aspiration
In phonetics,
aspiration is the strong burst of breath that
accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration,
the closure of some obstruents. In English, aspirated consonants are allophones
in complementary distribution with their
unaspirated counterparts, but in some other languages, notably most Indian and East Asian languages, the difference is contrastive.To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of one's mouth, and say pin [pʰɪn] and then bin [bɪn]. One should either feel a puff of air or see a flicker of the candle flame with pin that one does not get with bin. In most dialects of English, the initial consonant is aspirated in pin and unaspirated in bin.
Voiceless consonants are produced with the vocal folds open (spread) and not vibrating, and voiced
consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed and
vibrating (modal voice). Voiceless aspiration occurs when
the vocal cords remain open after a consonant is released. An easy way to
measure this is by noting the consonant's voice-onset time, as the voicing of a following vowel cannot begin
until the vocal cords close.
Phonetically
in some languages, such as Navajo, aspiration of stops tends to be realized as
voiceless velar airflow, whereas aspiration of affricates is realized as an
extended length of the frication.
Aspirated
consonants are not always followed by vowels or other voiced sounds. For
example, in Eastern Armenian, aspiration is contrastive even
word-finally, and aspirated consonants occur in consonant clusters. In Wahgi, consonants are only aspirated in final position.
Degree
The degree
of aspiration varies: that is, the voice-onset time of aspirated stops is
longer or shorter depending on the language or the place of articulation.
Armenian and
Cantonese have aspiration that lasts about as long as English aspirated stops,
in addition to unaspirated stops. Korean has lightly aspirated stops that fall
between the Armenian and Cantonese unaspirated and aspirated stops, as well as
strongly aspirated stops whose aspiration lasts longer than that of Armenian or
Cantonese. (See voice-onset time.)
Aspiration
varies with place of articulation. The Spanish voiceless stops /p t
k/ have voice-onset times (VOTs) of about 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds, whereas
English aspirated /p t k/ have VOTs of about 60, 70, and 80 ms. Voice-onset
time in Korean has been measured at 20, 25, and 50 ms for /p t k/ and 90, 95,
and 125 for /pʰ tʰ kʰ/.[2]
intonation
In linguistics,
intonation is variation of spoken pitch
that is not used to distinguish words; instead it is used for a range of
functions such as indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker,
signalling the difference between statements and questions, and between
different types of questions, focusing attention on important elements of the
spoken message and also helping to regulate conversational interaction. It
contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation in some languages
does distinguish words, either lexically or grammatically. (The term tone
is used by some British writers in their descriptions of intonation, but this
is to refer to the pitch movement found on the nucleus or tonic syllable in an
intonation unit – see Intonation in English: British Analyses of English
Intonation, below).Although intonation is primarily a matter of pitch variation, it is important to be aware that functions attributed to intonation such as the expression of attitudes and emotions, or highlighting aspects of grammatical structure, almost always involve concomitant variation in other prosodic features. Crystal[1] for example says that "...intonation is not a single system of contours and levels, but the product of the interaction of features from different prosodic systems – tone, pitch-range, loudness, rhythmicality and tempo in particular."
Functions of intonation
All vocal languages use pitch pragmatically in intonation — for instance for emphasis, to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question. Tonal languages such as Chinese and Hausa use intonation in addition to using pitch for distinguishing words.[2]Many writers have attempted to produce a list of distinct functions of intonation. Perhaps the longest was that of W.R.Lee who proposed ten. J.C. Wells and E.Couper-Kuhlen) both put forward six functions. Wells's list is given below; the examples are not his:
- attitudinal function (for expressing emotions and attitudes)
example: a fall from a
high pitch on the 'mor' syllable of "good morning" suggests more
excitement than a fall from a low pitch
- grammatical function (to identify grammatical structure)
example: it is claimed
that in English a falling pitch movement is associated with statements, but a
rising pitch turns a statement into a yes–no question,
as in He's going ↗home?.
This use of intonation is more typical of American English than of British. It
is claimed that some languages, like Chickasaw
and Kalaallisut,
have the opposite pattern from English: rising for statements and falling with
questions.
- focusing (to show what information in the utterance is new and what is already known)
example: in English I
saw a ↘man
in the garden answers "Whom did you see?"
or "What happened?", while I ↘saw
a man in the garden answers "Did you hear a man in the
garden?"
- discourse function (to show how clauses and sentences go together in spoken discourse)
example: subordinate
clauses often have lower pitch, faster tempo and narrower pitch range than
their main clause,[6]
as in the case of the material in parentheses in "The Red Planet (as it's
known) is fourth from the sun"
- psychological function (to organize speech into units that are easy to perceive, memorize and perform)
example: the utterance
"You can have it in red blue green yellow or ↘black"
is more difficult to understand and remember than the same utterance divided
into tone units as in "You can have it in ↗red
| ↗blue | ↗green
| ↗yellow | or ↘black"
- indexical function (to act as a marker of personal or social identity)
example: group
membership can be indicated by the use of intonation patterns adopted
specifically by that group, such as street vendors or preachers. The so-called high rising terminal,
where a statement ends with a high rising pitch movement, is said to be typical
of younger speakers of English, and possibly to be more widely found among
young female speakers.
It is not known whether such a list would apply to other languages without
alteration.
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