Re: Phonotactics of languages (Satrajit S Ghosh )


Subject: Re: Phonotactics of languages
From:    Satrajit S Ghosh  <satra(at)BU.EDU>
Date:    Fri, 1 Feb 2002 14:48:37 -0500

Dear Tsth, I think the overlap (or the lack thereof) of phonemes(*) across languages is an interesting issue by itself. If one could categorize phonemes from a purely acoustic perspective across languages, I would hypothesize that the union of this set would reflect a large percentage of the phonetic structure of most non-tonal languages. I am interested particularly in American English and how acoustically perceivable sounds containing sequences of phonemes not present in the language are produced from a neural control standpoint. Satra (*) The notion of a phoneme is greatly debated and I dont want to quite get into it. I just want to keep it simple and mean the smallest acoustically dissociable units that comprise a language. -----Original Message----- From: Tsth Laszls [mailto:tothl(at)inf.u-szeged.hu] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 3:54 AM To: Satrajit S Ghosh Cc: AUDITORY(at)lists.mcgill.ca Subject: Re: Phonotactics of languages On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, Satrajit S Ghosh wrote: > I am looking for a source that describes phonotactics of languages. In > particular, I am interested in phoneme clusters that are not permissible > in American English but are allowed in other languages. > What about the special case that certain phonemes do not exist in one language or the other? For example, I think that the vowel set of most European languages differs from that of English. Laszlo Toth Hungarian Academy of Sciences * Research Group on Artificial Intelligence * "Failure only begins e-mail: tothl(at)inf.u-szeged.hu * when you stop trying" http://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/~tothl *


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