Re: C-IPA underlying principles and methods

Christophe wrote:
> > * I guess it has something to do with the difference between sibilant
> > and
> > non-sibilant fricatives, but I don't know what that difference is. I'm
> > getting out of my depth here, I'm afraid.
> >
> I personally find [T] pretty sibilant, so I don't know what the difference
is
> either.
The difference is in the amount of high-frequency noise seen in a
spectrogram of [s], as opposed to [T] which has little.  In Distinctive
Feature terms, both are--

-- same POA (coronal, [-grave, +/-diffuse] or whatever one calls it,
terminology varies-- for most western languages. (The fact that Engl. [T] is
dental, [s] alveolar, is phonologically redundant and need not be part of
the underlying specification. Probably for e.g. Indic langs. one would have
to differentiate for dental vs. alveolar)
-- both are [+continuant]
-- [s] is [+strident], [T] is [-strident]--the important feature
(s/T of course are [-voice], z/D are [+])