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Re: fortis-lenis (was: How to Make Chicken Cacciatore)

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Saturday, July 24, 2004, 17:57
Quoting Muke Tever <hotblack@...>:

> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004 17:13:14 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> > wrote: > >> IPA isn't really adequate to represent the fortis-lenis distinction, > >> since it stresses the 'Frenchesque' point of view that the distinction > >> is in the > >> voicing. > > > > If fortis~lenis isn't a phonetic distinction, the IPA _shouldn't_ > > represent it. If it, as I believe, is, then there should be a way to > > indicateit orthogonally to voicing (unless we want to argue that > > voicing isn't phonemicin _any_ language). > > You can reanalyze IPA "voiced" and "voiceless" series of characters as > fortis and lenis, and use the "voiced" and "voiceless" diacritics to > indicate voice, if such a distinction needs to be emphasized. The last > book on phonemics I read (admittedly an outdated one, whose details escape > me) used them this way, though it didn't appear to know such terms as > "lenis" and "fortis"; it merely described that /p/ and /b_0/ were > pronounced differently.
In practice, this is what's usually done in phonetic descriptions of Swedish. Doesn't change the fact that there _should_ be a way to indicate fortis~lenis without hijacking what's officially a voiceless~voiced distinctions. Andreas