles against Esperanto. But any truly universal principle of human language must also apply in the case of Esperanto.
sudanglo
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sudanglo (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 13:22:51
Also the 'b' and 'p' in 'rap-oleo' and 'rabo'
LyzTyphone (Prikaži profil) 24. februar 2011 14:18:19
sudanglo:...So you mean devoicing doesn't normally occur in Esperanto? Well, that's a bit disappointing, as I really want to have an example with Esperanto in our Linguistic class to give my classmates (and teacher) a bit of a taste for the language. I think if they have seen the Esperanto they might want to look deeper into it.
That from the spelling of a word you should know the pronunciation (and vice versa), and that the only limitation on the combination of roots is that the combination should make sense.
...
You do realize that strict phonologically speaking, the "k" in "ka" "ki" "ku" are actually different sounds, right? This is (yet again!) quoted from Pleana Analiza Gramatiko, that I just learned yesterday. There is no perfect phonological language in the world. Esperanto is almost there, as it doesn't have a lot of harmonizaion or phonological alternation seen in other languages, but it's still not one. And it's perfectly Ok as long as the phonological deviations doesn't cause difference in meaning (remains allophones of the same phoneme, by the jargon).
I also understand that Esperanto is spoken by people from different origins with different language backgroud, so let's talk about the majority out there. Or even a bit unorthodoxically, abou the Europo-American variation there. Is there still something else I can work as an example in my Linguistic class?
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@ceigered
actually this might have nothing to do with mandarin, as it lacks a differentiation between and but instead distinguish consonants by and [kh]. I think I actually use that when I speak Esperanto and, to a lesser degree, English by corresponding my with , and my [kh] with . And I haven't met people who say they can't understand my word because of that.