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Re: CHAT: cultural interpretation [was Re: THEORY: language and the brain]

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Wednesday, July 2, 2003, 20:30
Quoting Roger Mills <romilly@...>:

> Mark J. Reed's cri de coeur resonates with me, as well-- > >All of this [voiced_0] vs [unvoiced] stuff is still very mysterious to > me. I have no clue how to pronounce [dZ_0] or [v_0] other than > like [tS] and [f]. > > Perhaps the X-Sampa diacritic "_0" with consonants should better be > interpreted as "lenis", "lax", or "voiceless onset/offset" rather than > "voiceless". It seems to me that to refer to a "voiceless [d]" or whatever > is a contradiction in terms-- IPA [b d g etc.] are inherently voiced-- and a > "voiceless [d]" would be describing some sort of [t] articulation. > (Voiceless vowels are another matter; that would be a legitimate use of the > "voiceless" diacritic.)
It seems to me that in actual usage, it is fortis vs lenis that decides between IPA [t] and [d], at least when discussing Germanic languages, possibly because everyone knows the voiceless marker, but marks for fortis/lenis appear to be unknown. Are there any? I don't think that my native 'lect has any pair where voicing is the critical difference ... so I might be feeling that "official" IPA is giving the distinction undue primacy! :-) Andreas PS The voiceless marker is certainly legitimate on consonant glyphs that don't come in voiced/voiceless pairs on the IPA chart.