TIL

Properties of Consonants

prop-con2.htm

by U Kyaw Tun, M.S. (I.P.S.T., U.S.A.). Not for sale. Prepared for students of TIL Computing and Language Center, Yangon, MYANMAR.

UKT: Based on
• Properties of Consonants and Vowels, Kevin Russell, Linguistics Department, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V5, CANADA http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/notes.htm.
• Online Phonetics Course (UNIL), Department of Linguistics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
(This source was downloaded in 2000 or a few years later, and instead of the original links, you can still get to them from: http://www.unil.ch/ling/page30184_fr.html -- UKT: 070823)

Contents of this page

  RBM4M |Top

Consonant parameters
Glottis
Voicing (phonetics)
  Voicing in English
  Phonation - the first variable of Voicing
  -- Phonation as the "state of the glottis"
  Voice Onset Time (VOT) - the second variable of Voicing
3. Nasality
4. Laterality
5. Airstream mechanism
Consonant charts
• English consonants • IPA consonants
UKT notes largely from Wikipedia for updating my knowledge
• consonant cluster • glottalization and pharyngealization • intonation • obstruent consonant  • sonorant consonants and vowels

Contents of this page

Glottis

Based on:
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottis download 071005
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larynx download 071005
• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arytenoid_cartilage download 071005

UKT: Along with the tongue, the vocal folds and the glottis, the space between them are the most important organs in the production of human speech.

The larynx (plural larynges), colloquially known as the voicebox (the area of the neck behind the Adam's apple) , is an organ involved in protection of the trachea and sound production. The larynx houses the vocal folds, and is situated just below where the tract of the pharynx splits into the trachea and the esophagus. The space between the vocal folds (vocal cords) is called the glottis.

Pix on left from: http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page5a.htm
If you go online to the Univ. Stuttgart site, you can see the vocal folds in action during quite breathing. During normal breathing the glottal area is more open (about 1 sq-cm) while during phonation the area is much reduced (0.05 to 0.1 sq-cm.).

As the vocal cords vibrate, the resulting vibration produces a "buzzing" quality to the speech, called voice or voicing.

The arytenoid cartilages are a pair of small three-sided pyramids which form part of the larynx, to which the vocal cords are attached. Each is pyramidal in form, and has three surfaces, a base, and an apex. ... They allow the vocal cords to be tensed, relaxed, or approximated. The diagrammatic representations of the glottis positions are usually given in the description of phonation.

Sound production involving only the glottis is called glottal. English has a vl glottal fricative spelled <h> {ha.}.

In many accents of English the glottal stop [ʔ] (made by pressing the folds together) is used as a variant allophone of the phoneme /t/ (and in some dialects, occasionally of /k/ and /p/); in some languages (UKT: as in Burmese), this sound is a phoneme of its own.
(UKT: this sentence from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottis, download 071005, has been troublesome for me. It would have made more sense for Burmese, if has been written as "In many accents of English the glottal fricative "h" is used as a variant allophone of the phoneme /t/ ." It would then be referring to [tʰ]. (Remember /t/ has two allophones [t] and [tʰ].)

UKT: You should be very careful in reading the above paragraph.
• Burmese-Myanmar speakers are not aware that English <t> /t/ has two allophones, [t] and [tʰ] corresponding to {ta.} and {hta.}. In English words like <tar>, /t/ sounds like [tʰ] -- i.e. {hta:}. Only in words in which <t> follows an <s>, the pronunciation [t], as in <star>. However, the average Myanmar cannot pronounce <st> together and has to pronounce them separately as {sâta:} /sətaː/.
• When an <h> is added to <t>, it can be added either before or after the <t>. If <h> is added after the <t>, we have <th>. This digraph <th> corresponds to {þa.}. (If I had written {tha.} following the common transcription, what I am writing would be very confusing.) The English digraph <th> can have two pronunciations as in <thin> /θɪn/ (DJPD16-535) and <that> /ðæt/ (DJPD16-533).
• To show what we are discussing is the allophone of /t/, I have to show the <h> before the <t>. However, this convention of writing the <h> before the basic /t/ to denote the aspirated allophone introduces an apparent anomaly:
-- /k/: [k] and [kʰ] with [kʰ] corresponding to {hka.}
-- /t/: [t] and [tʰ] with [tʰ] corresponding to {hta.}
-- /p/: [p] and [pʰ] with [pʰ] corresponding to {hpa.}

Skilled players of the Australian didgeridoo restrict their glottal opening in order to produce the full range of timbres available on the instrument.

The vibration of vocal folds produces an essential component of vd consonants. Don't forget that vowels are always voiced except in a small number of cases. If the vocal folds are drawn wide apart, air just flows between them causing no vibration, as in the production of vl consonants.

• Voiced consonants include /w/, /v/, /z/, /ʒ/, /ʤ/, /ð/, /b/, /d/, and /g/.
• Voiceless consonants include /h/, /ʍ/, /f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /ʧ/, /θ/, /p/, /t/, and /k/.

UKT: In the above list (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottis 071022), we find /w/ and /ʍ /. These are known as co-articulated consonants (see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximant_consonant download 071022 /
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-articulated_consonant download 071022)

• voiced labialized velar approximant [w] (a consonantal [u])
• voiceless labialized velar approximant [ʍ]

Co-articulated consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous POA. They may be divided into two classes, doubly articulated consonants with two primary POA of the same manner (both plosive, or both nasal, etc.), and consonants with secondary articulation, that is, a second articulation not of the same manner.

UKT: (the following 2 observations needs to be explained)
• Coarticulation with <w> appears to be similar to the formation of {wa.hswè:}. Since all the consonants except those mainly used for Pali-Myanmar, r3, and c4, can form {wa.hswè:}, there seems to no distinction between doubly-articulation and secondary articulation.
• Notice that DJPD16 gives English <w> as a bilabial approximant (see Table of English Consonants in prop-con.htm). However, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximant_consonant has given [w] and [ʍ] as velar approximants. There appears to be a contradiction here. At this moment (071022), I have no explanation for this contradiction.
• I wonder, if the author of the Wikipedia article had meant:
-- voiced velarised labial approximant [w]
-- voiceless velarised labial approximant [ʍ]

Contents of this page

Voicing (phonetics)

Based on:
• DJPD16
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_%28phonetics%29 download 071005

The terms "voice" or "voicing" are among the most troublesome for me in my study of phonetics. The pronunciation <voice> /vɔɪs/ always reminds me of the Pali-Myanmar word {wa-sa} meaning "word". Because of its very common use, and the varied dictionary meanings (given below), the word "voice" has always given me an uneasy feeling.

