Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!news.duke.edu!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!malgudi.oar.net!chemabs!rmt51
From: rturkel@cas.org (Rick Turkel)
Subject: Re: Question: Vowelless word
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Message-ID: <1995Mar16.040125.11430@chemabs.uucp>
Originator: rmt51@rmt51mws
Sender: Rick Turkel (rturkel@cas.org)
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT
Organization: S.W.I.G
References: <3k0rl6$mq7@netnews.upenn.edu> <AARS9PlG74@mlan.msk.ru>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 04:01:25 GMT
Lines: 44

I wasn't going to get involved, but...

In article <AARS9PlG74@mlan.msk.ru>,
Helena V. Lazareva  <helena@mlan.msk.ru> wrote:
>As far as I know since I was a student, "wolf" in Czekh ("vlk") is

Not exactly, Helen.  It is a vowel known as a "syllabic l" (po-russki
"slogovoi l"), so called because, like any other vowel, it forms the
basis of the syllable.  Czech, Slovak and most of the South-Slavic
languages also have a syllabic "r," and Yiddish has a syllabic "m."

>a typical vowelless word.  Secondly, the symbol "tvyordy znak" from the point
>of view of a Russian cannot be considered a vowell.  Thus some Bulgarian

Ah, but _not_ from the point of view of a Bulgarian.  The "back jer" in
Bulgarian actually _is_ a vowel, a schwa.  Historically and in form it
is cognate with a Russian tv. znak (sometimes - the first one in your
example below derives from an earlier back nasal, which merged with "u"
in Russian; the second one, however, is the modern reflex of a Common
Slavic back jer, which merged with "o" in Russian when it wasn't lost
altogether --> Russian "ugol'").  In Bulgarian, though, it retained its
original status as an independent phoneme.

>words, as for example "angle" (containing two tv.znak's) look perfectly
>vowelless.

It may look vowelless, but most definitely isn't.  Problem is, I'm not
enough of a phoneticist to be able to explain the sound as more than a
neutral vowel.  The closest thing to it in Russian is the first "o" in
"moloko" in a dialect with "akanje."  It can never be a stressed vowel
in Russian (or in English, for that matter), but in Bulgarian this
vowel can also bear the word stress.

>With best wishes,
>Helen W.Lazareva, Moscow
>-----
>helena@mlan.msk.ru

I Vam.
-- 
Rick Turkel         (___  _____  _  _  _  _  __     _  ___   _   _  _  ___
rturkel@freenet.columbus)oh.us|   |  \  )  |/  \     |    |   |   \__)    |
rturkel@cas.org        /      |  _| __)/   | ___)    | ___|_  |  _(  \    |
Rich or poor, it's good to have money.  Ko rano rani | u jamu pada.
