Re: Consonant Clusters at the Beginning of Words (I)
Saul Epstein 
Thu, 06 Nov 1997 14:36:33 -0600

At 09:44 AM 11/6/97 -0600, Rob wrote:

>At 08:42 AM 11/6/97 -0600, Saul wrote:
><snip>
>>move on to the following vowel. There's much less time and room with
>>something like /tv/. Whether it would come out as [tf] or [dv] -- or
>>[t^v] -- depends on how Vulcan handles voice assimilation.
>
>Ahh. I guess when I was playing with it, I was pronouncing it [t^v]
>and missing the [^].

Could be. I don't mean to suggest that /tv/ is impossible, just phonetically
unlikely.

>>>Then next, I'd like to know how we propose to explain kn, nm or wv?
>>>stop+nasel stop, or nasel stop+nasel stop.
>>
>>Right. That's part II probably. /nm/ may just have to go. And is /wv/ at
>>the beginning of a word? Yikes.
>
>Hmmm... you know, I may have made a mistake about /wv/ I cannot find it
>now. I may have misread my own writing when I transcribed my email. I bet 
>that should have been /vr/ instead. That one does appear at the beggining 
>of a word. The /nm/ should have been /mn/.

For whatever reason, /mn/ looks a lot "friendler" to me than /nm/. Probably
because it actually occurs in Greek and Latin. I intend part II to deal with
word-initial stop+stop and stop+nasal clusters. Except for my exclusion for
now of <'> aspirates and the w family, I think that covers stop+[any C].

>Yup. That /qy/ would be a throat-bender then. Just for that reason alone
>we may want to keep it ;-)

I confess I had the same thought. Maybe Vulcans have really long, flexible
tongues.

--
from Saul Epstein
liberty <at> uit <dot> net
www <dot> johnco <dot> cc <dot> ks <dot> us <slash> <tilde> sepstein
"Surak ow'phaaper thes'hi thes'tca'; thes'phaadjar thes'hi suraketca'."
					-- K'dvarin Urswhl'at