Talk:Abkhaz phonology

message: Are there any consonants which occur only ungeminated in the Bzyp Sadz dialect of Abkhazian? --88.76.251.11 14:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sadz, you mean (Bzyp does not have phonemic gemination). Vaux and Pəsiypa (1997) do not give a list of the consonants which have geminated forms in Sadz, leading me to think that all consonants may be capable of appearing either short or long. The consonants attested in Vaux and Pəsiypa's paper as having geminated forms are the following: []. As you can see, there appears to be no phonological reason why all consonants shouldn't have a corresponding geminate. Thefamouseccles 02:10, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

text: No, as far as I know all consonants may appear as singletons, and geminate consonants are also reduced to singletons in word-initial position. Thefamouseccles 02:18, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Geminates in the 
Bzyp
 Sadz dialect 

message: The phonology of these languages seems to me very similar  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Segnor Bugatti (talk • contribs) 17:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The phonemic systems of Amharic and Mingrelian are quite similar, too. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. Thefamouseccles (talk) 14:20, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abkhaz and Kwakwala 

message: The text beneath the table refers to red and green letters, but I don't see any coloured entries in the table. Did they get lost in an edit somewhere? -- pne (talk) 11:07, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The alveolo-palatal and uvular columns should have consonants that are dark red and dark green.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 16:16, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: this edit summary is confusing.  How is switching to blue and green beneficial to the colorblind? — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 08:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colourful phonemes 

message: So there's seems to be quite a lot of uncertainty in regards to this vowel, the description here being:
>and a close vowel /ɨ ~ ə/.
The page only cites one source, and there it's referred simply as a "close vowel". Chirikba refers to it as a high close vowel. Another paper by Bert Vaux, first mentions that "The phonemic status of ә is disputed" and "will be assumed here for ease of exposition", and then he generalises it saying it's [ɨ] for simplification.
I want to argue that the vowel 'ә' isn't as high as [ɨ], and [ɘ] would be a better description for the sound in general. 
In the book "Грамматика абхазского языка: фонетика и  морфология", they make it very clear that the ы in Abkhaz, and the ы in Russian are different sounds. The first indication that 'ы' isn't [ɨ] comes from this passage:
>гласный ы по сравнению с а является более закрытым, что зависит от более высокого положению языка. По сравнению с абхазским ы, русское ы по положению языка более задний и более закрытый гласный.
Translation by google translate
> The vowel ы is more closed than a, which depends on the higher position of the tongue. Compared to Abkhaz ы, the Russian ы is a more back and close vowel by the position of the tongue. 
This part alone saying that the Russian 'ы' is more closed, should be enough to say that the Abkhaz 'ы' is probably [ɘ] or [ɘ̝]. The next relevant passage I'll mention is this:
> During articulations of ы, the tip of the tongue touches the crowns of the lower incisors so that the anterior part of the tongue at the level of the canines rises somewhat above the level of the lower incisors. the cavity of the pharynx(?) is a resonator, tapering slightly in its upper part. The oral cavity is a tube, the wide part of which is turned backward, and the narrow part is forward. 
So to close my case, I say we should present [ɘ] as one of the main realisations of 'ы'
Lugë Ushqimi (talk) 02:34, 5 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality of the high close vowel 'ы'