voice n. Abbr. v. 1. a. The sound produced by the vocal organs of a vertebrate, especially a human being. b. The ability to produce such sounds. 2. A specified quality, condition, or pitch of vocal sound: a hoarse voice; the child's piping voice. 3. Linguistics Expiration of air through vibrating vocal cords, used in the production of vowels and voiced consonants. 4. A sound resembling or reminiscent of vocal utterance: the murmuring voice of the forest. 5. Music a. Musical sound produced by vibration of the human vocal cords and resonated within the throat and head cavities. b. The quality or condition of a person's singing: a baritone in excellent voice. c. A singer: a choir of excellent voices. d. One of the individual parts or strands in a composition: a fugue for four voices; string voices carrying the melody. Also Called voice part . 6. a. Expression; utterance: gave voice to their feelings at the meeting. b. A medium or an agency of expression: a newsletter that serves as a neighborhood voice. c. The right or opportunity to express a choice or an opinion: a territory that has a voice, but not a vote, in Congress. 7. Grammar A property of verbs or a set of verb inflections indicating the relation between the subject and the action expressed by the verb: “ Birds build nests ” uses the active voice; “ nests built by birds ” uses the passive voice. 8. The distinctive style or manner of expression of an author or a character in a book. v. tr. voiced voicing voices 1. To give voice to; utter: voice a grievance. See note at vent 1 . 2. Linguistics To pronounce with vibration of the vocal cords. 3. Music a. To provide (a composition) with voice parts. b. To regulate the tone of (the pipes of an organ, for example). -- AHTD

DJPD16 uses the word "voicing" instead of "voice" in its information panel on p581. Its mention of "Burmese" is noteworthy.

Voicing
p581. A term used to refer to the vibration of the VOCAL FOLDS. A sound made with this vibration is called voiced, and one without vibration is called voiceless. Most vowels in most languages are voiced, though voiceless vowels are found in some languages. Among consonants, it is very common to find pairs that are distinguished from each other by the presence or absence of voicing, but in English we find that consonants such as /b  d  g  v  ð  z  ʒ/ , though frequently described as voiced (in contrast with the corresponding voiceless consonants /p  t  k  f  θ  s  ʃ/ ) often have little or no voicing. See FORTIS, LENIS, ONSET TIME. Whispering is speech that is entirely voiceless.
   In other languages : Many pairs of consonants distinguished by the voiced-voiceless contrast are found in different languages. Welsh has voiced and voiceless LATERAL consonants, while Burmese has voiced and voiceless NASAL consonants.

DJPD16 mentions "Burmese has voiced and voiceless NASAL consonants". Burmese-Myanmar has 5 nasals {nga.} {Ña.} {Na.} {na.} and {ma.}. I am not aware that it has vl-vd contrast in the basic nasals listed in Burmese-Myanmar akshara matrix. However, DJPD16 might have mistakenly included {þa.} (ordinarily written as {tha.} with the digraph <th>) which, similar to its English counter part <th>, has vl. [θ] and vd. [ð] sounds as in <thin> and <that>.

On the other hand, it is probably referring to what is given as vl nasals in P. Ladefoged's Vowels and Consonants, http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/vowels/chapter12/burmese.html download 071024. The "so-called vl nasals" are actually the {ha.hto:}-conjuncts (co-articulated sounds), as given on the right. If you go online to the website, you can listen to individual sounds. What are given in the table:

When my wife and I (learning Phonetics by ourselves at home in Canada in the late 1990s) first came across Ladefoged's table, we were quite confused. The examples given did not give the registers and had transcriptions such as rings below and above the letter.

The following (slightly edited by me) is from Wikipedia:

From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_%28phonetics%29 download 071005

In phonetics, voicing or voice is one of the three major parameters used to describe a sound. It is usually treated as a binary parameter with sounds being described as either voiceless (vl) (unvoiced) or voiced (vd), although in fact there can be degrees of voicing (see below).

A vd sound is one in which the vocal folds (cords) vibrate, and a vl sound is one in which they do not. Voicing is the difference between pairs of sounds such as /s/ [s] and /z/ [z] in English. If one places the fingers on the voice box (i.e. the location of the Adam's apple in the upper throat), one can feel a vibration when one pronounces zzzz, but not when one pronounces ssss. (For a more detailed, technical explanation, see the section below.)

UKT: Remember the use of brackets for p:
• orthography or spelling -- <p>
• broad transcription (pronunciation) as given by DJPD16 -- /p/
• narrow transcription (pronunciation) gives finer points of pronunciation -- [...]
-- English has allophones [p] and [pʰ]

• None of the above /p/, [p] and [pʰ], can be pronounced because they are just letters. To pronounce a letter, a vowel has to be inserted. It then becomes a syllable, such as /pa/, [pa] or [pʰa]
• In Burmese-Myanmar, an akshara is pronounceable because the presence of the inherent vowel /a/. To represent an akshara, Romabama always has to show the vowel, e.g. {pa}
-- Burmese has no allophones (except in {þa} r6c5). English <pa> can be pronounced as {pa.} [pa], or {hpa.} [pʰa]

Vowels are usually voiced. Consonants may be voiced or unvoiced.

English examples (edited to reflect Burmese-Myanmar)
UKT: The original Wikipedia article did not give the allophones of /p/, and mistakenly represented [p] as <pin>. Formerly, I would have left the Wikipedia article unaltered, but because of my unhappy encounter with the allophones, I have decided to emphasize their existence in English on all occasions. My corrections/insertions are indicated by *. Broad transcriptions are from DJPD16, indicating the page numbers)

Obstruents (UKT: antonym: sonorant) commonly come in vd and vl pairs like those above. Vl consonants are usually articulated more strongly than their vd counterparts, because in vd consonants, the airflow energy used in pronunciation is split between the laryngeal vibration and the oral articulation.

UKT:
• obstruents are {wag}-aksharas excluding the nasals and {a.wag}-aksharas.
• Vl consonants are usually articulated more strongly -- sometimes described as fortis
• Vd consonants are weaker because a part of airflow energy is used in vibrating the vocal folds -- vd consonants are sometimes described as lenis

Vowels are almost always voiced, however, there are voiceless vowels. The IPA diacritic for voicelessness is the under-ring, [  ̥]. This is used where no separate symbol is available, for example for voiceless vowels.

UKT: (based on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_devoicing download 071023)
The voiceless-ness symbol is used to show when a vd consonant becomes unvoiced in some environment. Devoicing is commonly met in consonants, e.g.
   [d] --> [d̥]

English does not have phonological final obstruent devoicing of the type that neutralizes phonemic contrasts; thus pairs like <bad>and <bat> are distinct in all major accents of English. Nevertheless vd obstruents are devoiced to some extent in final position in English, especially when phrase-final or when followed by a vl consonant, e.g. in pronouncing <bad cat >:
   slow speech: [bæd kʰæt] -- <d> is voiced
   normal or rapid speech: [bæd̥ kʰæt] -- <d> becomes unvoiced (notice the ring under <d>)

Notice that <bad> with the devoiced <d> is not written as [bæˀ(t)]. Burmese-Myanmar readers should note that <t> is pronounced as {hta.} and not {ta.}.

