On 2006-05-30 15:08, Grzegorz Jagodzinski wrote:
> No, it is not. The "final note" is a synthesis from many sources, not a
> citation from Puppel (Hence apparently it isn't seen clearly, I will detach
> both parts of the chart). In fact, Puppel does not use the terms "apical",
> "coronal" and "dorsal" at all.
I know -- I've already been to the library. I wasn't even sure if the
main text was in English, for I hadn't opened the book since my student
days. The description there is a bit vague (see L&M's remarks in _The
Sounds of the World's Languages_) and he drawings don't do justice to
the predominantly, though not crucially, apical character of the <sz>
series in standard Polish (the position of the tip of the tongue may
vary a little between idiolects or even within one and the same
idiolect, just as in the case of English <sh>).
>> If so, it contains a
>> surprising amount of terminological confusion, making the description
>> almost incomoprehensible. Both /s/ and /s^/ are CORONAL (just that, not
>> "more" or "less" coronal, since both are articulated with the front part
>> of the tongue), and /s/ most certainly isn't DORSAL (which would
>> properly mean "pronounced with the back of the tongue as the active
>> articulator"). The reconstructed intended meaning is as follows: Pol.
>> /s/ is more LAMINAL while Pol. /s^/ is more APICAL, though not SUBAPICAL
>> ("retroflex" sensu stricto).
>>
>> Piotr
>
> 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outdated usage that may be lingering here and there. 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.
The most general classification of articulation features according to
the active articulator used is into LABIAL, CORONAL, DORSAL and RADICAL,
and whatever uncertainty there may be (see below), /s/ is
_unambiguously_ coronal, if the coronal/dorsal distinction is to mean
anything. 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). In modern phonetics, the dorsum means the
mid body of the tongue (between the flexible front and the root of the
tongue). Typical dorsal articulations involve the hard palate, the soft
palate or the uvular region as the passive articulator (i.e. palatal,
velar and uvular sounds in place-of-articulation terms).
> 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"? Technically, a consonant is CORONAL if the blade of
the tongue is raised from the neutral position. All laminal, apical and
subapical sounds are therefore CORONAL by definition. There are some
differences of opinion as regards predorsal consonants, i.e. the
inhabitants of no-man's-land between the laminal and dorsal sections of
the upper surface of the tongue, which lacks a clearcut demarcation
line. In other words, consonants like front varieties of [รง] could be
considered ambiguous, but /s/ is definitely not one of them.
> ...In addition to what I have already collected, it may also be interesting
> that Strutyn'ski terms the <s> series "apical-dental", even if all other
> sources emphasize that <s> is not apical in Polish.
You're absolutely right. It's laminal, and the place of articulation is
dental or more precisely dentialveolar. The tip of the tongue actually
touches the _lower_ teeth.
> 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. If terms used in (some) Polish
handbooks differ from those used elsewhere, it's those handbooks that
stand in need of revision, not the current standard. <s'> could with
some reason be described as predorso-postalveolar rather than
lamino-postalveolar, but "predorsal-alveolar" is plainly wrong and
misleading as a description of <sz>.
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. Very few people have ever tried to popularise sound
knowledge about the history of Polish on the Internet.
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