And now for something even shallower, albeit somewhat cryptic:
Written while drinking Svijany 11°, shortly after grading 67 individual three-page Phonology exams.
Such a beautiful short tough word. Starts with a fricative, voiceless of course. Voiced consonants are pussy -- it would be /v/ if it was voiced, and how would that sound? Exactly: gay. And it's a fricative, for maximum catharsis: a fricative is like the perfect combination of the force of a consonant and the flowing air of a vowel. Your upper teeth dig into your bottom lip as you hiss your way into the word. Then to the vowel itself, a grunt almost, the back of your tongue lifted to within a fraction of the soft palate. Your whole tongue's close to the roof of your mouth, so it's an effortless move from the initial consonant: all you have to do is widen your lips and you're there. And then the finish, the final consonant: hard and gutteral and voiceless, yes, and where's it articulated? The soft palate of course, just a millimeter away from that unobtrusive little vowel sound! A brilliant finish: whether left unaspirated or given that extra push of breath at the end, its plosive force cuts off the air and then releases it, like the sound you make when you get punched in the stomach. It ends the word like a full-body hit in a mosh pit, that leaves you gasping for breath, and slamming back for more.
Yeah, I'm...not sure where that came from. It's in the same format as one of the answers I was looking for on the Phonology exam: take a word and dissect it, discuss the articulation of each phoneme in order. Despite the fact that the word above is, needless to say, not one of the ones I asked them to analyze, I would have been absolutely thrilled if someone had turned in the above paragraph. Because, mark you, it gives all the relevant information for each phoneme, and! It uses complete sentences! You wouldn't think it'd be that hard! But the little twits cannot get it straight.
I'm...gonna go lie down now.
Such a beautiful short tough word. Starts with a fricative, voiceless of course. Voiced consonants are pussy -- it would be /v/ if it was voiced, and how would that sound? Exactly: gay. And it's a fricative, for maximum catharsis: a fricative is like the perfect combination of the force of a consonant and the flowing air of a vowel. Your upper teeth dig into your bottom lip as you hiss your way into the word. Then to the vowel itself, a grunt almost, the back of your tongue lifted to within a fraction of the soft palate. Your whole tongue's close to the roof of your mouth, so it's an effortless move from the initial consonant: all you have to do is widen your lips and you're there. And then the finish, the final consonant: hard and gutteral and voiceless, yes, and where's it articulated? The soft palate of course, just a millimeter away from that unobtrusive little vowel sound! A brilliant finish: whether left unaspirated or given that extra push of breath at the end, its plosive force cuts off the air and then releases it, like the sound you make when you get punched in the stomach. It ends the word like a full-body hit in a mosh pit, that leaves you gasping for breath, and slamming back for more.
Yeah, I'm...not sure where that came from. It's in the same format as one of the answers I was looking for on the Phonology exam: take a word and dissect it, discuss the articulation of each phoneme in order. Despite the fact that the word above is, needless to say, not one of the ones I asked them to analyze, I would have been absolutely thrilled if someone had turned in the above paragraph. Because, mark you, it gives all the relevant information for each phoneme, and! It uses complete sentences! You wouldn't think it'd be that hard! But the little twits cannot get it straight.
I'm...gonna go lie down now.
posted by ridley at 6/21/2005 01:41:00 PM
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