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Re: "Transferral" verb form in LC-01

From:Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>
Date:Thursday, June 27, 2002, 6:30
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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Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>