The most salient distinction between <bad> and <bat> is not the voicing of the final consonant, but rather the duration of the vowel and the glottalization of final /t/: <bad> is pronounced [bæːd̥] while <bat> is [bæˀ(t)].

Vowels may be voiceless, usually allophonically. For example, the Japanese word sukiyaki is pronounced [su̥kijaki]. This may sound like [skijaki] to an English speaker, but the lips can be seen compressing for the [u̥]. Something very similar happens in English with words like <peculiar> and <particular>.

UKT: I can only get broad transcriptions from DJPD16:
• <peculiar> /pɪ'kjuː.li.əʳ/ -- DJPD16-401
• <particular> /pə'tɪk.jə.ləʳ/ -- DJPD16-398

Contents of this page

Voicing in English

Beside the pairs of vl and vd obstruent consonants given above, other vd sounds in English are the nasals, i.e. /m, n, ŋ/; the approximants, i.e. /l, r, w, j/ (the last spelled <y>); and the vowels. These sounds are called sonorants.

UKT:
• obstruents: {wag}-aksharas {ka. hka. ga.} {ta. hta. da.} {pa. hpa. ba.} (nasals excluded)
• nasals: {nga. Ña. Na. na. ma.}
• approximants: {ya. ra. la. wa.}
• sonorants: nasals, approximants, and laterals (examples in English: l, m, n, ŋ, r, w, j)
Therefore the sonorants are {a.wag} aksharas, and nasals.

In most languages, the difference between /b, d, g/ and /p, t, k/ is that /b, d, g/ are vd, while /p, t, k/ are not. However, in English, the main distinction is not that /b, d, g/ are voiced, but rather that /p, t, k/ are aspirated. (UKT: never forget that /p, t, k/ are {hpa. hta. hka.}. That is, they differ in when voicing starts (see VOT - voice onset time - in my notes.). In most English dialects, /b, d, g/ are partially voiceless in some environments, such as word initially. In fact, after an /s/, the contrast between /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/ is lost; when a child learning English has acquired voicing distinctions, but not yet acquired the clusters /sp, st, sk/, the child's pronunciation of <spy>, <sty>, <sky> sounds to an adult like <buy>, <die>, <guy>.

UKT:
• Statements such as "In most English dialects, /b, d, g/ are partially vl in some environments, such as word initially" are unexpected by Burmese-Myanmar, because an akshara "never" loses its property under any circumstance. And, {pa.} remains vl under all circumstance, and {ba.} remains vd always. In fact, this attitude is maintained religiously by Sanskrit-Devanagari speakers, who view an akshara to be "eternal".
   " The alphabets in Sanskit are called  Akshara, which means "something that cannot die or lose its luster" --
Na Sharathi ithi Akshara. " -- http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/narayan/sanskrit.htm download 071023

• Burmese phonotactics do not allow {ha.hto:} formation with {pa. hpa. , ta. hta. , ka. hka.}. The only reason I could think of is that these {wag}-aksharas are already aspirated, and more aspiration by adding a {ha.hto:} would make the articulations impossible.

Degrees of voicing

There are two variables to degrees of voicing: intensity (discussed under phonation in the next section), and duration (discussed under VOT). When a sound is described as "half voiced" or "partially voiced", it is not always clear whether that means that the voicing is weak (low intensity), or if the voicing only occurs during part of the sound (short duration). In the case of English, it is the latter.

Contents of this page

Phonation - the first variable of voicing

Based on:
•  Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonation download 071003
• EGG and Voice quality: http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page6.htm#1 download 071008
• Hyperphysics: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/voice.html
(UKT: there is a stub on Phonation in intro-voc.htm)

UKT: Phonetic voicing is described qualitatively by phonation, and quantitatively by VOT.

In phonetics, phonation is the "use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy, i.e., sound, which can then be modified by the articulatory actions of the rest of the vocal apparatus."

Phonation has traditionally been seen as one dimension of phonetic voicing, the degree of glottal tension. (A second dimension of voicing is timing, called voice onset time (VOT). When a sound is described as "half voiced", it may not be clear whether it is quality (phonation) or quantity (VOT) that is referred to.)

However, with recent advances in imaging technology, it has become apparent that in many languages phonation involves more than just the glottis.

Voicing: A voiced sound is produced when air expelled from the lungs causes the vocal folds to vibrate. This produces a fundamental tone accompanied by several non-harmonic overtones. The resulting sound is modified by movements in the vocal tract, by the volume of the airflow and by the degree of constriction of the vocal cords. (During speech the flow of air is relatively small because of constrictions of the vocal cords.) Vowels are usually voiced, as are many consonants. Pix on left from Hyperphysics.

The sound of a c3 consonant such as /g/ {ga.} is voiced. The fundamental tone is accompanied by several non-harmonic overtones. The resulting sound is modified by:
1. movements in the vocal tract
2. the volume of the airflow
3. the degree of constriction of the vocal cords.

If the vocal folds are lax and not sufficiently close to vibrate, then the sound is voiceless, e.g. /k/ {ka.}

The vocal vibration is varied to produce intonation and tone. This is accomplished by varying the pressure of the air column under the glottis as well as the tension in the vocal folds themselves. These actions produce changes in the frequency of vocal-cord vibration, which generates the fundamental pitch of the voice. Tone and intonation are not conveyed well by voiceless sounds, with their lax vocal folds, but the changes in airflow are still audible.

UKT: The graph on the right is from Hyperphysics. It shows the how the vowel in <father> can be distinguished by measuring formants which are related to frequency of the vowel in <father>. The figure on the left shows how "puffs" of air come out of the glottis during production of human voice. We deal with formants in one of the later chapters.

For the vocal folds to be able to vibrate, they must be just open (not tightly closed) to vibrate. If they are wide open, they will not vibrate. And of course, when they are tightly closed, they will have no room to vibrate.

UKT: "voiceless" does not mean "soundless" -- it simply means the vocal folds are not vibrating. Thus, the term "voiceless sound" is not self-contradictory. Since this can be confusing to a Myanmar, I prefer to use the term "vl sound". Similarly, I prefer to use the term "vd sound" in place of "voiced sound".

The vocal vibration is varied to produce intonation and tone. This is accomplished by varying the pressure of the air column under the glottis as well as the tension in the vocal folds themselves. These actions produce changes in the frequency of vocal-cord vibration, which generates the fundamental pitch of the voice. Tone and intonation are not conveyed well by vl sounds, with their lax vocal folds, but the changes in airflow are still audible.

