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Re: Tsuhon: tentative phonology

From:Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>
Date:Friday, April 27, 2001, 11:44
Henrik Theiling wrote:
>Weiben Wang <wwang@...> writes: > > There are minimal pairs in which the only difference is voicing: > > > > fahren (unvoiced) > > waren (voiced) > > > > Does that help? > > > > -Weiben > > > > I'm thinking that the phonemic difference between German /f/ and /v/ >is > > > > fortis vs lenis, not unvoiced vs voiced. Don't take my word for it >tho' - > > > > perhaps you know some German phonetician you could ask? > > > > > > To clarify: one is pronounced more forcefully than the other? > > > Could be...it sounds like it could be right, but I haven't heard a > > > fluent/native speaker of German in quite a long time. D'you know, I'm > > > still on good terms with my German TA from last semester. I'll drop >her > > > an email and ask if she knows, or knows where I can find out. :-) > >I learnt [f] and [v] for /f/ and /v/ in German. So I suppose [v_0] is >an allophone of /v/ in `schwitzen' /"SvIts@n/ ["Sv_0Itsn=]. > >And I pronounce the above: > >In dialect: > [fa:n] > [va:n] > >In clearer pronunciation: > ["fa:Rn=] > ["va:Rn=] > >R is a uvular voiced fricative which is very lax. (I never do a >uvular trill. It's actually not even easy.) > >/v/ is more lax than /f/ (and, of course, voiced).
For the record, I'm perfectly aware that High German /f/ and /v/ are usually realized as unvoiced and voiced respectively. However, as far as I can tell, /f/ is also more strong, fortis, than /v/. I base this on, among other things, that /Sv/ in 'schwarz' etc goes accross tomeas /Sv/, not /Sf/, which it should if voicing was the only difference. Being a Swede, my unconsciousness invokes the Swedish rule that [Sv_0] is /Sv/. And if [v_0] is an allophone of /v/, not of/f/, then it would seem that is fortis vs lenis rather than unvoiced vs voiced that's the phonemic difference. As for the 'fahren' vs 'waren' example, AFAICT there isn't simple unvoiced vs voiced distinction, but a more complex unvoiced fortis vs voiced lenis. Andreas _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

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Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>