Re: what is the difference?

On Fri, 2005-11-25 at 23:22 -0500, Reilly Schlaier wrote:
> whats the difference between
> /h/
> and
> /h_v/
> ?
The first is a phoneme which probably represents a group of sounds that
are generally somewhat like [h]; the second represents a phoneme which
probably represents a group of sounds that is generally somewhat like
[h_v]. You probably didn't mean to ask that question. (That's the
difference between slashes, which mark phonemes and are very much
specific to a particular interpretation of a phonology, and square
brackets, which attempt to be much more general, although they needn't
be anywhere near precise.)

[h_v] is a "voiced [h]". [h] is a by default a voiceless glottal
fricative. The IPA and CXS/X-Sampa have a character which represents a
voiced glottal fricative, being CXS/X-Sampa [h\] or IPA [ɦ] (a hooktop
haitch, if you can't see that). Now, in a context in which "h_v" is
used, particularly as a phoneme, one is probably trying to draw some
distinction between [h_v] and [h\], and without further information, you
simply can't tell what that is. One commonly sees things like [z_0]
(_0=voiceless diacritic) in contrast to [s] to represent some relatively
arbitrary "voiceless form of /z/" sound to contrast with /s/ in some
way, which might be an equally arbitrary "tense" vs "lax" distinction,
or it could be that the /z/ is only partially unvoiced (with voicing
stopping/starting part-way through the sound); this could be something
equivalent. In transcriptions of Danish, /b_0 d_0 g_0/ are sometimes(?
commonly? always?) used for [p t k] rather than /p t k/, which instead
represent aspirated/affricated [p_h t_s k_h].

(In an environment where [h_v] vs [h] is used, it could simply be that
the person who wrote it is trying to emphasise that it's a member of
the /h/ phoneme, so that in some language where /h/ is unvoiced word
initially but voiced between vowels, you might get /hahe/ = [hah_ve],
equivalently but perhaps less transparently [hah\e].)

The difference between a voiceless phone and a voiced phone is that with
voiced phones, the vocal chords are vibrating, whereas they are not with
voiceless phones. (The difference between /s/ and /z/.) Thus: [h_v] and
equivalently [h\] have vibrating vocal chords throughout the duration of
articulation, which [h] lacks.

Still, I don't know how to produce a voiced glottal fricative, and I
don't know how it's different from a vowel. I do understand they're
quite common, though, particularly intervocalically (where I wouldn't
know how they're distinguished from hiatus).

--
Tristan.

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