UKT:
• Intonation is represented in IPA by [↗] and [↘]
• "Tone" in Burmese-Myanmar is represented by {a. a a:}

J. Laver (1994:184) defines phonation as the use of the laryngeal system to generate an audible source of acoustic energy (the source in the sense of the source-filter model of speech production) which can then be modified by the articulatory actions of the rest of the vocal apparatus (the filter in the source-filter model). The main function of the larynx is to transform the potential energy of the air compressed below the larynx into the kinetic energy of egressive airflow. If the transformation occurs sufficiently fast the air pressure changes generate acoustic waves that expand into the surrounding air (Orlikoff & Kahane, 1996:127). A more detailed description of the phonation process will be given in the next section. For the moment it is sufficient to consider only the basic types of phonation.
• Creaky voice <)) (WAV file,  16 kB)
• Breathy voice <)) (WAV file,  17 kB)
• Harsh voice <)) (WAV file,  18 kB)
• Falsetto <)) (WAV file,  8 kB)
• Pharyngalized voice  <)) (WAV file,  21 kB)
• Nasalized voice  <)) (WAV file,  18 kB)

Phonation as the state of the glottis

UKT: It was thought that phonation can be explained by the state of the glottis, however it has become apparent that in many languages phonation involves more than just the glottis.

In classic treatments of phonation, such as those of Peter Ladefoged, phonation was considered to be a matter of points on a continuum of tension and closure of the vocal cords. More intricate mechanisms were occasionally described, but they were difficult to investigate, and until recently the state of the glottis and phonation were considered to be nearly synonymous.

If the vocal cords are completely relaxed, with the arytenoid cartilages apart for maximum airflow, the cords do not vibrate. This is vl phonation, and is extremely common with obstruents such as /p t k/. If the arytenoids are pressed together for glottal closure, the vocal cords block the airstream, producing stop sounds such as the glottal stop.

UKT: Here, the Wikipedia author is making the usual mistake of not differentiating an onset consonant from a coda consonant which is singularly important in Burmese-Myanmar. The glottal closure and glottal stop are terms applicable to {a.that} consonants, i.e. the coda consonants. The term "glottal" is mainly concerned with <h> {ha.}. <h> in the onset is quite different from the glottal stop.

In between there is a sweet spot of maximum vibration. This is modal voice, and is the normal state for vowels and sonorants in all the world's languages. However, the aperture of the arytenoid cartilages, and therefore the tension in the vocal cords, is one of degree between the end points of open and closed, and there are several intermediate situations utilized by various languages to make contrasting sounds.

The vocal cords can do a number of things. They can:
• be held so wide apart that the air makes no sound passing through them. (This is nice when you have to breathe 24 hours a day, but not as useful for speaking.)
• be held closer together, so that the air passing through them becomes turbulent. This quality of sound is called breathiness. It is what is happening in aspiration and in the sound [h].
• be held together so that the air passing through them causes them to vibrate. This is called voicing.
• be held together so tightly that no air can pass through at all, as in a glottal stop.

UKT: IPA symbol for a glottal stop in Burmese-Myanmar syllable is /ʔ/, and in MEDict is /'/.

By varying their tension and position, the vocal cords can also produce many other effects like breathy voicing, creaky voicing, and falsetto.

For example, Gujarati has vowels with a partially lax phonation called breathy voice or murmured, while Burmese has vowels with a partially tense phonation called creaky voice or laryngealized. Both of these phonations have dedicated IPA diacritics, an under-umlaut and under-tilde. The Jalapa dialect of Mazatec is unusual in contrasting both with modal voice in a three-way distinction. (Note that Mazatec is a tonal language, so the glottis is making several tonal distinctions simultaneously with the phonation distinctions.)

UKT: The above paragraph has compared Burmese and Gujarati languages. However, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28phonology%29 download 070920, has given the table below in which it states that there are three or four vowel registers in Burmese. (Note on Wikipedia: it is an online encyclopedia that is being updated continually, and unless, I specify its modified date or the date on which I downloaded it, I will be very misleading.

In the table, Burmese is said to have both breathy voice and creaky voice. Now, listen to sound files from EGG and Voice quality from
http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page1.htm , to differentiate Creaky voice and Breathy voice:
• Creaky voice <)) (WAV file,  16 kB)
• Breathy voice <)) (WAV file,  17 kB)
After listening to these sound files again and again, I think to describe {a. a:}, as "creaky" and "breathy" are misleading. Passages such as "while Burmese has vowels with a partially tense phonation called creaky voice or laryngealized." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonation , should be taken be taken with caution.

Javanese does not have modal voice in its plosives, but contrasts two other points along the phonation scale, with more moderate departures from modal voice, called slack voice and stiff voice. The "muddy" consonants in Shanghainese are slack voice; they contrast with tenuis and aspirated consonants.

Although each language may be somewhat different, it is convenient to classify these degrees of phonation into discrete categories. A series of seven alveolar plosives, with phonations ranging from an open/lax to a closed/tense glottis, are:

UKT: The table above is misleading, because, it has confused the onset consonants and the coda consonants. Or, I might have misapplied it to Burmese-Myanmar. The pronunciations of Burmese-Myanmar /t d/ should be given as [t tʰ d], where [t tʰ] are voiceless and [d] is voiced. When these happened to be onset consonants, each has 3 registers:
{ta. ta ta:}, {tʰa. tʰa tʰa:}, and {da. da da:}. However, if they are in the coda, they are not pronounced.

The IPA diacritics under-ring and subscript wedge, commonly called "voiceless" and "voiced", are sometimes added to the symbol for a voiced sound to indicate more lax/open (slack) and tense/closed (stiff) states of the glottis, respectively. (Ironically, adding the 'voicing' diacritic to the symbol for a voiced consonant indicates less modal voicing, not more, because a modally voiced sound is already fully voiced, at its sweet spot, and any further tension in the vocal cords dampens their vibration.)

Production of {ha.} sound -- Unaccompanied phonation

It has long been noted that, both phonologically and historically, the glottal consonants [ʔ, ɦ, h] do not behave like other consonants. Phonetically, they have no manner or place of articulation other than the state of the glottis: glottal closure for [ʔ], breathy voice for [ɦ], and open airstream for [h]. Some phoneticians have described these sounds as neither glottal nor consonantal, but instead as instances of pure phonation.

UKT: What is the sound of Burmese-Myanmar {ha.}? Since I am not a trained phonetician, I can only go by Burmese-Myanmar phonotactics, some highlights of which are given below:
• It does not allow any of the fricatives to form conjuncts with with stops or plosives. In that way it is different for English, where /t/ and /ʃ/ form an affricate /ʧ/.
• Burmese-Myanmar allows only {ya.} /j/, {ra.} /ɹ/, {wa.} /w/, and {ha.} ?
Since, three out of four are approximants, I have to consider {ha.} to be  an approximant -- NOT a fricative. Therefore, {ha.} must be a pharyngeal in the onset. However, since in the coda it is killed, it does not matter matter whether it is a glottal or pharyngeal.
• None of the stops (or plosives) are allowed to form a conjunct with {ha.}, which shows that stops such as {ka. hka. ga.} [k kʰ g], {ta. hta. da.} [t tʰ d], and {pa. hpa. ba.} [p pʰ b], already contains an element of aspiration.

