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

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 book on phonemics I read (admittedly an outdated one, whose details escape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