Re: Rating Languages

Quoting David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

> In a message dated 9/26/01 3:58:05 AM, dnsulani@ZAHAV.NET.IL writes:
>
> << Most of the time, when I treat this difficulty, the client has
> no problems with the voiceless sounds and needs to be taught how to
> produce the voiced equivalents. Although the opposite problem (no
> voiceless sounds) is not unknown to me. >>
>
>   That'd be because voiceless sounds are far less common and harder
> to produce.
Surely you mean: "voic*ed* sounds are less common" than voiceless
sounds.  There are *lots* of languages in the world where there is
no voiced series of stops or fricatives at all.  A fairly common
system would be something like the following:

  p   t     k    voiceless-plain
  ph  th    kh   voiceless-aspirate
  p'  t'    k'   voiceless-glottalized
      s
  m   n
      l
  w      y

(subtracting the glottalized series if need be)

> In fact, my phonology professor has argued (with PRAAT
> data to back it up), that there is, in fact, no [g] in English, but,
> rather, [k] without aspiration.
That's a reasonable claim -- it varies as always depending on dialect,
but for most people, if there's a [g] it's only semivoiced. Aspiration
vs. nonaspiration is phonologically at least as salient as voicing vs.
nonvoicing in distinguishing /p/ ~ /b/, /t/ ~ /d/, etc..

==============================
Thomas Wier <trwier@...>

"Aspidi men Saiôn tis agalletai, hên para thamnôi
  entos amômêton kallipon ouk ethelôn;
autos d' exephugon thanatou telos: aspis ekeinê
  erretô; exautês ktêsomai ou kakiô" - Arkhilokhos