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

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book on phonemics I read (admittedly an outdated one, whose details escape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

I still suspect the reason some Australians on this list had trouble
finding /D/ is that perhaps they have /D_0/ (to appropriate this notation)
which isn't appreciably different from /T/, especially as far as voicing
goes.  [Of course I never actually hear any Australian nowadays; it's just
a hypothesis.]

	*Muke!
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