Since, I cannot place {ha.} either in Pharyngeal or Glottal unequivocally, I am unable to describe the process of formation of a {ha.hto:}. All I can say is that it imparts a <h> sound to the consonant.  I should add that Burmese-Myanmar phonotactics does not allow a {ha.hto} (or any medial) in the coda. See glottalization and pharyngealization in my notes.

Register

Many languages combine phonation and tone into a single phonological system. In Mazatec, tone and phonation have separate lives, so that all possible combinations of its several tones and phonations can be utilized to distinguish words, but Burmese tones do not contrast directly in this way. Rather each Burmese tone occurs only with a specific phonation that serves to make it more distinctive — or, from a different point of view, Burmese tone serves to make the phonations more distinct. These tone-phonation hybrids are called registers.

Supra-glottal phonation

In the last few decades it has become apparent that phonation may involve the entire larynx, with as many as six valves and muscles working either independently or together. From the glottis upward, these articulations are[1]

1. glottal (the vocal cords), producing the distinctions described above
2. ventricular (the 'false vocal cords', partially covering and damping the glottis)
3. arytenoid (sphincteric compression forwards and upwards)
4. epiglotto-pharyngeal (retraction of the tongue and epiglottis, potentially closing onto the pharyngeal wall)
5. raising or lowering of the entire larynx
6. narrowing of the pharynx

Until the development of fiber-optic laryngoscopy, the full involvement of the larynx during speech production was not observable, and the interactions among the six laryngeal articulators is still poorly understood. However, at least two supra-glottal phonations appear to be widespread in the world's languages. These are harsh voice ('ventricular' or 'pressed' voice), which involves overall constriction of the larynx, and faucalized voice ('hollow' or 'yawny' voice), which involves overall expansion of the larynx.

The Bor dialect of Dinka has contrastive modal, breathy, faucalized, and harsh voice in its vowels, as well as three tones. The ad hoc diacritics employed in the literature are a subscript double quotation mark for faucalized voice, [a͈], and underlining for harsh voice, [a]. Examples are,

Other languages with these contrasts are Bai (modal, breathy, and harsh voice), Kabiye (faucalized and harsh voice, previously seen as ±ATR), Somali (breathy and harsh voice).

Elements of laryngeal articulation or phonation may occur widely in the world's languages as phonetic detail even when not phonemically contrastive. For example, simultaneous glottal, ventricular, and arytenoid activity (for something other than epiglottal consonants) has been observed in Tibetan, Korean, Nuuchahnulth, Nlaka’pamux, Thai, Sui, Amis, Pame, Arabic, Tigrinya, Cantonese, and Yi.

Phonation in familiar languages

In languages such as French, all obstruents occur in pairs, one modally voiced and one voiceless.

In English, every voiced fricative corresponds to a voiceless one. For the pairs of English plosives, however, the distinction is better specified as voice onset time rather than simply voice: In initial position /b d g/ are only partially voiced (voicing begins during the hold of the consonant), while /p t k/ are aspirated (voicing doesn't begin until well after its release).

Certain English morphemes have voiced and voiceless allomorphs, such as the plural, verbal, and possessive endings spelled -s (voiced in kids /kɪdz/ but voiceless in kits /kɪts/) and the past-tense ending spelled -ed (voiced in buzzed /bʌzd/ but voiceless in fished /fɪʃt/.

A few European languages, such as Finnish or Alemannic, have no phonemically voiced obstruents but pairs of long and short consonants instead. Outside of Europe, a lack of voicing distinctions is not uncommon; indeed, in Australian languages it is nearly universal.

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Voice Onset Time (VOT) - the second variable of voicing

Based on:
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_onset_time download 071002
(UKT: there is a stub on VOT in prop-con12.htm)

UKT: Phonetic voicing is described qualitatively by phonation, and quantitatively by VOT.

In phonetics, voice onset time, commonly abbreviated VOT, is the length of time that passes between when a consonant is released and when voicing, the vibration of the vocal folds begins.

UKT: As an illustration take the case of pronouncing <pa>. Remember /p/ cannot be pronounced. To hear its sound let's supply it with a vowel, say /a/. Remember, vowels are voiced. At first, the lips are pressed together. When they are suddenly opened (i.e. /p/ is released), a puff of air comes out of the glottis which produces vibration of vocal folds. (i.e. the production of /a/). There is a small time lag between /p/ and /a/. That time lag is VOT.

The three major phonation types of stops can be analyzed in terms of their voice onset time.

#1. Simple unaspirated voiceless plosives, sometimes called tenuis plosives, have a voice onset time at or near zero, meaning that the voicing of a following vowel begins at or near to when the stop is released. (An offset of 15 ms on [t] or 30 ms on [k] is inaudible, and counts as tenuis.)

UKT: Remember: [k] corresponds to the sound of {ka.}

#2. Aspirated plosives followed by a sonorant have a voice onset time greater than this amount, called a positive VOT. The length of the VOT in such cases is a practical measure of aspiration: The longer the VOT, the stronger the aspiration. In Navajo, for example, which is strongly aspirated, the aspiration (and therefore the VOT) lasts twice as long as it does in English: 160ms vs. 80ms for [kʰ], and 45ms for [k]. Some languages have weaker aspiration than English. For velar stops, tenuis [k] typically has a VOT of 20-30 ms, weakly aspirated [k] of some 50-60 ms, moderately aspirated [kʰ] averages 80-90 ms, and anything much over 100 ms would be considered strong aspiration. (Another phonation, breathy voice, is commonly called voiced aspiration; in order for the VOT measure to apply to it, VOT needs to be understood as the onset of modal voicing. Of course, an aspirated consonant will not always be followed by a voiced sound, in which case VOT cannot be used to measure it.)

UKT:
• A sonorant can be a vowel or a nasal. (See sonority hierarchy in intro-voc.htm). To understand "aspirated plosives followed by a sonorant", we shall take the "sonorant" to be a vowel.
• Remember [kʰ] corresponds to the sound of {hka.}. It is an example of an "aspirated plosive".
• Therefore, "aspirated plosives followed by a sonorant", can be exemplified by {hka.}. The values given in the above paragraph:  tenuis [k] typically has a VOT of 20-30 ms; moderately aspirated [kʰ] averages 80-90 ms.

#3. Voiced plosives have a voice onset time noticeably less than zero, a negative VOT, meaning the vocal cords start vibrating before the stop is released. With a fully voiced stop, the VOT coincides with the onset of the stop; with a partially voiced stop, such as English [b, d, g] in initial position, voicing begins sometime during the closure (occlusion) of the consonant.

UKT: Remember: [g] corresponds to the sound of {ga.}

Because neither aspiration nor voicing is absolute, with intermediate degrees of both, the relative terms fortis and lenis are often used to describe a binary opposition between a series of consonants with higher (more positive) VOT, defined as fortis, and a second series with lower (more negative) VOT, defined as lenis. Of course, being relative, what fortis and lenis mean in one language will not in general correspond to what they mean in another.

