Re: phi-theta [was: Hellenish oddities]

On 24 Nov, H. S. Teoh wrote:

>On Thu, Nov 23, 2000 at 06:23:40PM -0600, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>[snip]
>> I still don't know what I'm doing wrong... maybe I just have the wrong
>> definition of "aspiration" in my mental dictionary? I thought that an
>> aspirated stop was simply one released with a puff of air; the problem is
>> that I can't conceive of a stop with *any* release being immediately
>> followed by another stop without a brief pause or vowel intervening.
>
>The way I handle [p<h>t<h>] is to aspirate the [p] prominently, and
>pronounce the [t] as I release the [p] with a puff of air. (So it's almost
>like [p<h>t].) But to me, "puffing" too hard on aspirate stops is overly
>exaggerated. The aspiration doesn't have to be *that* accentuated; just
>make sure you pronounce the unaspirates relatively "softer".
    To me, the difference seems to be that for aspirated stops, you use
your lip/tongue muscles to tightly close and you let a puff of air do
the work of forcing them open again; whereas in unaspirated stops,
once you've used the muscles to close, you use them again to open up,
so that the air doesn't have to do the work.
    People who abuse their vocal system by constantly tightening up
all their muscles when they speak are sometimes taught to use
unaspirated stops as a way of gaining conscious control over the muscles
as a first step in learning how to unclench them.
(I have done this both with L1 English speakers who have, as Teoh says,
" been "wired" to aspirate all initial unvoiced stops ", as well as with
Hebrew speakers, who have no problem with unaspirated stops
in word initial clusters such as [pg] and [kt]. In Hebrew, the extra
tension doesn't cause them to apsirate, rather to unaspirate with
more force.)

Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a.

A word is an awesome thing.