Re: "Transferral" verb form in LC-01

On Thu, 2002-06-27 at 16:06, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> I'm not sure French does. Vowels are not longer before voiced stops (foreigners
> tend to hear that, but it's an artefact due again to the difficulty to spot the
> exact limit between a vowel and a voiced stop), nor after, and there are no
> other articulatory features I can think of that accompany voicing. I actually
> wonder why such a strong distinguishing feature like voicing would need another
> feature to recognise it. If you say that you can say the same of aspiration
> (which I hadn't noticed in English initial voiceless stops until someone
> pointed that out on the list a few years ago...). To me voicing is a strong
> distinguishing feature that doesn't need anything else to be recognisable, but
> aspiration is nearly inaudible. I guess this is again more a problem of first
> language and common distinctions made rather than absolute quality.
Aren't voicing and aspiration just basically the same thing, though? To
do with when the voice is 'switched on'---if it's before the end of the
consonant, it's voiced, if it's at the end (+/-20 ms) of it, it's
unvoiced, and if it's after, it's voiced?

And how about a fortis/lenis distinction---I understand English unvoiced
stops are fortis, voiced are lenis (and that this, not voice or
aspiration, is what causes the distinction). Although I have no idea
what it means.

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