Voicing contrast applies to all types of consonants, but aspiration is generally only a feature of stops and affricates.

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3. Nasality

The soft palate can be lowered, allowing air to flow out through the nose, or it can be raised to block nasal airflow. As was the case with the vocal cords, what the soft palate is doing is independent the other articulators. For almost any place of articulation, there are pairs of stops that differ only in whether the soft palate is raised, as in the oral stop [d], or lowered, as in the nasal stop [n].

We will discuss more on Nasality in the following chapter.

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4. Laterality

UNIL: Laterals are generally considered to be a special case, since physically speaking they could be grouped among the fricatives and spirants.

When you form an [ l ], your tongue tip touches your alveolar ridge (or maybe your upper teeth) but it doesn't create a stop because one or both sides of the tongue are lowered so that air can flow out along the side. Sounds like this with airflow along the sides of the tongue are called lateral, all others are called central (though we usually just assume that a sound is central unless we explicitly say it's lateral).

The side of the tongue can lower to different degrees. It can lower so little that the air passing through becomes turbulent (giving a lateral fricative like [ɬ] (U026C) or [ɮ] (U026E)) or it can lower enough for there to be no turbulence (a lateral approximant). The [l] of English is a lateral approximant.

We will continue with Laterality in prop-con3.htm.

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5. Airstream mechanism

Speech sounds need air to move. Most sounds (including all the sounds of English) are created by modifying a stream of air that is pushed outward from the lungs. But it's possible for the air to be set in motion in other ways. Sounds which use one of the other three most common airstream mechanisms are called ejectives, implosives, and clicks. We'll discuss these possibilities later in the course.

UKT: To learn more about airstream mechanism see initiation (phonetics) in my notes.

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Consonant charts

Fully describing a consonant involves answering each of the seven questions discussed earlier, that is, specifying the consonant for each of the parameters:
1. active articulator
2. passive articulator
3. constriction degree
4. state of glottis
5. nasality
6. laterality
7. airstream mechanism

UKT: We still have to discuss more fully on Nasality and Laterality, which we will do in prop-con2.htm. And, we have to know about the Manner of articulation which will be discussed in prop-con2.htm. Until we have done so, I will just give the consonant chart.

Some charts have a row for affricates (e.g., the chart below from DJPD16). The IPA consonant chart doesn't -- you can always get the affricate symbol by putting together the plosive and the fricative symbols in the relevant column.

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Table of English Consonants

UKT:
• If only /θ/ (U03B8 - non-ASCII character) could be substituted with /þ/ (Alt0254 - ASCII character), confusion over {tha.} would be solved. We could unequivocally state that {tha.} is Old English 'thorn' [þ].
• If only we could introduce palatal /ç/ (Alt0231 - ASCII character), confusion over {sa.} would be solved. We could unequivocally state that {sa.} is French 'c with cedilla' [ç].

In the Burmese consonant system there are four consonants for each of the following pairs.

According to Rev. U Kawwida of Toronto Myanmar Buddhist monastery, the Burmese consonants {ga.} and {Ga.} sounds almost the same to layman Myanmars. However, the Myanmar monks are taught to pronounce them differently when reciting Pali. Of the two {Ga.} has an {ha.} sound at the end. {Ga.} is the Burmese-Myanmar equivalent of Hindi-Devanagari घ (U0918 Devanagari letter Gha.

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Table of IPA Consonants

Note:
• Is it possible that both Burmese-Myanmar and English-Latin do not have palatal plosives [c] and [ ɟ]? Unable to pronounce these sounds, both have to substitute [s] and [z] in their places?
• In English <c> can have 3 pronunciations: <cell> /sel/, <cat> /kæt/, and <cello> /ʧel/, but the IPA [c] seems to be similar to [ç] with a pronunciation similar to <s>. French [ç] in French word [caleçon] sounded like {sa.} or {hsa.} in my ears. The [c, j] pair has a counter-part in [ç, ʝ] in the fricatives.
• Burmese-Myanmar {a.wag}-consonants, {ya. ra. la. wa. ha.} were medial-formers at one time. However, today, only {ya. ra. wa. ha.} are the allowable medial formers. They form {ya.ping.} {ra.ris} {wa.hswè:} and {ha.hto:}. My problem is where to put {wa.} and {ha.} in the IPA table. From the position of English <w>, {wa.} can be said to be bilabial approximant. Since, no fricatives can form medials, {ha.} can only be a pharyngeal approximant. I am expecting comments from my peers -- UKT 070915.
• Note that /w/ is not included in the IPA table of pulmonic consonants.
• I have placed the four conjunct formers, in red. You will note that they are all approximants.
• "The term ‘liquid’ has become synonymous with ‘l’ and ‘r’ sounds in modern phonetics and phonology. This contrasts with its original meaning, which applied only to the lateral and rhotic that may occur as the second member of a cluster." -- from: Liquid asymmetries in French and Spanish, by Laura Colantoni and Jeffrey Steele , Univ. of Toronto, http://r1.chass.utoronto.ca/twpl/pdfs/twpl24/Colantoni_Steele_TWPL24.pdf 080105

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UKT notes

consonant clusters

From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant_cluster download 071007

In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups /spl/ and /ts/ are consonant clusters in the word <splits>.

UKT: In Burmese-Myanmar, the only consonants that can form consonant clusters are the approximants, {ya. ra. wa. ha.}. No other consonants, such as {sa.}, are not allowed to form consonant clusters. The allowable consonants clusters are known as medials.

Some linguists argue that the term can only be properly applied to those consonant clusters that occur within one syllable. Others contend that consonant clusters are more useful as a definition when they may occur across syllable boundaries. According to the former definition, the longest consonant clusters in the word <extra> would be /kst/ and /str/, whereas the latter allows /kstr/. The German word Angstschweiß (cold sweat) is another good example.

Consonant clusters cross-linguistically

Languages' phonotactics differ as to what consonant clusters they permit.

UKT: Burmese-Myanmar allow only approximants {ya. ra. wa. ha.} to form consonant clusters, known as medials, with other consonants and among themselves. Of course, there are further restrictions.

Many languages do not permit consonant clusters at all. Maori and Pirahã, for instance, don't permit any more than one consonant in a row before another vowel must appear. Japanese is almost as strict, but it allows clusters of consonant plus /j/ as in Tokyo, the name of the capital city. Across a syllable boundary, it also allows a cluster of a nasal consonant plus another consonant, as in Honshū (the name of the largest island) and tempura (UKT: a food item). A great many of the languages of the world are more restrictive than English in terms of consonant clusters; almost every Malayo-Polynesian language permits either one-term clusters or slight variations on a theme. Tahitian, Fijian, Samoan and Hawaiian are all of this sort. Standard Arabic does not permit initial consonant clusters, or more than two consecutive consonants in other positions. Finnish has initial consonant clusters natively only on South-Western dialects and on foreign loans, and only clusters of three inside the word are allowed. Most spoken languages and dialects, however, are more permissive.

