Polish sibilants [was: Slavic palatalistions: why /c^/, /c/?]

From: Grzegorz Jagodzinski
Message: 41560
Date: 2005-10-24

Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

> A few have already been shown. What else do you need? More information
> about the significance of tongue shape? Any good handbook of
> articulatory phonetics can give you the details. For example, Polish
> <sz> is apical, English <sh> is laminal and bunched up ("domed, to use
> Ladefoged's terminology"), while Polish <s'> is predorsal (also domed,
> but without a laminal or apical component). The acoustic effect is
> different in each case, although the place of articulation is the same
> for all three (postalveolar). If <sz> and <s'> are distinguished in
> Polish, it means that they lie on alternative paths crossing the same
> place of articulation.
>
> Piotr

All this is true except the claiming of the same place of articulation. Can
you cite any sources? I am particularily interested in this as one of my
webpages is devoted to Polish sibilants
(http://www.aries.com.pl/grzegorzj/gram/uni/sibilants.html). I have
collected quotations from 12 sources there, none of them mentions the same
place of articulation (for <sz> and <s'>). The more frequent terms are
"fore-tongued alveolar" for <sz> and "middle-tongued-duropalatal" for <s'>
(literary translations from Polish).

Ladefoged, for complete unknown reason, sticks to the opinion that it is <s>
which is alveolar (none Polish source agree with this, all say of dental
articulation here; of course the English /s/ _is_ alveolar but not the
Polish one). As a consequence, he terms <sz> postalveolar (while it is
termed alveolar in Polish literature).

In the earlier version of his www pages he spoke of retroflex articulation
of <sz>. I wrote him a nice piece of e-mail once and after changing ideas
finally he agreed that <sz> is not retroflex. Unfortunately, IPA has not
proper symbols for such a sounds. That is why Ladefoged decided finally to
introduce a special symbol, a low-dotted /s/ for the Polish <sz> (see
http://phonetics.ucla.edu/appendix/languages/polish/polish.html). I do not
understand why IPA constructors hate the Slavic transcription - but the
haceked <s^> would be better solution. Of course using [S] (integral-like)
for the Polish <sz> is incorrect as it is easily acoustically
distinguishable from the English sh [S] (palato-alveolar). Ladefoged terms
the Polish sound "flat postalveolar" contrary to truly retroflex fricatives
which he terms "apical post-alveolar". Thus, I also _doubt_ that <sz> is
_apical_ (the Polish literature - like Dl/uska - term it _coronal_ rather,
see the descriptions collected on my page, the address above, however
Sawicka uses the term "apical").

And finally <s'> is alveopalatal, not alveolar and even not postalveolar
(and even if somebody uses this term, places of articulation of both <sz>
and <s'> are never claimed to be the same because <sz> is generally termed
alveolar, not postalveolar). Ladefoged writes "alveolopalatal are
palatalized postalveolar" but also "Polish contrasts six sibilants at three
places of articulation: alveolar, post-alveolar and alveolopalatal". If
three places, <sz> and <s'> could not have the same place of articulation.

Grzegorz J.



___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com