It’s been bugging me for a really long time.
Okay, in a few languages, certain consonants can function as vowels - generally, liquids like ‘L’ and ‘R’. How do these fit on a typical vowel diagram, if this is even a valid question?
I’m not sure what you’re referring to, but let me see if I can address some related questions. (Sorry, my recollection is fuzzy right now.]
[ul]
[li]w is frequently referred to as a ‘semivowel’ – it can function almost like a vowel in english, particularly in dipthongs. It even is a voewl in Welsh. I believe y can also be a semivowel. I don’t think that w gets charted as a voewl, though…[/li]
[li]Other consonants, such as n, are syllabic in that they make what should be a one-syllable word into a two-syllable word. I can’t think of an example right now, for no good reason.[/li][/ul]
I hope that helps, somewhat…
I once asked this question at http://linguistlist.org Unfortunately, at the moment, I don’t have access to the answers I received.
Some of the replies I received said that sounds as “rough” as “t” can be used as the core of a syllable, although this is much, much rarer than “softer” sounds like “r” or “l” being used.
The only word without a vowel that I remember off the top of my head was “pLt” where the “L” represents a Welsh “ll”. This would sound something like the “pst” you use to quietly get someone’s attention. I can’t remember what language it was in.
If you like words without vowels, look at Bella Colla and Czech (which can use “r” as a syllable core). Also, Georgian can have many consonants in a row, although I don’t know of any Georgian words that lack a vowel entirely.
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You can make whole sentences in Czech without vowels,
and depending on what you think, rhythm, shy, why, etc are all words without vowels in English. And some onomaetipeac (?) words are withour vowels “grrr”, “hmmm”, if they count.
[hijack]
NOTE: Letters surrounded by slashes – eg. /m/ – indicate phonological sounds, as distinct from written letters.
Not only liquids like /l/ and /r/, but sometimes also nasals like /m/, /n/, and /ng/. There are even dialects of Chinese – along with some American Indian languages like the aforementioned Bella Coola – that incorporate sibilant sounds (/s/, /z/ /sh/, /zh/) as syllable nuclei.
In analysis of spoken English at conversational speed, very often the final syllables of words like “button” and “bacon” are realized as syllabic nasals. Naturally, the same goes for English words like “tackle” and “butter” – the final syllables are often syllabic /l/ and /r/, respectively, especially as spoken conversationally by Americans.
Now then, from your OP, it looks like you had languages like Czech and Serbo-Croatian in mind. The very name “Serbo-Croatian” in that self-same tongue, srpskohrvatski, demonstrates the use of /r/ as a syllable nucleus – pronounce it as “sirp-skoh-her-vaht-ski”. Likewise, among the copious Czech examples would be Plzen, the town after which Pilsener beer is named.
As for the inclusion of these syllabic consonants into a vowel diagram … well, I’m not really shure what you have in mind by a “vowel diagram”. Do you mean a graphical diagram that includes both “openess” and “backness” as axes, like so:
Vowels of Spanish
----------------------
further back
---------------->
m |
o | i u
r |
e | e o
|
o |
p |
e | a
n v
Or do you have something else in mind, like a phonological inventory where valid “vowels” in agiven language are simply listed out in a roster?
You can make sentances in czech with no vowels, but they’re very rare and usually pretty tortured. Like
“Strc prst skrz krk”
is a czech tongue twister, meaning roughly “Push (your) fingers through (your) neck.” The no-vowel sentences don’t happen too much in day-to-day conversation. Glad you’re familiar with czech tho-
Sorry, that should be “finger”, not “fingers”. And capitalize “Czech”.
Hmm. From looking at your location, you may be Czech and already have known everthing I just said. If so,
Prominte, prosim vas! Jsem blbec! 
(trans: Forgive me, please! I am an idiot!)
Yes, bordelond, I do mean the triangle you showed me. I’m thinking that ‘L’ would be a front vowel, because it’s pronounced in the alveolar region (depends on the language, but I’m going by my own personal pronunciation here), but I haven’t a clue as to its height. Since the line between vowel and consonant is somewhat blurry, I’m just wondering what it would look like if I mapped consonants onto the vowel triangle.
Well, the tongue height of a syllabic /l/ is, if you think about it, as close as is physically possible – after all, either the tongue’s tip or blade actually touches the hard palate (not necessarily in the alveolar region, of course). So that might make /l/ seem like a far closer “vowel” than even /i/, but actually such analysis demonstrates why consonants like /l/ and tapped /r/ aren’t considered full-fledged vowels, and thus can’t really be plotted on a vowel chart. Vowels, by definition, are made with an unobstructed oral cavity. The tongue and lips SHAPE the oral cavity in a way that influences the quality of each pronounced vowel, but vowels are never produced with 100% obstruction.
(Incidentally, vocalic /l/ CAN be plotted on a vowel chart based on formants)
Having said that, there’s nothing to stop a non-vowel sound from serving as a syllable nucleus. However, “syllable nucleus” and “vowel” aren’t exactly the same thing, though there is considerable overlap in their realizations in actual human speech.
English /r/ is a little different, as it is an approximant, not a tap as in Spanish and many other languages. Therefore a complete obstruction of the oral cavity does not occur when pronouncing Englidh /r/, which especially lends the sound to frequent syllabification. The vowel in “bird” can be plotted as a central vowel, perhaps a little more fronted than schwa. However, when describing this vowel, one must make sure to mention that the tongue tip is RAISED during it’s pronounciation (most vowels are produced with the tongue tip resting down behind the bottom front teeth) – in other words, that the vowel is rhotacized.
The ancient Sanskrit grammarians thought about your question over 2000 years ago and arranged the phonemes (vowels, consonants, and semivowels) in an order that would make sense to you. Sanskrit used syllabic /r/ and /l/. Proto-Indo-European reconstruction posits four syllabic consonants: /m/, /l/, /n/, /r/. These survived in modern Czech and English. In ancient Sanskrit, only syllabic /l/ and /r/ existed, and they were classified as vowels.
In Sanskrit, the obstruent consonants are classified in five series: I velar, II palatal, III retroflex, IV dental, and V labial. Within each of these series, there are five consonants that go in the order 1. unvoiced unaspirated, 2. unvoiced aspirated, 3. voiced unaspirated, 4. voiced aspirated, 5. nasal.
Thus the first 25 consonants are arranged systematically like this:
k kh g gh ng
c ch j jh ñ
T Th D Dh N
t th d dh n
p ph b bh m
Following these come the four semivowels:
y r l v
The reason for this order:
/y/ goes with the palatals
/r/ goes with the retroflex
/l/ goes with the dentals
/v/ goes with the labials.
“Vowel” and “consonant” refer to the sounds produced. You can’t tick of vowels and consonants based on the letters that are used to represent them in a word.
“Why” is not a vowell-less word. It has at the beginning a vowel glide and at the end a diphthong.
Similarly, in the Czech words listed above, the letter “R” represents a vowel sound. So those aren’t vowel-less words either.