USAGE: Voicing and aspiration (was: "Transferral" verb form ...)

Tim May scripsit:

> Is the kind of link between voicing and aspiration seen in English
> common?  That is, in languages where only one of these is regarded as
> phonemic, is it common for the other to correlate with it to that
> degree?
Certainly not uncommon.  The other Germanic languages do it, and so does
Celtic.  Mandarin comes at it from the other direction: aspiration is
controlling and voice/voiceless is heard as nonasp/asp, as in Pinyin
writing where "b" = [p] and "p" = [p_h].

But then in the Romance languages aspiration is unknown, and in Indic
languages aspiration and voicing vary separately ("voiced aspirated"
is really aspiration followed by a murmured vowel).

--
John Cowan <jcowan@...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

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