Re: [tied] The disappearance of *-s -- The saga continues

On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:55:31 -0700 (PDT),
enlil@... wrote:

>
>gLeN (me):
>>Another idea I had was that *r, *n and *l were dental
>
>Miguel:
>> Dental /r/ would be highly unusual.
>
>Really? Speaking of Semitic:
>
>http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/LingWWW/LIN325/Notes04/Consonants.pdf
>
>Check out its dental /r/.

Nonsense. Semitic /r/ is alveolar.

>Might wanna double-check Russian

Russian /r/ is alveolar. Only palatalized /r'/ tends to be
dental.

>and Bengali as well. I don't know what you have in mind exactly,
>but dental flaps or trills aren't terribly rare.

Dentals trills are extremely rare, for simple articulatory
reasons. As far as I know, only Malayalam has a dental
trill. Flaps/taps might be more common, at least they are
easier to make, but they are also overwhelmingly alveolar.

>Whoa, wait a minute! That pdf above solves something for me!
>I notice that *s is marked "alveolar" and *r, *l and *n are
>"dental"

*r, *l and *n are not really marked "dental" in that table.
There's simply no opposition dental/alveolar/postalveolar in
the Semitic sonorants. Semitic /r/ is rolled, and thus
surely alveolar.

>with dental everything-else. In French, everything is dental,
>including /s/.

No it isn't. /t/ and /d/ are dental, /s/ /z/ /l/ (and
formerly /r/) are alveolar. /n/ can be dental or alveolar.
More or less as in Spanish (Spanish /n/ is alveolar, and so
are /r/ and /rr/).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...