Re: Questions (mostly about phonemics)

"Back there" and "bat there" sound completely different IML, as do
"backs"/"bats" or simply "back"/"bat", the final stops being
customarily unreleased.  We  identify stops aurally by their effect on
neighboring continuants, and that effect goes backwards as well as
forwards, the backward component caused by the mouth preparing for the
stop articulation.

Any description of Pinyin should tell you that e.g. P represents /p_h/
and B bare /p/.  In English stop pairs like /p/ and /b/ are
distinguished by three phenomena.  The most important for perception
seems to be fortis/lenis - the mouth muscles are tenser for /p/ than
for /b/.  The other two are voice and aspiration.  /p/ is voiceless
and typically aspirated, especially initially - though generally not
in clusters such as "sp".  /b/ is typically voiced, but the fact that
I can readily distingush /b_0/ from /p/ (as when whispering) reveals
that voice is not the only or necessarily most important factor.


On 1/20/07, Leon Lin <leon_math@...> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> These have been confusing me to the point that I start to try to figure them
> out in public. People sometimes stare at me when I repeat a phoneme/word
> over and over again.
>
> 1. Is it possible to distinguish two final unreleased consanants? i.e. Is
> there a sound difference between "back there" and "bat there"
>
> 2. I have heard some people call words with syllabic consanants like
> "button" a 'nasal release'. Isn't this just a glottal stop followed by an
> /n/?
>
> 3. Is stress also accompanied by a raise in pitch (in English)?
>
> === If you speak Mandarin ===
>
> When I went to China, some of my cousins said my very Mandarin was very
> accurate and without accent.  I wonder if that's true...
>
> 1. Do voiced plosives and affricates exist in Mandarin? After some thought,
> it seems that pinyin /b d g z j zh/ are just unaspirated versions of /p t k
> c q ch/. Maybe that's why other Romanization systems have a lot of unvoiced
> consanants, as in the name of the Taiwanese city Kaohsiung (pinyin
> Gaoxiong). Or maybe its both voiced and unaspirated and it sounds unvoiced
> because there aren't unaspirated voiced plosives (are there?) in English...
>
> 2. Tone
>
> 2.1. The 3rd tone confuses me.
>
> 2.1.1. It is said to lower in pitch and then rise again, but this seems only
> to be true when the person is enunciating, speaking slowly, or speaking the
> character alone (as when teaching the student how to say it). To me it just
> falls into a very low pitch.  I feel that the 2nd tone is more accurately
> described with the 3rd tone's description.  Say di3-xia4 (below) and compare
> with di2-ren2 (enemy).
>
> 2.1.2 The 3rd tone seems to change into the second tone when it is followed
> by another character of the third tone: say yong3-yuan3 (forever, eternal).
>
> 2.2. After repeating the 4th tone over and over, I still do not see how it
> 'falls'. It just seems to be a shorter version of the 1st tone, sort of like
> the difference in the length of the a's in "man" and "hat".  This also
> applies to other tonal languages, which seem to have all these tones but to
> me just sound like vowel length.
>
> 3. Final pinyin /e/ does not seem to be pure, but with a unrounded central
> semivowel glide into it (I've heard people say that research has yet to find
> a language with a central semivowel). This glide seems to be a semivowelized
> unrounded high central vowel, described on the Ithkuil page as, "an obscure
> vowel found in Turkish and Japanese". (According to Wikipedia, it exists in
> Spanish and Korean as well (and IMO in Mandarin, too))  X-Sampa [M] or [M\].
>
> To see why I feel it isn't "pure", say first part of the word "suppose"
> (don't say the "ppose" part). This is quite different from the sound found
> in se4, as in yan2-se4 (color).
>
> Thanks,
> Leon
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>