Re: Lenition

En réponse à Christian Thalmann <cinga@...>:

>
> Similarly, if you were to produce an /f/ with the same loudness
> (volume) as a /v/, you'd have no doubt about which is harder.  You
> can try that with any cheap sound editor on your own machine.
>
Exactly. I myself tend to correlate hardness with the signal-to-noise ratio of
a sound. I personally find noise harder than pure notes (signal), and thanks to
the vibration of the vocal chords voiced sounds contain more signal than
voiceless ones, and are thus softer. But since it's about signal-to-noise
ratio, it's by essence a relative thing.

Also, I consider energy use too, and there again voiceless sounds are certainly
harder than voiced sounds. To make a voiced sound, you just let your vocal
chords at rest, in a soft state. With the air stream they will naturally
vibrate and create the voiced sound without having to put any special energy to
it. On the other hand, to produce a voiceless sound you have to strengthen your
vocal chords in order to prevent them from vibrating in the passage of air.
Hence you need more energy to produce a voiceless sound than a voiced sound,
and it is thus "harder". Finally, voiced sounds blend better in the spoken
stream than voiceless sounds, which, especially in case of stops, really cut
the spoken stream, while voiceless sounds, even stops, tend to blend in it
nicely. In this case too you can consider voiceless sounds harder than voiced
sounds.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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