aspiration of voiceless stop consonants

Kirk   Tue Nov 29, 2005 9:30 am GMT
<<Just to keep this interesting thread alive; 1) I was wondering whether /t/ in ‘battery’ becomes flap. And how do you pronounce it as I find this ‘battery’ a bit confusing.>>

It's a flap/tap for me. I say ["b{4@`i].

<<2) Also, how about ‘kipper’ ‘and clipper’? Do you aspirate the K’s in these two examples?>>

Yes, for /p/ /t/ and /k/ syllable initially before vowels English aspirates them, so the /k/ and /p/ in "kipper" get aspiration. There is also typically at least some aspiration after these unvoiced stops and before the liquids /r/ and /l/ in English (the aspiration may be less noticeable in this environment, however). A quite narrow transcription of those words for me would be ["k_hI.p_h@`] and ["k_hl_0I.p_h@`]. The [_0] after the [l] indicates it's devoiced in this instance.
Felix the Cassowary   Wed Nov 30, 2005 10:59 am GMT
Paul, "Battery" has two different major pronunciations: In one, the -e- is silent (which I believe predominates in Britain, or at least the standard English English accent), whereas in the other, it is pronounced (which I believe predominates in North America).

In Australia, different people use one, others the other. Personally if it's a portable power supplying-device, I drop the -e-, whereas other meanings I pronouce the -e- (such as in "a battery of tests").

How the -t- is pronounced differs again in different dialects. In North American English, aspiration tends to be minimal if not altogether absent before unstressed syllables. In the particular case of -t-, when it is between two vowels and the second is unstressed, it tends to be pronounced as a flap. So the American pronunciation of "battery" will tend towards [bæ4@ri].

On the other hand, in British English (or at least the standard Received Pronunciation), aspiration tends to be maintained even before unstressed syllables (of course, some British variants will do different things here, but the accent most foreign learners of British English learn is, I understand, Received Pronunciation). So the pronunciation of "battery" will tend towards [bætr\_0i] (note that the combination of an aspirated sound and any of /r l w j/ tends to result in the aspiration being realised as an unvoiced following sound). In particular the sequences /tr/ and /dr/ tend to be realised with some frication, either the /r/ is pronounced with more frication that an approximate usually is (as in Received Pronounciation), or the /t/ is pronounced as [tS], so that "battery" could be pronounced as [bætSr\_0i].

(Australians tend towards the [bæ4@ri] and [bætSr\_0i] pronounciations.)

The last thing to note about aspiration of voiceless consonants is that it is very common in accents with stronger, more consistent aspiration, such as Received Pronunciation or Australian English, to realise the stops /b d g/ as unvoiced stops [b_0 d_0 g_0] word initially. Word finally even more dialects devoice them word finally, but /p t k/ in that circumstance are usually aspirated, glottalised, affricated or have some other change. Also, there's typically changes to the previous vowel as well to maintain the distinction. On the other hand, there's dialects like newer New Zealand English (typically influenced by other languages) which don't aspirate at least some of/p t k/, so unless your native language is one like Mandarin Chinese, Danish or Icelandic which doesn't have voiced stops, you probably shouldn't try to copy. Seeing as the dialects which pronounce /b d g/ as [b_0 d_0 g_0] have no truely voiced stops, less people will be confused if you do voice them, then if you don't.

Finally, although they aren't stops, /tS dZ/ (as in "CHurCH" and "JuDGE") behave exactly like stops as far as aspiration/voicing is concerned i.e. /tS/ tends to be pronounced aspirated as [tS_h], whereas /dZ/ is often pronounced without voicing in some dialects i.e. as [dZ_0]. In those dialects that have /tS/ after /s/ in words like "stew", the /tS/ is not aspirated.

As for question (2), I think Kirk's answered it: [k_h] in the first, [kl_0] or [k_hl_0] in the second.
Paul N.   Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:15 am GMT
Lazar said:

<<Usually a word-final T that isn't flapped is pronounced as an incomplete articulation [t_}] or a glottal stop [?].>>

Could you post some examples of such word-final T's? I mean example words in short sentences.

I myself heard the phrase such as this: "We've been thinking about it for some time..." The phrase was spoken by a Canadian. I was not able to hear the word-final T in the 'it'. Is this an example of such incomplete articulation? Or I'm mistaken and simply failed to detect a subtle tone with which the Canadian phrased the 'it' in the sentence.

Paul N.
Kirk   Thu Dec 29, 2005 8:37 am GMT
<<Could you post some examples of such word-final T's? I mean example words in short sentences.

I myself heard the phrase such as this: "We've been thinking about it for some time..." The phrase was spoken by a Canadian. I was not able to hear the word-final T in the 'it'. Is this an example of such incomplete articulation? Or I'm mistaken and simply failed to detect a subtle tone with which the Canadian phrased the 'it' in the sentence.

Paul N.>>

In "We've been thinking about it for some time..." the /t/ doesn't experience tapping/flapping since it's before a consonant (and doesn't apply the rule for tapping/flapping...the technical rule may be seen in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allophonic_rule).

In North American English that may mean the /t/ will either be unreleased (so, [t_}]), or produced as a glottal stop (which is [?]). It's likely the Canadian you were listening to did one of these things in that position.
Travis   Thu Dec 29, 2005 9:43 am GMT
At least in my dialect, word-final /t/ is flapped if the following word begins with a vowel, regardless of whether the first syllable of the following is stressed or not. Consequently, word-final /t/ in my dialect can have four realizations, [?] (its normal realization), [4] (its prevocalic realization), and [t] proper or even [t_h] (its emphatic or formal realizations).
MUFTAH . GWILY   Sat May 13, 2006 11:20 am GMT
I WOULD LIKE TO ASKE YOU ABOUT SOME OF LITERATURE REVIEW .( MISPRONOUNCE INITIAL CONSONANT CLUSTERS. )
MUFTAH_GWILY@YAHOO.COM   Sat May 13, 2006 11:24 am GMT
I WOULD LIKE TO ASK ABOUT SOME OF LITERATURE REVIEW . ( MISPRONOUNCE CONSONANT CLUSTERS.)

THANK YOU
lana   Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:27 pm GMT
hi everyone

can anyone help me to write my term paper about aspirated and non aspirated in english and arabic

please help me

my email is lanaindia@yahoo.com