At the other end of the scale, the Kartvelian languages of Georgia are almost unbelievable in terms of the consonant clusters they permit. Clusters in Georgian of four, five or six terms are not unusual - for instance, brt'q'eli (flat), mc'vrtneli (trainer) and prčkvna (peeling) - and if grammatical affixes are used, it allows an eight-term cluster: gvbrdγvnis (he's plucking us). Consonants cannot appear as syllable nuclei in Georgian, so this syllable is analysed as CCCCCCCCVC. Some Slavic languages such as Slovak may manifest formidable numbers of consecutive consonants, such as in the words štvrť, žblnknutie, but the consonants /r/ and /l/ can form syllable nuclei in Slovak, and behave phonologically as vowels in this case. Another notable word is the Croatian word opskrbljivanje (supplying) (though note that, like nj, lj is a single consonant here: [lʲ]). Some Salishan languages exhibit long words with no vowels at all, such as the Nuxálk word xłp̓x̣ʷłtłpłłskʷc̓: he had had a bunchberry plant. It is extremely difficult to accurately classify which of these consonants may be acting as the syllable nucleus, and these languages challenge classical notions of exactly what constitutes a syllable.

Consonant clusters in loanwords

Consonant clusters occurring in loanwords do not necessarily follow the cluster limits set by the borrowing language's phonotactics. The Ubykh language's root psta, a loan from Adyghe, violates Ubykh's rule of no more than two initial consonants; also, the English words <sphere>, <sphinx>, Greek loans, violate the restraint that two fricatives may not appear adjacently word-initially.

Consonant clusters in English

In English, the longest possible initial cluster is three terms, as in <split>; the longest possible final cluster is four terms, as in <twelfths>, <bursts> and <strengths>.

However, it is important to distinguish clusters and digraphs. Clusters are made of two or more consonant sounds, while a digraph is a group of two consonant letters standing for only one sound. For example, in the word ship, the two letters "s" and "h" together represent the single consonant [ʃ]. Also note a combination digraph and cluster as seen in "lightning" with three terms: <gh> <t> and <n>; or "length": <ng> <th>

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glottalization and pharyngealisation

From:
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glottalization download 070825
• Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharyngealization download 071008

Glottalization is the complete or partial closure of the glottis during the articulation of another sound. Glottalization of vowels and voiced consonants is most often realized as creaky voice (partial closure). Glottalization of voiceless consonants usually involves complete closure of the glottis; another way to describe this phenomenon is to say that a glottal stop is made simultaneously with another consonant. In certain cases, the glottal stop can even wholly replace the voiceless consonant.
   There are two other ways to represent glottalization in the IPA: (a) the same way as ejectives, with an apostrophe; or (b) with the under-tilde for creaky voice. For example, the Yapese word for sick with a glottalized m could be transcribed as either [m’aar] or [m̰aar]. (In some typefaces, the apostrophe will occur above the m.)

Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound. Arabic uses phonemic secondary pharyngealization for the "emphatic" coronal consonants. The letter ʿayn represents a pharyngealized glottal stop in many dialects. Ubykh, a Northwest Caucasian language formerly spoken in Russia and Turkey, uses pharyngealization in 14 pharyngealized consonants. Chilcotin has pharyngealized consonants that trigger pharyngealization of vowels. Many languages (e.g. Salishan, Sahaptian) in the Plateau culture area of North America also have pharyngealization processes triggered by pharyngeal or pharyngealized consonants that affect vowels. In Danish many of the vowel phonemes have distinct pharyngealized qualities, and in the Tuu languages epiglottalized vowels are phonemic.

UKT: Instead of "reading" what creaky voice and pharyngealized voice are, I prefer to listen to sound files :
from: http://www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/phonetik/EGG/page6.htm#1 download 071008
• Creaky voice <)) (WAV file,  16 kB) --
• Pharyngalized voice  <)) (WAV file,  21 kB)

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intonation

From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intonation_%28linguistics%29 download 071007

In linguistics, intonation is the variation of pitch when speaking. Intonation and stress are two main elements of linguistic prosody.

Many languages use pitch syntactically, for instance to convey surprise and irony or to change a statement to a question. Such languages are called intonation languages. English and French are well-known examples. Some languages use pitch to distinguish words; these are known as tonal languages. Chinese, Thai, and Hausa are examples. An intermediate position is occupied by languages with tonal word accent, for instance Norwegian or Japanese.

UKT: The above paragraph gives examples of languages classified according to intonation:
• intonation languages -- English, French
• tonal word accent languages -- Japanese, Norwegian
• tonal languages -- Chinese, Thai

UKT: In linguistics, a register language is a language which combines tone and vowel phonation into a single phonological system. Burmese and the Chinese dialect Shanghainese are examples. Burmese is usually considered a tonal language, but differences in relative pitch are correlated with vowel phonation, so that neither exists independently. (From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28phonology%29 download 070920)

Rising intonation means the pitch of the voice increases over time; falling intonation means that the pitch decreases with time. A dipping intonation falls and then rises, whereas a peaking intonation rises and then falls.

The classic example of intonation is the question-statement distinction. For example, northeastern American English, like very many languages (Hirst & DiCristo, eds. 1998), has a rising intonation for echo or declarative questions (He found it on the street?), and a falling intonation for wh- questions (Where did he find it?) and statements (He found it on the street.). Yes or no questions (Did he find it on the street?) often have a rising end, but not always. The Chickasaw language has the opposite pattern, rising for statements and falling with questions.

Dialects of British and Irish English vary substantially, with rises on many statements in urban Belfast, and falls on most questions in urban Leeds.

Transcription: In IPA, "global" rising and falling intonation are marked with a diagonal arrow rising left-to-right [↗] and falling left-to-right [↘], respectively. These may be written as part of a syllable, or separated with a space when they have a broader scope:

He found it on the street?

[hi faʊnd ɪt | ɑn ðə ↗stɹit ‖ ]

In the previous example, the global rise symbol is placed between the transcriptions for the words <the> and <street>.

Yes, he found it on the street.

[↘ jɛs ‖ hi faʊnd ɪt | ɑn ðə ↘stɹit ‖ ]

In that example, the symbol for a global fall was placed before the transcription for the word <yes>, as well as between the transcriptions for the words <the> and <street>.

How did you ever escape?

[↗haʊ dɪdju | ɛvɚ | ɪ↘skeɪp ‖ ]

Here, the global rise symbol is place before the transcription for the word <how> and the global fall symbol is placed between the two syllables in <escape>, after the small capital letter < I > which represents the sound [ɪ].

More specific transcription systems for intonation have also been developed, such as ToBI (Tones and Break Indices), RaP (Rhythm and Pitch) and INTSINT (Hirst & Di Cristo, eds. 1998).

