Oh those booths

[Jules Levin]

On 1/31/2012 5:03 AM, Goloviznin Konstantin wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> There is some doubt about pronunciation of the word booths.
> Dictionaries  give two variants for singular of it . Those are
> [buːð] and [buːθ]. Сorrespondingly the plural for them should be
> [buːðz] and [buːθs]. But listening to it on the site www.howjsay.com
> gives [buːðs]. Am I right about my hearing and this time it's  only
> some exception to the rule "after voiced - voiced, after unvoiced -
> unvoiced" or something else?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Konstantin
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>    options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                      http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Alas, you and many others have fallen for the myth of +/- Voice in 
English.  The consonants s ~ z, theta ~ ethe, etc.,
differ by the feature Tense ~ Lax.  In the normal pronunciation of 
'dogs', the devoicing of the final cluster is clearly visible on sound 
spectrographs.  The vowel is /lengthened /before the lax consonants and 
the final vocal cord vibrations peter out before the final [z] is 
reached.  The acoustic signal for native speakers is the vowel length.  
You can easily  test this by just lengthing the vowel in minimal pairs 
such as 'his' ~ 'hiss', 'bad' ~ 'bat', while devoicing the final 
consonant.  No native speaker will notice.  You can do this acoustically 
by actually replacing the final consonant--no loss of contrast!
I am not sure, but I think Trubetzkoy endorces this in /Principes de 
Phonologie"  (/Sorry, read it in French, not German.)
Jules Levin
Los Angeles

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------