Re: [tied] Further question on Polish and a question on IE languages

From: Grzegorz Jagodzinski
Message: 44813
Date: 2006-05-30

----- Original Message -----
From: "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 5:26 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Further question on Polish


> On 2006-05-30 15:08, Grzegorz Jagodzinski wrote:
>> There is NOT ONE understanding of these terms in the literature (however
>> I
>> thought that specialists know it perfectly...), and this is the source of
>> the problems now.
>
> Come on, the confusion is nowhere as serious as you make it. At any
> rate, as a phonologist by profession, I can tell you that currently
> nobody in this line of trade uses the term DORSAL in such a way as to
> include Polish /s/ or any other laminal sound. I'm talking about
> internationally accepted terminology, not about any idiosyncratic or
> outdated usage that may be lingering here and there.

"Here and there" means e.g. academic books considered to be the most
authoritative on many Polish universities. As an author of a Polish grammar,
written in Polish and only being translated into English, I cannot belittle
this fact.

> The whole point
> about having standard terminology (and about promoting its use, which is
> precisely waht I'm doing just now) is that students of different
> languages can readily understand each other's descriptions.

Your postulate of standardization is just - but I cannot also forget the
real situation.

Naturally, I do not try to discuss with your point. I only try to explain
why my website contains such or another content. And I try to explain that
the content is not deceitful - contrary, it corresponds with what a Polish
student can find in the books he/she is familiar with.

> Note that these are not my private terms -- in the vast modern
> literature on phonetics and phonology they have well-defined meanings.
> You may consult any up-to-date dictionary of phonetic terms (like Larry
> Trask's _A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology_ 1996) or any standard
> handbook of general phonetics (e.g. Peter Ladefoged's _Vowels and
> Consonants_ 2000, Peter Ladefoged & Ian Maddieson's _The Sounds of the
> World's Languages' 1996, John Laver's _Principles of Phonetic_ 1994 --
> there is no shortage of them).

Oh, I believe you, however I do not think that all these books are
especially popular among Polish students. Instead, many Polish works are in
use, and the works present different terminology. I see no reason for
accepting only "western" ideas, and throwing away all what Polish authors
ever wrote.

By the way, Ladefoged thinks that the Polish [t d s z c 3] are alveolar
(http://phonetics.ucla.edu/appendix/languages/polish/polish.html). I have
not met a single Polish author who would share this opinion. Instead,
everybody say that Polish [t d s z c 3] are dental, contrary to English [t d
s z] (which are alveolar indeed). He also sometimes makes the difference in
notation between Poliush affricates and the sequences stop + fricative, and
sometimes not. Yet some time ago he stated that Polish alveolars <sz z.|rz
cz dz.> are retroflex (and hopefully changed his opinion after some
discussion with me). All these facts cause some reservation towards
Ladefoged and make me not fully believe in the standard character of his
work.

And once again, it is not a discussion either. I only try to explain why I
preserve the "non-standard" terminology on my website, and why I should
continue with it.

>> Some authors seem to understand "coronal" as "articulated
>> with the apical and lateral parts of the tongue, or with the tongue
>> blade"
>> (probably "laminal" + "apical" in the other sense that you use),
>
> What "other sense"?

Yes, other. You are right about the terminological convention applied in
western sources but not about works edited in Poland. So, from the point of
view of a Polish student, the "western" terminology is "the other".

>> At the same time <sz> is
>> termed "predorsal-alveolar", and <s'> - "mediopalatal". I must add this
>> to
>> my chart.
>
> One shouldn't use other people's confusion as an excuse for propagating
> loose or simply incorrect terminology.

Perhaps you should write Strutyn'ski a letter and ask him, not me, why he
uses such a loose terminology in his well-known academic book.

> If terms used in (some) Polish
> handbooks

Some? And do you know any Polish books which contain the proper terminology?
I am thinking about handbooks, student books, academic books, not about
special publications.

> I'm just trying to clarify things, so please don't take these remarks as
> criticism of your website, which is in general an ambitious and highly
> commendable project.

Oh, quite contrary, I am very thankful for your opinion. It helped me make
my sibilant page more readible, I hope. A new version is ready now
(http://www.aries.com.pl/grzegorzj/gram/uni/sibilants.html; it may be
compared with the prevous one on the outdated mirror:
http://grzegorj.private.pl/gram/uni/sibilants.html)

> I suggest such lateral discussions of phonetic and phonological problems
> should be moved to the phoNet group:
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/phonet/
>
> Regrettably, there has been no activity there since December.
>
> Piotr

I am inclined to close the thread rather... But a little question arose by
the way. As it is fully "Indo-European", I believe that this group is the
proper place to ask it.

The Polish alveolars <sz z.|rz cz dz.> are "hard", i.e. non palatalized,
even if their source were "soft", i.e. palatalized consonants. Their
development is a good example of dispalatalization I think. Something
similar can be observed in East Slavic (e.g. Russian) - but there the former
palato-alveolars have yielded strongly velarized alveolars. On the other
hand, in German the former palato-alveolar <sch> has yielded a labialized
alveolar (and possibly velarized as well).

So, the Polish dispalatalization seems to be unique in this sense that
former palato-alveolars seemed to become plain alveolars without any clear
reason. In the case of Russian or German, a new feature (velarization,.
labialization) seemed to "replace" the former palatalization and eliminate
it. But no such a new factor seemed to be present in the Polish development.

Now my question. Are similar spontaneous dispalatalizations common among the
IE family? Among the languages of the world? And a related question - if
such spontaneous dispalatalizations are documented, even if rare, why should
we reject the hypothesis of the existence of palatal (or at least prevelar)
series as long ago as in the common IE period?

Btw., it is often thought that the process of k^, g^, g^h > k, g, gh looks
inbelievable as only fronting development of palatal is attested. But if I
am not mistaken, a similar process "prevelar > velar" is known from some
Polish dialects, including the urban dialect of Warsaw. And, if it is
possible in Polish, why not in PIE?

Of course, the difference between Polish velars and prevelars (incorrectly
termed "palatals" in some sources) is less than between IPA [k] and [c]. But
why should we believe that PIE k^, g^, g^h were palatals? Couldn't they be
just prevelars instead? If yes, their retreating and mixing with the
original velars in Centum would be easier to believe in. And the Polish
dialectal processes (does anybody know examples from other languages?) would
be the needed attestation.

Grzegorz J.





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