Re: Phonetic contrast between lenis unvoiced and lenis voiced?

On Oct 15, 12:54 pm, Craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Oct 15, 6:45 pm, "ranjit_math...@xxxxxxxxx"

<ranjit_math...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Are there languages where it is the norm* to phonemically contrast
lenis voiced and lenis unvoiced stop phonemes?

Well, if I have understood my first text book of Eastern Armenian,
they have a three-way distinction: fortis vs. lenis unvoiced vs. lenis
voiced.

Aha! Most gratified to have been supplied with this information. Do
they use the lenis unvoiced only intervocalically or in consonant
clusters too? Some Malayalis use a lenis unvoiced velar rather than
[g] in "pregnant" - [pr.ek`nEnd] rather than [pr.Egn@nt]. (For want of
knowledge, I arbitrarily chose a grave quote to describe lenis
articulation; is there a standard way to describe lenis in ASCII IPA?)

However, other descriptions insist that the distinction is the same as
in Georgian, i.e. fortis vs. ejective vs. lenis voiced.

I don't see how there can be doubt whether something is "ejective" or
"lenis unvoiced"; it doesn't seem that the two can sound similar.

.