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<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background If we now compare the words containing these voiceless stops with those in column 2, which contains the so-called ‘voiced’ stops, we will find that no such burst of air is experienced. The reason I refer to these sounds as ‘so-called voiced stops’ is because no real vocal fold vibration occurs in these sounds in word initial position. In order for voicing to occur it is essential for air to be passing through the closed glottis and to push the vocal folds apart. Since there is simultaneously a closure in the mouth then the air won’t be able to perform this task. When these stops occur between two vowels, as for example in obey, adore, again, the vocal folds will already be vibrating and will continue to do so throughout the articulation of the stop. Another distinction used here could be fortis and lenis. A fortis consonant is one which involves greater breath force (thus opposite for lenis); is voiceless (lenis may be voiced); initial in a stressed syllable have strong aspiration (lenis unaspirated); vowels short before final fortis cons. (full length before final lenis). Final stops often have reinforcing glottal stop – not so for lenis. The following wave forms illustrate the difference between the voiceless aspirated stop of tie and the ‘voiced’ sound at the beginning of die. Notice that the period between the release of the stop and the onset of the vowel is considerably longer in tie than in die. If we turn to the words in column 3, we might assume that these words are identical to those in column 1 except that they are all preceded by [s]. However, if we perform the aspiration test on these words, we should find that no aspiration occurs. Indeed, if we were to record these words and cut the [s] out of the tape, anyone listening to result would more than likely conclude that they were listening to the words in 8
<strong>LG204</strong>-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background column 2 rather than column 1. We shall return in much more detail to the situation involving [s] next term. For the time being we can state that there is no contrast between voiced and voiceless stops after [s] (no words such as sby, sdy, sgy exists in English, nor, indeed, could they). Whether we claim [p] to be an allophone of /p/ or /b/ is purely academic (spelling notwithstanding). The general claim that could be made is that /p/ has two allophones (at this point) [p h ] and [p]. We call this lack of contrast ‘neutralisation’. I show the wave form for sty below. Notice here that the /t/ closure more closely resembles the /d/ closure in die than the /t/ closure in tie. We’ll now turn to columns 4 and 5. Again these pairs of words appear to be distinguished by the voicing or lack of it of the final stop sound. If you were to say these words in a frame such as Say …again you would indeed find that you could hear the difference in voicing. Notice, however, that it’s highly unlikely that the voiceless stop at the end of the words would be aspirated, it would simply be voiceless. The voiced stops in this situation would involve vocal fold vibration, being intervocalic. If, however, we were to include these words in the frame say…to me, or at the end of an utterance then the stops would remain unreleased, making voicing less likely. How, therefore, can we distinguish them? What we can distinguish is the relative difference in the length of the vowels that precede the final stop, not the voicing or lack of it in the stops themselves. This difference in vowel length is very apparent in the comparative wave forms for mat and mad below. 9
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