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

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Friday, July 23, 2004, 15:13
Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>:

> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 16:44:26 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote: > > >Quoting "J. 'Mach' Wust" <j_mach_wust@...>: > > > >> On Thu, 22 Jul 2004 12:25:01 +0200, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> > wrote: > >> > >> >Quoting j_mach_wust <j_mach_wust@...>: > >> > > >> >> FWIK, the Swiss/Alemannic opposition of fortis and lenis is the same > >> >> as in Finnish, even though the Alemannic opposition is represented as > >> >> [d_0] vs. [t(:)], whereas the Finnish isn't called a fortis-lenis > >> >> opposition and is represented as [t] vs. [t:]. > >> > > >> >Hm. I hear Finnish 't' as /t/, not /d/, which I'd expect if it were a > >> >dental or alveolar voiceless non-aspirated lenis stop. I guess it might > >> >be not lenis enough. > >> > >> What is a lenis? I don't know it for sure; I just know that the Swiss > >> German short voiceless stops are caled lenes, and these are identical > >> with Finnish /t, p, k/. > > > >_Lenis_ is Latin for "soft" - I guess "lenes" might be the pl? > > > >Anyway, fortis~lenis signifies a distinction in articulatory force; during > >the production of a fortis sound, the muscles involved are more tense than > >during the production of a lenis one. This, of course, isn't really a > >binary distinction, but a continuum of possibilities, in which certain > >languages pick to points to contrast > > For what I know, nobody's ever succeeded in measuring that 'articulary > force' (either in fortis-lenis or in tense-lax) (I'd be very happy to learn > that this weren't true).
I'm not into articulatory phonetics; I don't really now. I _think_ there were spectrographs purporting to show the difference in an old textbook I read, but I might be misremembering. FWIW, it certainly _feels_ like I employ more muscular tension when producing fortis sounds than lenis ones, and, holding my palm in front of my mouth, the airstream is perceptibly stronger when I produce (Swedish) /f/ than /v/. I've always identified that difference in force with forticity.
> That means that so far, there's not really a > phonetic feature 'articulary force' (comparable to features such > as 'aspiration' or 'voice'). So I think the terms 'fortis-lenis' are rather > to be used on a level of phonemic analysis. They name the distinction > between /p, t, k/ etc. and /b, d, g/ etc., a distinction that may vary from > language to language. It may involve length, aspiration, or voice.
I guess it might be used that way - labels, we're told, are in the final instance arbitrary. It does, however, not solve any problems I'm aware of, and it leaves the problems towards the solution of which fortis~lenis as a phonetic distinction was introduced to me unsolved.
> 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 indicate it orthogonally to voicing (unless we want to argue that voicing isn't phonemic in _any_ language).
> >In the Germanic languages, voiced stops are generally pronounced with less > >articulatory force than voiceless ones, and thus we say their lenis, and > >the voiceless ones fortis. Many varieties of English, Swedish and German > >have devoiced, wholly or partly, in some or all positions the voiced > >stops, but thanks to the difference in "forticity" (not sure if that's a > >word) been able to maintain the phonemic contrast even when aspiration > >isn't at hand to disambiguate > > Couldn't this be a length contrast (it it's neither voice nor aspiration)? > Or is this really an instance of that mysterious 'articlatory force' > feature?
I believe it is. My 'lect of Swedish has lost distinctive consonant length, but I believe I've got enough of an idea of what it sounds like to say this is not it.
> >The most immediate explanation would seem to be that while these Finnish > >sounds are lenis by the standards of Finnish (and apparently by those of > >Swiss German), they're not by those of Swedish; the languages simply draw > >the line at different points in the continuum. > > That's exactly how I'd explain it.
But this assumes that an "articulatory force" variable has an objective phonetic existence. Andreas

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Muke Tever <hotblack@...>