Paraplegic.

Mark A. Mandel Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM
Tue Apr 17 20:17:12 UTC 2001


Herb replied to me in such wise:

>>>>>
Entertaining but improbable.  Aspiration, or delayed onset of voicing, is
not aerodynamic in cause but neuro-muscular.  The neural signal to close
the glottis so that voicing can begin does not come until significantly
after the release of the [p], a delay of about 50-60ms.  After a [b] the
delay is only about 10ms.  For heavy aspiration, the delay is simply
longer, but the air pressure doesn't rise to a level that would hinder
tongue movement.  The tongue's a pretty strong muscle.  However, the
perceptual effect might be as you suggest in (1).  As to "naptha" and
"dipthong", I suspect that those are simply dissimilatory.  We don't like
fricative clusters in English except for those involving a final -s suffix.
<<<<<

Thanks for the data. I shouldn't have said "hinder tongue movement", but
rather "create a perceptible resistance that speakers would rather avoid
than fight". As you point out, though, that's purely speculative.

-- Mark



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