Talk:Voiceless dental, alveolar and postalveolar lateral approximants

context for English
Can somebody add a note about the context of the English one? --Backinstadiums (talk) 15:10, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
 * If you are referring to the example word "clean", I don't understand what you mean by 'context' here. It's a word pronounced out of context.RoachPeter (talk) 09:33, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

English example 'clean'
Examples of voiceless approximants are very hard to find in WP, so it's good to have one for the English word 'clean' here. Unfortunately, the example doesn't fulfil the criterion of "narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream". Spectrographic analysis of the initial consonant confirms what my ears tell me - there is a burst of high-frequency noise lasting .01 sec. and extending up to 11 kHz, a spectrum typical of voiceless fricatives. I am still waiting to hear a genuinely non-fricative example of a voiceless approximant. RoachPeter (talk) 09:40, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I wonder if there is any natural language that distinguishes between voiceless lateral and . It looks as if most instances of  are allophones of, with various clines of a more or less "turbulent airstream". I assume they are more likely to be described as a "voiceless approximant" (rather than a voiceless fricative) if they are devoiced allophones of an approximant. Quite like  etc. is more likely to be described as  if it takes the lenis part in a fortis-lenis constrast. –Austronesier (talk) 10:43, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I have just found that you posted this :) –Austronesier (talk) 10:49, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * And Prof Roach posted this! Nardog (talk) 10:56, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I am sure you are right that "voiceless approximant" is most likely to be chosen as a label for a sound when there is a voiced approximant for it to be related to, and much less likely to be used as a stand-alone label for a sound without cognates. As I wrote elsewhere, whatever the theoretical case, it seems that people feel a need for the term 'voiceless approximant' to distinguish some sounds from voiceless fricatives. RoachPeter (talk) 12:00, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
 * See also Talk:Voiceless labialized velar approximant. Nardog (talk) 02:48, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

What would be the "proper" IPA for Iaai then?  or maybe even ? When I try to produce these, all three come out as a whistle. –Austronesier (talk) 20:54, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * If one's position is to permit no such things as "voiceless approximants", then shouldn't it also be acceptable to attach the voiceless diacritic to an approximant symbol and say it represents a voiceless fricative, since by (one's) definition there are no voiceless approximants? ⟨ʍ⟩ is defined as a fricative yet the sound in English it represents is said to be the voiceless version of [w] (and is described as an approximant by those who admit the concept), so naturally the voiceless version of [ɥ] would be a fricative.
 * The source you cite (Maddieson & Anderson) actually pertains to our conversation quite well. I was about to say ⟨ɥ⟩ usually represents a sound with rounded lips (as in French) so it should be ⟨çʷ⟩ rather than ⟨ɸʲ⟩ (and according to SOWL a fricative can have only one place of friction), but apparently Iaai is a language that contrasts labials and labialized labials and its /ɥ̊ ɥ/ are not labialized, i.e. [ɸʲ βʲ] (p. 176). I would move our articles on [  ] to the names as defined by the IPA if I could, but I can't move [ɥ] without the help of an admin or page mover, which means it could go the RM route. Maddieson & Anderson presents a strong case for the move then, because it provides an example of ⟨ɥ⟩ used for a non-labialized sound, rendering the current name even less desirable. Nardog (talk) 21:19, 3 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Tl;dr but isn't the English lateral in clean a postvoiced approximant (a consonant which starts as a voiceless fricative and ends as an approximant)? I can certainly hear a before the vowel. Same goes for other phonological approximants in English. They're not pure voiceless fricatives (maybe the  in cue is, though). Perhaps this is also a meaningful distinction (voiceless fricative vs. postvoiced approximant). This is likely a postvoiced approximant. Sol505000 (talk) 22:36, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * I didn't merge the English one into the fricative article because it wasn't cited to a decent source (which can no doubt be easily found notwithstanding). Most examples in the merged approximant articles were, as I feared, devoiced allophones the sources didn't explicitly say were approximants as opposed to fricatives (e.g. Bengali, Faroese). Though I merged them, I'm not convinced we should list them at all, whether we have separate voiceless approximant articles or not; they may be only partially devoiced or not fit whatever definition of a voiceless approximant even according to those who admit them. It strikes me as akin to listing clusters as affricates. Nardog (talk) 23:22, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we could cover those (what I call postvoiced approximants, or perhaps also prevoiced ones? With a reversed approximant-fricative order) in the lead section of each article once we find enough RS's. Some of those are genuine fricatives for sure and should be listed in the table (I know, we don't need to list every language - but still). Sol505000 (talk) 23:31, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * By "they/them" I don't mean all examples formerly listed in the voiceless approximant articles, just the non-distinctive ones the sources only make a passing mention of. Nardog (talk) 23:46, 4 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes, me too. Also the approximants devoiced due to aspiration, which seem to follow (almost) the same pattern no matter the language - see above. Sol505000 (talk) 23:49, 4 January 2021 (UTC)