On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 22:49:57 -0500, Patrick Ryan
<
proto-language@...> wrote:
>What I am representing as /¿/ is Arabic ¿ayin. I perceive it as a voiced
>pharyngeal stop similar to /?/, the glottal (laryngeal) stop. The raspy
>release sounds a bit like a fricative.
Arabic ¿ayin is usually a voiced pharyngeal or epiglottal
approximant (i.e. a fricative without friction)
>Palatalization of this sound would defeat even an Arab's best efforts, I
>think, since it is not made with the tongue at all.
That's true for the epiglottal variant. The pharyngeal
variant involves the root of the tongue (against the
pharynx).
As to the possibility of a correspondence ¿ <=> c, it's not
impossible. I was looking at North Caucasian numerals, and
we may have one case there (actaually /¿/ ~ /c./). If we
assume that the NW and NE Caucasian numerals are related
(which I think most of them are, even if that doesn't
necessarily mean that NW and NE Caucasian are related in
general), then we have for instance Dargva (dial.) c.Wa vs.
Abaza ¿W& (from something like *t.q.ui). In general,
uvulars have the potenmtial to back to pharyngeals, or to
palatalize to lateral or central (post-)alveolar fricatives.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...