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obstruent consonant

UKT: Whenever, we meet the word consonant, we should be careful what it means, because a Burmese-Myanmar consonant-akshara behaves differently in the onset and in the coda. This is not the case in English-Latin: the coda consonant in the CVC syllable is pronounced. However, it is not so in Burmese-Myanmar because the coda consonant-akshara is always "killed" with an {a.that}. Because of this, the Romabama syllable is of the form CVÇ, where, Ç = akshara whose inherent vowel has been killed. Ç is not pronounced.

The following is applicable to syllables ending in killed consonantal akshara of the {wag} division except the nasals.
From: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruent download 071004

In phonetics, articulation may be divided into two large classes, obstruents and sonorants. An obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing outward airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract.

UKT: Obstruent consonants are {wag}-aksharas, excluding nasals. Some {a.wag}-consonants may be included.

Obstruents are those articulations in which there is a total closure or a stricture causing friction, both groups being associated with a noise component; in this class there is a distinctive opposition between voiceless and voiced types.

Obstruents are subdivided into stops, fricatives, and affricates. Obstruents are prototypically voiceless, though voiced obstruents are common. This contrasts with sonorants, which are rarely voiceless.

The following is for languages where a consonant undergoes a change in the coda. However the change is not similar to that of the {a.that}. It only involves a change in voicing: vd changes to vl.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_devoicing download

Final obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish, and Russian, among others. In these languages, vd obstruents in the syllable coda become vl.

In German, the contrast between homorganic obstruents is rather an opposition of fortis and lenis (see fortis and lenis in my notes in prop-con1.htm) than an opposition of vl and vd sounds. Therefore, the term devoicing may be misleading, since voice is only an optional feature of German lenis obstruents. Likewise, the German term for the phenomenon, Auslautverhärtung, does not refer to a loss of voice and is better translated as 'final hardening'. However, the German phenomenon is similar to the final devoicing in other languages in that the opposition between two different kinds of obstruents disappears at the ends of words. Some examples from German include:

• Laub 'foliage', pronounced [laʊ̯p]
• Rad 'wheel', pronounced [raːt]
• Zug 'train', pronounced [tsuːk]

In Dutch and Afrikaans, terminal devoicing results in homophones such as hard 'hard' and hart 'heart' as well as differences in consonant sounds between the singular and plural forms of nouns, for example golf-golven (Dutch) and golf-golwe (Afrikaans) for 'wave-waves'.

homophone n. 1. One of two or more words, such as night and knight, that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, origin, and sometimes spelling. -- AHTD

Phonological final obstruent devoicing can lead to the neutralization of phonemic contrasts in certain environments. For example, Russian нож 'a knife' (phonemically /noʐ/) and нош 'of burdens' (phonemically /noʂ/) are pronounced identically as [noʂ].

The Russian practice of this process is also the source of the seemingly variant transliterations of Russian names into "-off", especially by the French.

English does not have phonological final obtruent devoicing of the type that neutralizes phonemic contrasts; thus pairs like bad and bat are distinct in all major accents of English. Nevertheless voiced obstruents are devoiced to some extent in final position in English, especially when phrase-final or when followed by a voiceless consonant (for example, bad cat [bæd̥ kʰæt]). The most salient distinction between bad and bat is not the voicing of the final consonant but rather the duration of the vowel and the glottalization of final /t/: bad is pronounced [bæːd̥] while bat is [bæˀ(t)].

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sonorant consonant and vowels

From: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonorant download 071006

In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means that a sound is sonorant if it can be produced continuously at the same pitch. For example, vowels are sonorants, as are consonants like /m/ and /l/. Other consonants, like /d/ or /k/ (UKT: [kʰ]), cannot be produced continuously and so are non-sonorant. In addition to vowels, phonetic categorizations of sounds that are considered sonorant include approximants, nasal consonants, taps, and trills. In the sonority hierarchy, all sounds higher than fricatives are sonorants.

UKT: Remember sonorant and sibilant are not the same. A sonorant is a continuous sound as in pronouncing a vowel. A sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth. This can produce a hissing sound as in /s/, or a non-hissing sound as in /θ/. Because of this /s/ is sometimes called a shibilant as opposed to /θ/ thibilant. -- See Wikipedia
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thibilant download 070918
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_fricative download 071007

Sonorants are those articulations in which there is only a partial closure or an unimpeded oral or nasal scape of air; such articulations, typically voiced, and frequently frictionless, without noise component, may share many phonetic characteristics with vowels.

The word resonant is sometimes used for these non-turbulent sounds. In this case, the word sonorant may be restricted to non-vocoid resonants; that is, all of the above except vowels and semivowels. However, this usage is becoming dated.

UKT: A resonant is defined as a "sonorant". -- http://www.answers.com/topic/resonant

A vocoid is a sound made with an open oral cavity such that there is little audible friction in the mouth. It has the potential to be analysed phonemically as a vowel. -- http://www.sil.org/linguistics/glossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAVocoid.htm
(UKT: example given by SIL is a vowel quadrilateral with vowels. The antonym is contoid. SIL examples of contoids are consonants.)

Sonorants contrast with obstruents, which do cause turbulence in the vocal tract. Among consonants pronounced far back in the throat (uvulars, pharyngeals) the distinction between an approximant and a vd fricative is so blurred that such sounds as vd uvular fricative ([ʁ]) and vd pharyngeal fricative ([ʕ]) often behave like sonorants. The pharyngeal consonant is also a semivowel corresponding to the vowel /a/.

UKT:
• IPA consonant table does not give any uvular or pharyngeal approximants. However, if {ha.} has to be put in, I would place in pharyngeal-approximant cell.
• The Burmese-Myanmar's inclusion of vowel {a.} in the consonantal akshara table as a consonant has a rational in "the pharyngeal consonant is also a semivowel corresponding to the vowel /a/". (Quoted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonorant 071010.)

Whereas most obstruents are vl, the great majority of sonorants are vd. It is certainly possible to make voiceless sonorants, but sonorants that are unvoiced occur in only about 5 percent of the world's languages. These are almost exclusively found in the area around the Pacific Ocean from New Caledonia clockwise to South America and belong to a number of language families, among them Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut. It is notable that, in every case where a voiceless sonorant does occur, there is a contrasting voiced sonorant.[verification needed]

The Sino-Tibetan languages form a hypothetical language family composed of, at least, the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of East Asia. They are second only to the Indo-European languages in terms of their number of speakers. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Tibetan_languages download 071007
UKT: Since Burmese is a Tibeto-Burman language, examples from Burmese is of interest. The following pairs are fricatives.
• {hsa.} [sʰ] vl. - {za.} [z] vd.
• {þa.} [θ] vl. - [ð] vd.

Voiceless sonorants tend to be extremely quiet and very difficult to recognise even for those people whose language does contain them. They have a strong tendency to either revoice or undergo fortition to form for example a fricative like ç or ɬ.

Sonorants in English

English has the following sonorant consonants: l, m, n, ŋ, r, w, j

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