On Mon, 24 Feb 2003 22:35:32 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer <
mcv@...>
wrote:
>Ladefoged on p. 50 of A Course In Phonetics says "most".
I accidentally confused Ladefoged p. 50 (where he states that most
speakers of AE have no voicing during closure of initial b-, d-, g-)
with Ladefoged & Maddieson p. 50, where it is stated that speakers of
English often fail to vibrate their vocal chords when pronouncing
intervocalic -b-, -d-, -g-). I give the two passages in question in
full, as they are well worth studying:
Ladefoged, A Course in Phonetics, p. 50:
Most people have very little voicing going on while the lips are
closed during either "pie" or "buy." Both stop consonants are
essentially voiceless. But in "pie," _after_ the release of the lip
closure, there is a moment of *aspiration*, a period of voicelessness
after the stop articulation and before the start of the voicing for
the vowel. If you put your hand in front of your lips while saying
"pie," you can feel the burst of air that comes out during the period
of voicelessness after the release of the stop.
In a narrow transcription, aspiration may be indicated by a small
raised h, [H] . Accordingly, these words may be transcribed as [pHaI,
tHaI, kHaI] . You may not be able to feel the burst of air in "tie,
kye" because these stop closures are made well inside the mouth
cavity. But listen carefully and notice that you can hear the period
of voicelessness after the release of the stop closure in each of
them. It is this interval that indicates the fact that the stop is
aspirated. The major difference between the words in the first two
columns is not that one has voiceless stops and the other voiced
stops. It is that the first column has (voiceless) aspirated stops and
the second column has (partially voiced) unaspirated stops. The amount
of voicing in each of the stops [b, d, g] depends on the context in
which it occurs. When it is in the middle of a sentence in which a
voiced sound occurs on either side, voicing may occur throughout the
stop closure. Most speakers of American English have no voicing during
the closure of so-called voiced stops in sentence initial position.
Ladefoged & Maddieson, The Sounds of the World's Languages, pp. 50-51:
Modal voice
We will discuss each phonation type in turn, beginning with modal
voice. The physiological position for modal voice can be regarded as
one in which the arytenoid cartilages are in a neutral position for
speech, neither pulled apart nor pushed together (Stevens 1988). The
vocal folds would be very slightly apart, if there were no air flow.
We assume that the same position as occurs in ordinary voiced vowels
and in voiced continuant consonants such as nasals is normally
maintained in stops that are phonologically voiced. It is well known
that in some languages, English being a familar example, the vocal
folds may not vibrate throughout the closure for a voiced stop. Even
when surrounded by other voiced sounds, such as vowels, the vocal fold
vibration often ceases shortly after the closure is made and only
resumes shortly after the closure is released. Most English speakers
appear to leave the vocal folds in a constant position throughout such
a sequence, but passive devoicing occurs as the supralaryngeal
pressure builds up behind the oral closure. There are a number of
maneuvers that can be made to assist the continuation of vocal fold
vibration during an oral stop closure by expanding the size of the
cavity behind the location of the closure; these include a relaxation
of the cheeks and other soft tissues around the oropharyngeal cavity
so that the pressure will passively expand the volume, as well as
active gestures, such as moving the articulatory constriction forwards
during the closure, moving the root of the tongue forwards, lowering
the jaw, or lowering the larynx (Hudgins and Stetson 1935, Bell-Berti
1975, Ohala and Riordan 1979, Keating 1984c). Some English speakers
utilize such gestures to a sufficient degree to produce vocal fold
vibration during their voiced stop closures (Westbury 1983), but
similar gestures are often executed by speakers producing intervocalic
phonologically voiced stops without sustained vocal fold vibration
(noted by Kent and Moll 1969). Flege (1982) has shown that the
variation in the time at which vocal fold vibration starts near the
release of utterance-initial voiced stops in English does not depend
on how long before the release the vocal folds are adducted. The
target for voiced stops in English can therefore be said to include
the maintenance of a position of the vocal folds appropriate for
voicing, but not to require the employment of other strategies to
sustain vocal fold vibration.
In contrast to English and several other Germanic languages, a
considerable number of languages have voiced stops which require more
energetic efforts to produce sustained vocal fold vibration. Such
languages include well-known ones such as French and Thai, as well as
more obscure ones such as Ilwana. In languages of this type, the
target in the production of voiced stops must be defined as including
the presence of actual vocal fold vibration through the articulatory
closure period. Figure 3.1 shows the word budda 'pelican' from Ilwana.
This word contains an initial voiced stop and an intervocalic geminate
voiced stop which are both produced with full vocal fold vibration.
This occurs despite the fact that these are both positions in which
sustaining voicing requires particular additional effort, as has been
shown by Westbury and Keating (1986).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...