Description

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 711.

Aspiration and its degrees

In phonetics, aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies either the release or, in the case of preaspiration, the closure of some obstruents. To feel or see the difference between aspirated and unaspirated sounds, one can put a hand or a lit candle in front of his or her mouth, and say "tore" (IPA| [tʰɔɹ] ) and then "store" (IPA| [stɔɹ] ). One should either feel a puff of air or see a flicker of the candle flame with "tore" that one does not get with "store". In English, the "t" should be aspirated in "tore" and unaspirated in "store".

The diacritic for aspiration in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a superscript "h", IPA| [ʰ] . Unaspirated consonants are not normally marked explicitly, but there is a diacritic for non-aspiration in the Extensions to the IPA, the superscript equal sign, IPA| [⁼] .

Voiceless consonants are produced with the vocal cords open and voiced consonants are produced when the vocal folds are fractionally closed. 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.