Re: commonness of sound changes (was: Question re historical sound changes)

On 01/04/09 04:58:58, Eric Christopherson wrote:
> Tristan, Roger, et al. -- I had some further questions about long
> voiced stops. I thought I would reword them a bit and see if I get a
> response:
>
> 1. Am I correct in saying that, to produce a very long voiced stop,
> you start by saying a very long vowel, and then close off the POA,
> while basically continuing what you were doing with your voice before
>
> that closure, then holding it, and finally releasing it?
>
> 2. When I attempt [ag:::::::::::a] (using the technique described in
> 1), it feels like I get the "hum" of the [g:::] for a few seconds,
> then am unable to make *any* sound, and then eventually I release it.
>
> In that silent period it's voiceless, but once I release it it
> *feels* voiced again (as I feel my throat for vibration) -- so why
> would the sound be transcribed as [ag::::k::::::a] instead of
> [ag:::k:::ga], or [ag:::_}     ga]? (I'm not sure of a symbol for a
> silent pause, so I'm just using several spaces.)
You are right in your description of how it says, and Roger is AFAIK
right in his explanation of why (your vocal chords are still being told
to vibrate---they just can't).

As for transcription, I doubt there's any proper way to transcribe it.
It would depend on whether your focus is the sound produced or
articulation. Any transcription that gets the idea you want to express
acrossis correct for your purposes. Seeing as this isn't something that
most linguists would need to transcribe on a daily basis, however
you're doing it, you'll need to explain in words what your
transcription is trying to express in the end.

In the extended IPA, which has diacritics for speech errors useful when
transcribing people with lisps and so forth, there's a special
diacritic for partially voiced. I've never used these extensions, so I
can't say whether the partially voiced diacritic necessarily means "the
first half is voiced, the second half is unvoiced" or whether you have
to explain your intentions in text.

> 3. What do we make of the assertion that "voiced" stops in English
> are only partially voiced, as opposed to e.g. French? Does that
> mean /b/ in French is pronounced something more like [b:]?
No. It means English /b/ is something like [p] and English /p/ is
something like [p_h]. There's a continuum from [b] to [p] and from [p]
to [p_h], just as there's a continuum from [a] to [e] and [e] to [i].
English /e/ isn't exactly the same as French /e/, and sometimes English
/e/ is transcribed as /E/ because some linguistics reckon it's more
like an [E] than an [e] in the dialect(s) they study.

It's the same situation with English and French /b/ and /p/. For an
English /b/ and a French /p/, the aim is to begin voicing the moment
the sound is released. But the English sound has as its contrast the
English /p/, which has as its aim to begin voicing after the the lips
are released, and the French sound has as its contrast the French /b/,
which has as its aim to begin voicing before the lips are released.

So because of the direction of contrast, when we err on the side of
caution, an English speaker will begin voicing for /b/ perhaps just a
little before the release, and a French speaker will begin voicing
for /p/ just a little after the release, so even though the aim for
English /b/ and French /p/ is essentially the same, the usual results
won't necessarily be.

And just like English vowels, the strength of voicing in English
differs from dialect to dialect. (And the situation is different in
intevocalic and coda position; the situation I've described is word-
initially.)

> I have two reasons that might not be so: a) Voiced geminates are
> uncommon in languages. b) it doesn't sound long enough to be a
> geminate; perhaps it's only half-long ([b:\]).
No. The correct reason is because a French /b/ is a good and proper [b]
and it's English that is not perfectly transcribed in this regard.


--
Tristan.

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