Re: Fricative Nasal Aspiration (was: Re: IPA griefs)

H. S. Teoh wrote:

>On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 08:18:08PM +0200, Kristian Jensen wrote:
>[snip]
>> If you guys want to acheive an orally aspirated fricative, then what you
>[snip suggestions]
>
>Hmm, interesting. I tried pronouncing an aspirated [s], and it came out
>like an [s] followed immediately by a [h]. It didn't sound very much
>different, at least to my ears (probably because [s] and [s<h>] are
>allophonic to me), but I did the "paper test" and the paper flapped, so it
>*was* an aspirated fricative. :-)
Well, that's basically what aspiration is; a segment followed by [h].
In some languages, aspirated stops can be viewed as a consonant cluster
with /h/. AFAIK, the aspirated stops of Mon-Khmer languages developed
from consonant clusters with /h/.

>What I did was simply to pronounce an [s] but give it an extra puff of air
>toward the end of the frication (almost like pronouncing "s-hha", where
>the "hh" is almost like an ejective. For me, this works with aspirating
>[f], [s], [C] and [T]. [x] seems to sound a bit too much like [h].
This suggestion works too. Basically, what you want to achieve is a
[s] and [h] consonant cluster.

>I tried to aspirate the voiced labial fricative as well, but [b<h>a] came
>out like [b@ha] instead (or like a *loud* [ba] if I try to get rid of the
>gap between the [b] and the [h]). I know someone said that voiced
>fricatives technically don't exist, but IE apparently has letters for them
>so I couldn't resist trying. :-)
When I try them myself, I always get a voiced stop followed by a breathy
voiced vowel. But I have heard of a lang from India that that has a
phonemic contrast between modal and breathy voiced vowels in addition to
plain and aspirated voiced stops. I think this lang was Sindhi. So there
is a potential phonemic contrast between a voiced aspirated stop followed
by a modal voiced vowel, and a plain voiced stop followed by a breathy
voiced vowel (e.g., /b<h>a/ and /ba<breathy>/), so I can't be doing it all
correct either.

-kristian- 8)