Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!oitnews.harvard.edu!newsfeed.rice.edu!bcm.tmc.edu!news.msfc.nasa.gov!newsfeed.internetmci.com!chi-news.cic.net!news.midplains.net!gw2.att.com!nntpa!mac-118.lz.att.com!user
From: rte@elmo.lz.att.com (Ralph T. Edwards)
Subject: Re: Neantherthal Vowels
Message-ID: <rte-1710951018300001@mac-118.lz.att.com>
Sender: news@nntpa.cb.att.com (Netnews Administration)
Nntp-Posting-Host: mac-118.lz.att.com
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs
References: <45bh27$kjf$1@mhafm.production.compuserve.com> <45c5c6$3lg@netsrv2.spss.com> <hubey.813300898@pegasus.montclair.edu> <45ffiv$3e3@medici.trl.OZ.AU> <45tssd$7qp@rzsun02.rrz.uni-hamburg.de> <ZpEHosf.ben1910@delphi.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 15:18:30 GMT
Lines: 27

In article <ZpEHosf.ben1910@delphi.com>, ben1910@delphi.com wrote:

> Jens Wuepper <fm4a004@GEOMAT.math.uni-hamburg.de> writes:
>  
> >Are vowelless languages just a theoretical (yet feasible) possibility
> >or they exist in reality?
>  
> I do not know about completely vowelless languages.  But some languages
> are more vowelless than others.  For example, a native speaker of
> English cannot pronounce a name like Knuth without inserting a short
> vowel between the K and the N.  A native speaker of Russian can do
> without that vowel just fine.

Actually native speakers of English have no trouble pronouncing words like
knecht without vowels.  Words like connect are pronounced that way in
rapid speech all the time.  The problem is more basic.  Because [knEkt]
and [k@nEkt] are considered equivalent, sometimes a vowel gets inserted
where it doesn't belong.  It's a form of hypercorrection, since the form
with the vowel is the more formal version (in English).  All of this
proceeds on an unconscious level.
English w and v get confused in many foreign accents for the same reason,
they are heard as just two ways of pronouncing the same phoneme (in the 
foreigner's mind).  Differing phoneme boundaries (and in this case 
differing rules for elision) are the source of accents.

-- 
R.T.Edwards rte@elmo.att.com 908 576-3031
