USAGE voicing and aspiration (was: "Transferral" verb form in LC-01)

On Wednesday, June 26, 2002, at 09:33 , Tim May wrote:

[snip]

> I made the stop in all fricative-stop clusters voiced too, because I
> can't tell the difference in my own speech unless it's aspirated (so
> it's a matter of orthography, mostly).  I think at least some Celtic
> languages do this.
You mean like Welsh _ysgol_ = "school" and _Sbaen_ = "Spain"?

Yes, the sounds [sk] and [sp] are always written _sg_ and _sb_ in
Welsh, where the plosive is regarded as a devoiced allophone of
/g/ and /b/ respectively, and not - as in English - where they felt to
be de-aspirated allophones of /k/ and /p/.   In other words, whereas
English regards the voiced~voiceless distinction as fundamental and
aspiration as something that accompanies the voiceless plosive in
certain environments, Welsh regards unaspirated~aspirated as the
fundamental distinction.

Welsh initial voiceless plosives are more strongly aspirated than is
usually the case with English speakers.   When an a voiceless plosive
occurs medially after a stressed vowel, it is geminated with strong
aspirate release, e.g. the /p/ in _hapus_ (happy) is noticeably different
from the /p/ in English 'happy'.
hapus ['happ_h1s] (north Wales) or ['happ_hIs] (south Wales).

Oddly, however, although /t/ behaves exactly the same way, e.g. _ateb_
(answer) = ['att_he:b], and the distinction between /t/ and /d/ is exactly
like that between /p/ and /b/, the combo [st] is always written _st_ and
not, as one might expect, _sd_.

Ray.