Fortis Consonants

[Nicholas Widdows]

> 	The term "fortis" is not really one which has a clear and
> objective phonetic meaning.  According to Catford, "the terms tense/lax,
> strong/weak, fortis/lenis, and so on should never be loosely and
> carelessly used without precise phonetic specification."

Thank <swearword> for that. It's not just me then. I was never taught those
terms, and whenever I read them I'm thinking What? What? I don't want a
theatre critic's opinion of the sound. Tell me which bits of my mouth to
move!

Using terms like this that (as far as I can tell) don't accurately describe
the physiology is often a source of misunderstanding. These "aspirated"
voiced stops, is anyone really suggesting they were aspirated, with breathy
voice on the onset of the following vowel, or were they murmured the way
modern Indian ones (I think) are? It could make quite a difference to the
glottalic theory.

English [sp] is compared to Danish or Icelandic [sb] because the [b] fits
the rest of their phonology, and I've heard it said that our choice of [p]
is (phonetically) arbitrary. But voiceless [p] is not the same as devoiced
[b]. The arytenoid cartilages are held and are moving differently. That's
where the tenseness and weakness partly are, but I would prefer to see them
described in (laryngal)phonation terms: voiced, devoiced, voiceless,
breathy, creaky, etc. A sound law might be more easily expressed if the
right structural features were chosen.

I've seen a book on Arabic say that English vowel-initial words also begin
with hamza. But the larynx can presumable make plosive, implosive, or
ejective stops; most of us have one, Arabic and German have the other,
Maltese contrasts them (if I read it right).

Phonation: Cinderella's kid sister.

Nicholas Widdows (probably)

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