Re: "Transferral" verb form in LC-01

In a message dated 06/26/02 5:58:36 PM, butsuri@BTOPENWORLD.COM writes:

<< Is the kind of link between voicing and aspiration seen in English
common?  That is, in languages where only one of these is regarded as
phonemic, is it common for the other to correlate with it to that
degree? >>

    From my phonetics class:  It is extremely rare that voice is the only
determining factor when voicing is phonemic.  English is a good example.
Initially, you get aspiration as the secondary determining factor.  Finally,
you get vowel length and release, or glottalization (vowels are longer before
voiced stops, and voiced stops are released; vowels are shorter before
voiceless stops, and tend to be glottalized, or not fully realized).  Due to
the lack of the secondary determining factors, a /t/, /p/ or /k/ after an /s/
could *sound* like /d/, /b/ or /g/, respectively.  However, it is definitely,
100%, indisputably a voiceless sound, either [t], [k] or [p] (we proved this
with instruments in phonetics).  For other examples, in German, voiceless
stops are slightly aspirated initially, and finally, all stops are realized
as voiceless, so the distinction is nullified.  The same thing happens in
Russian finally.  I've also heard of languages where the voiced stops are
accompanied by creaky voice.  In Spanish (and this is speaking from
experience, not phonetics), the voiced stops just seem to be longer, when
they're actually stops and not fricatives.  I don't know if that's true, or
if that's just a strange impression I'm getting.  Anyway, the point was that
distinguishing between something like [t] and [d] without any secondary
articulatory features is not that easy.  It can be done, but more often than
not, languages will compensate via other means.

-David

"fawiT, Gug&g, tSagZil-a-Gariz, waj min DidZejsat wazid..."
"Soft, driven, slow and mad, like some new language..."
                    -Jim Morrison

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