Re: [tied] Laryngeal theory as an unnatural

----- Original Message -----
From: "Miguel Carrasquer" <mcv@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 8:07 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Laryngeal theory as an unnatural


On Sat, 22 Feb 2003 13:55:37 -0600, "Patrick C. Ryan"
<proto-language@...> wrote:

>In dialects I have heard all over the US, initial /b,d, g/ are voiced. By "voiced", I mean specifically:
>
>1) a closure of the oral cavity is achieved by the tongue or lips;
>
>2) vibration of the vocal chords ensues which ends when the capacity of the closed area behind the tongue or lips absorbs to capacity the air (pressure) created by vibrating the vocal chords;
>
>3) the closure is then released.
>
>I recently saw a TV commercial in which a grubby cabdriver from Brooklyn mentioned the "Brooklyn Bridge", which sounded like /pruklin pridzh/. This is definitely a non-standard and disfavored pronunciation in most of the US.
>
>In most American English, as noted, the initial [b] is realized as /P%>/ if we wish to designate labial closure as /P/ and release as />/. The combination of pre-voicing and labial closure and release of closure is English initial [b]. Unless you wish to deny that initial /P%>/ is "voiced", then you must admit that most English initial [b] is voiced.

I think this whole pre-voicing business is ficticious. I've never
heard it, never seen it described, and I've never seen a spectrogram
of it. Voice onset time in English occurs _after_ the closure, not
before it.

[PCR]
Well, apparently you have never read Jespersen, which Piotr was kind enough to include in his posting.

"Otto Jespersen (1909) [about English /b/]: "... the vocal chords are generally in vibration so as to make the sound 'voiced'; this is always the case between voiced sounds, as in _robber_, _to begin_; in the beginning of a sentence, as in _Begin_ after a pause, the vibrations do not, however, begin till immediately before the opening of the lips..."

Here, he clearly describes "pre-voicing". "immediately before the opening" means, however long the voicing is, it occurs DURING closure. Of course, you may always accuse Jespersen of supplying "fictitious" data.

Do you?

Pat

>It seems to me, but correct me if I am wrong, that you are insisting that Dutch or Spanish initial [b] is voiced throughout the production of the sound.

Yes.

>Could you tell me have it (or they) differs - specifically - from /P%./?

A Field Manual of Acoustic Phonetics

Working Draft (April 2001) Revised (July 2001)

Joan L.G. Baart
SIL International

Copyright © 2001 SIL International


4.2.2 Voice onset time (VOT)

The examples of voiced plosives discussed above were taken from Dutch,
which is a language where voiced plosives usually have a voice lead.
In contrast, English is a language where "voiced" plosives usually do
not have a voice lead. In other words, English is a language where
phonologically voiced plosives are, strictly speaking, phonetically
voiceless (there is no vocal cord vibration during the closure and
release of the plosive).

[PCR]
This is the definition that is critical. It is simply untrue. Otherwise, it would be immaterial to discuss "voice onset" as you do below.



>A series of studies by Lisker & Abramson in the 1960s (see for
instance their 1970 paper) has shown that it is still possible to view
the phonetic distinction between English voiced and voiceless plosives
as primarily a voicing distinction. In order to do so, we have to
consider the timing of the moment of voice onset (that is: the timing
of the start of vocal cord vibration). Lisker & Abramson proposed to
take the start of the release of the plosive as a reference time. When
we give this reference time a value of zero, then a moment following
the release will have a positive time, and a moment preceding the
release will have a negative time (-100 ms will mean: '100 ms before
the beginning of the release burst'). Voice onset time (VOT) is the
moment at which the vocal cords start to vibrate, measured in
reference to the time of release of the plosive.

Voice onset times can be plotted along a continuous scale, which is
normally drawn as a horizontal line with zero in the middle, negative
values to the left of zero, and positive values to the right. When we
measure VOTs and plot them along such a scale, the similarity between
English and Dutch plosives is that voiced plosives are associated with
VOTs that occur more to the left on the scale, while the VOTs of
voiceless plosives occur more to the right. In other words: in both
languages voicing starts earlier in the case of voiced plosives, and
later in the case of voiceless plosives. The difference between the
two languages is that, overall, the VOTs of Dutch plosives occur more
to the left on the scale, while the VOTs of English plosives occur
more to the right; in comparison to Dutch plosives, the timing of
voice onset in English plosives (both voiced and voiceless) is
delayed.

[PCR]
These English "voice onsets" are what we have been terming "prevoicing".

>If we use the terms early, medium, and late for VOTs around -80 ms
(early), +10 ms (medium), and +80 ms (late), respectively, then we can
say that the timing of voice onset is early for Dutch voiced plosives
and medium for Dutch voiceless plosives. On the other hand, the timing
of voice onset is medium for English voiced plosives and late for
English voiceless plosives.
If the timing of voice onset is late (or greater than, say, +30 ms),
then there is an interval between the actual release burst and the
start of the following vowel. This interval is normally filled with
glottal frication noise, also called aspiration. As this noise is
produced at the glottis it will have to travel through the entire
vocal tract before it leaves the mouth, and as it does so it will pick
up a spectral coloring that resembles the quality of the following
vowel (the articulators will be on their way to assume the target
configurations for that vowel, or may even have reached them already).

>>>I think your reference to Mandarin is probably a 'typo'. The system of stop contrasts in Mandarin is unaspirated vs. aspirated, both voiceless.
>>
>> The typo is called Hanyu Pinyin.
>
>[PCR]
>I am afraid this cryptic answer does not illuminate the question. Are you denying that the Mandarin stop contrasts are voiceless unaspirated vs. aspirated? Yes or no?

No. But the standard transliteration (Hanyu Pinyin), uses <d> for the
unaspirated, and <t> for the aspirated phoneme.

[PCR]
How one writes it is completely immaterial to this discussion.

> > It's not a matter of opinion. Acoustic phonetics is a branch of
>> applied phyisics.
>
>[PCR]
>So, are you saying that before the pressure built up my voicing is effectively stopped by the closure, a release is made? Do you also assert that voicing follows the release? By the way, there are many matters of opinion in physics. Being a scientist means that one recognizes that.

Show me a spectrogram.

[PCR]
You are quoting from people who do have spectrograms, and, it seems, you are misinterpreting what they clearly have written.



Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE@... (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE: http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)