Linguistik-Klassifikation
Refine
Year of publication
- 2008 (2) (remove)
Document Type
- Part of a Book (1)
- Conference Proceeding (1)
Language
- English (2) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (2)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (2)
Keywords
- Aerodynamik (1)
- Affrikata (1)
- Nungisch (1)
- Qiang-Sprache (1)
- Sinotibetische Sprachen (1)
- Sprachliche Universalien (1)
- Sprachtypologie (1)
- Stimmhaftigkeit (1)
- Stimmlosigkeit (1)
- Zischlaut (1)
In this paper it is argued that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part.
This paper is more about presenting phenomena and questions related to the concept of transitivity in Tibeto-Burman languages that I hope will stimulate discussion, rather than presenting strong conclusions. Sections 2 and 3 present alternative analyses of transitivity and questions about transitivity in two Tibeto-Burman languages I have worked on. In Section 4 I discuss some general issues about transitivity.