"Voiced obstruent" mistakes

[De Reuse, Willem]

I guess I should add sth. regarding Western Apache.  WA has a fortitioned (prenasalized) [nd] from PA *n.  In some dialects, that stays the prenasalized [nd], in others it becomes a plain [n] (yes, there's evidence that PA *n > PSA (Proto Southern Athabascan) *nd > n), in others, it becomes a voiced [d], phonemically different from the <d> [t].  Now, for some younger speakers, this [d] merges with the <d> [t], both being pronounced voiceless. I have always wondered whether that was an influence from the spelling, since in the dialects that have [d] and [t] as different phonemes, both are spelled <d>.  You are supposed to spell the <d> that comes from PA *n as underlined <d>, but in practice no one does this.

Best wishes,

Willem de Reuse
________________________________
From: ATHAPBASCKAN-L [ATHAPBASCKAN-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] on behalf of Andrea L. Berez [andrea.berez at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2010 9:07 AM
To: ATHAPBASCKAN-L at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: "Voiced obstruent" mistakes

Hi,

That's a good point. It's misleading to assume that e.g. <j> really
represents the same sound in both Tlingit and English. Unfortunately
most teachers aren't linguists and thus don't try very hard to be
precise about these things.


During this trip I've been spending a some time in adult Ahtna language classes, and I've noticed that elder speaker-teachers seems to be far more distressed by students' lack of attention to manner distinctions than to voicing distinctions (including my own). Missing an affricate or, more commonly, an ejective is far more likely to be corrected by an elder than making a voicing error, especially word-medially.

Andrea
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