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? I think in France it
would be the contrary: no problem to distinguish voicing, but tremendous
problems to distinguish aspirated vs. unaspirated stops. So an English
person listening to a French saying "cadeau" /kado/ would hear something
like "gadeau" /gado/?

                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

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