Re: phi-theta [was: Hellenish oddities]

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". (But I know
it's hard for many English L1 speakers to pronounce unaspirated stops,
because they've been "wired" to aspirate all initial unvoiced stops. I
guess I'm glad my L1 does differentiate between voiced, unvoiced and
aspirated stops. :-)

> I was talking to a friend of mine last night, who gave me perhaps some
> insight into the issue, but I still don't know. The impression I got from
> him was that it's possible to conceive of aspirated geminates such as
> /p_hp_h/ as [p:_h], by which I mean a long consonant with only one aspirate
> release. Since it's considered as one unit, the release applies to the whole
> thing instead of to individual [p_h]s. But is it conceivable for /k_ht_h/ to
> be also be considered as one sound with aspirate release? Or am I completely
> off base?
Hmm, that seems to be what I'm doing :-)


T

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