Re: /p/ versus devoiced b?

On Sun, 28 Jan 2001, Danny Wier wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > Behalf Of E-Ching Ng
> > Sent: Sunday, 28 January, 2001 1:25 AM
>
> > Imperative wrote:
> > >Why is it that /p/ and devoiced /b/ sound slightly different? I recall
> > >reading somewhere that it has something to do with fortis and lenis
> > >voiceless (or I could be mistaken?)
> >
> > We should ask Yoon Ha.  Korean has a three way contrast between voiceless
> > stops: aspirated, unaspirated, and fortis.  Is the devoiced /b/ the fortis
> > stop?
>
> [If I get this wrong YHL, kick me.]
Nah, I wouldn't do this to you.  But I could possibly give a better
question if someone would explain what the difference is between /p/ and
devoiced /b/, because the little phonetics/phonology I've had/have read
is absolutely no help is figuring it out.  :-/

> I think of the plain consonants p, t, c, k as b, d, j, g which become
> devoiced in initial and final positions. (And final c becomes t.) This is
> because if I think of these consonants as p, t, c, k, then I tend to
> aspirate them. Consequence of being a native English speaker (we pronounce
> the t's in "stop" and "top" differently after all).
Yup--I *could* aspirate in "stop" and unaspirate in "top," it just sounds
terribly weird (with good reason).  :-p  And when pronouncing things in
other/unknown languages I probably default to non/aspiration as per English.

I will observe that p, t, c, k sound uncannily like b, d, j, g before
vowels (though not so much IMHO in the final positions, where p, t, k are
unreleased; and c in final position becomes unreleased t anyway)--is that
perhaps the difference between /p/ and devoiced /b/?  But the difference
between, oh, /t/ in "stop" and Korean unaspirated /t/ seems nonexistent
or very tiny, and I'm not sure (again) if a devoiced /d/ would come into
play somewhere....

> > The three Korean grad students in my phonetics class told us that fortis
> > stops were produced by stiffening the vocalis folds so that there was no
> > vibration in the larynx.  This made things as clear as mud to me.  There
> > were slightly audible differences between individual unaspirated
> > and fortis
> > pairs which they produced for us, but I could never generalise the
> > difference and recognise what made them different.
>
> And I still can't figure out what is meant by "glottalized" for the
> consonants pp, tt, ss, cc, kk. I just cheat and pronounce them ejectives
> like in Amharic, Georgian and Navajo, but that's probably not the correct
> way. Every description of Korean phonology just mentions "glottal tension",
> which automatically ends up being ejective for me.
Far as I can tell, the above refers to pp, tt, (ss), cc, kk when saying
"fortis," which I've also seen called "glottalized," which I've also seen
called "tensified" (I do wish there were one terminology so it'd be less
confusing).

You'd think the !@#$ descriptions of Korean phonology could list other
languages (I would hope that there's one or two...) that also has the
same sounds so you can figure out what the heck they mean.  :-/  If you
can find me a link to sound clips of ejectives (I tried a couple web
searches with no luck), I can listen to them and tell you if they sound
the same as the glottalized/fortis/tensified/??? stops in Korean....

_The Korean Alphabet_ confused me further with terms like "wholly muddy"
and "neither clear nor muddy" and "raised apicals" until (I'm slow) I
rediscovered the table of traditional *Chinese* sound classifications
around Sejong's time.  Not to mention I'm skimming the thing right now
for any insights, which involves recognizing and skipping a lot of
interesting but not-currently-relevant stuff on cosmology and Phags-pa
and who knows what.  :-p

Hmm, possibly useful passage ("The Phonological Analysis Reflected in the
Korean Writing System" by Young-Key Kim-Renaud in _The Korean Alphabet_,
p.165):
(NOTE: Since I can't get the haceks? I've used "eo" for o-hacek and "eu"
for u-hacek, as is standard)

"It seems that Sejong considered the degree of aspiration a determining
factor in the famous three-way stop distinction in Korean.  According to
Chin-W. Kim (1970), who defines aspiration as a function of the glottal
opening at the time of release of the oral closure of a stop, the glottal
opening is teh largest in the case of the heavily aspirated series and
smallest in the tense group.  Thus, in Cheong'eum the slightly aspirated
sounds were interpreted as ch'eong (clear/airy) and heavily aspirated
ones even more ch'eong.  Tense sounds were thought to have a close
contact at the glottis and possibly also at the point of articulation,
giving the impression of being t'ak (muddy/dense).  It is interesting to
note that in Korean the strongest consonants were created either by
opening the glottis wide or by narrowing it tightly.  Rough ch'ach'eong
sounds were created with an extra stroke, while tense consonants were
formed by squeezing the same symbol twice into the consonantal space."

Things to keep in mind: this is based on the Korean of Sejong's time
(though the tensed stops seem not to have changed in nature, except that
modern Korean doesn't have "hh") and "strongest" refers to the way Sejong
designed the alphabet hierarchically according to his phonological analysis.

> For the same reason I think of the plain consonats as being "voiced".
They changed the transliteration so p, t, c, k are written as b, d, ch
(no change in that one), g before vowels <shrug>.  You can voice the
stops in that context and still be understood.  But then, most Koreans
are very used to deciphering mangled "American Korean" after years of
Itaewon shoppers and 8th Army people.  =^)

YHL