Re: Pronouncing Tokana (was RE: Importance of stress)

>At 09:35 28/01/00 -0600, you wrote:
>>
>>English may distinguish voiced from voiceless stops, but I think that
>>(in word-initial position, anyway) the primary phonetic cue for the
>>contrast is aspiration:  If the initial stop is aspirated, it gets 'read'
>>as voiceless, and if it's unaspirated, it gets 'read' as voiced, regardless
>>of what the actual voicing of the sound may be.  In trying to teach
>>phonetics to college students, I've noticed that they often have
>>tremendous difficulty hearing whether a stop is voiced or voiceless:
>>If I ask them, "Is /z/ voiced or voiceless?", they can answer right
>>away.  But if I ask them "Is /b/ voiced or voiceless?", they have no
>>idea, and have to look it up on the chart.  On the other hand, they
>>generally have no difficulty distinguishing aspirated from
>>unaspirated stops, once they understand what to listen for.
>>
>
>        I find it strange, because English has also voiced stops
>contrasting with
>voiceless stops, at least inside words, doesn't it?
Oh, yes, of course.  The point that I was making is that, when it comes
to distinguishing, say, /b/ from /p/, English speakers don't seem to be
all that sensitive to the voicing feature per se - or at least, it's very
hard to make them *consciously* sensitive to it.  I have my students
do the test where they hold their fingers against their larynx and feel
for vibrations, and they typically report no difference between /b/ and
/p/.

Matt.