Re: What's the different between /tS/ as one phoneme and as two?

From: Tor (tor826_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 07/19/04 

Date: 19 Jul 2004 16:17:03 -0700

Nathan Sanders <nsanders.DIE.SPAM@wso.williams.edu> wrote in message news:<nsanders.DIE.SPAM-168936.12514319072004@news.verizon.net>...
 
> Essentially, an English /b/ at the beginning of a word is acoustically
> similar to a French /p/ at the beginning of a word.

If so, you'd expect French people to have a tendency to misinterpret
English words beginning with /b/. They'd often hear <bill> as <pill>,
for example. But I'm not aware of French people having this
difficulty.

> There is no significant vocal cord vibration in English plosives at
> the beginning of a word.

I don't quite agree. I think the voicing is a little reduced, but
still significant enough to play a role in distinguishing /p/ from
/b/.

> The difference between them is what happens
> after the plosive is released (aspiration for initial /p/, no
> aspiration for initial /b/).

My understanding is that in Chinese and Icelandic, among other
languages, aspiration alone is significant in distinguishing initial
/p, t, k/ from initial /b, d, g/. But in English, both aspiration and
voicing are significant (although aspiration might be somewhat more
significant). To English ears, an unaspirated initial [p] sometimes
sounds like /b/ and sometimes sounds like /p/.

In Finnish, the standard language has both /t/ and /d/, but most rural
dialects have only /t/, pronounced [t] (unaspirated as in French).
Once when I was in Finland, a farmer told me that he had been watching
"Dallas" on television, but at first I had no idea what he was talking
about, because he said [tallas]. The [t] was unaspirated, yet I
didn't hear it as English /d/. This experience confirmed my belief
that voicing does matter in English in distinguishing initial /p, t,
k/ from initial /b, d, g/.
 
Tor

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