Newsgroups: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!das-news.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!MathWorks.Com!news.duke.edu!convex!cs.utexas.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!dog.ee.lbl.gov!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!pacbell.com!amdahl!netcomsv!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!alderson
From: alderson@netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Definition of Vowel?
In-Reply-To: millert@grad.csee.usf.edu's message of 2 Oct 1994 00:54:46 GMT
Message-ID: <aldersonCxBAz9.F26@netcom.com>
Followup-To: alt.usage.english,sci.lang
Reply-To: alderson@netcom.com
Fcc: /u52/alderson/postings
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <CwBxz8.9M7@eskimo.com> <hubey.780032174@pegasus.montclair.edu>
	<CwGHzp.6yr@eskimo.com> <CwK85v.26K@reston.icl.com>
	<theriaal.780670931@tornade.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
	<36l0cm$hu0@mother.usf.edu>
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 1994 16:54:45 GMT
Lines: 80

In article <36l0cm$hu0@mother.usf.edu> millert@grad.csee.usf.edu
(Timothy Miller) writes:

>Theriault Alain (theriaal@ERE.UMontreal.CA) wrote:

>>Why not? Keep in mind that a voiced /s/ is NOT a /z/ and contrarywise

>Being an ameteur, this is new to me.  I has always understood that /s/ is a
>voiceless alveolar fricative, and /z/ is a voiced alveolar fricative.  Why is
>/z/ not a voiced /s/, and if this is the case what is a voiced /s/?  What's
>the difference between a voiced /s/ and /z/?

Several different layers have gotten thrown together and to some extent
confused in this series of posts.  I'll try to straighten things out a bit,
briefly.

First, the notational difference between slashes (or virgules) and brackets:  A
symbol from the IPA (or variants such as those frequently used by Americanists)
between slashes is generally considered to represent (in some sense, in some
theoretical universe of discourse) a phoneme, however defined.  The same symbol
is considered, when placed between brackets, to represent (in a broader or
narrower transcription) an actual phone, that is, a perceptual/acoustical/pro-
duction element.

In a phonetic transcription, [s] and [z], without diacritics, are to be under-
stood as you have noted above, to wit, alveolar fricatives, respectively voice-
less and voiced.  However, other phonetic concomitants are also represented:
[s] is more tense than [z], and so on.  Thus, in a narrow transcription, in
which someone might wish to indicate that a particular phone is a lax voiceless
alveolar fricative, the better choice would be [z] with "unvoiced" diacritic.

In this sense, a voiced [s] may well not be the same as [z].

In a phonemic transcription, /s/ and /z/ represent a set of contrasts derivable
from the phonetic set, though most probably an incompletely specified (or
specifiable) set.  The phonetic realization is subjugated here, and it will
probably be less important whether /z/ is voiced or lax, or whichever contrast
is best represented by the choice of this symbol.

In a theory which includes morphophonological rules--and it simplifies things
immensely to admit them, just as Copernican astronomy simplifies things with
respect to the Ptolemaic--interchanges can be postulated between phonemes as
necessary, as in Mr. Wojcik's example of /haus/ ~ /hauzIz/.  These should not
be understood as phonetic, however:  This is not, synchronically, a voicing
rule or process.

There are also phonetic processes, such as intervocalic voicing of obstruents,
which may or may not be active in different speech modes:  Perhaps in lento
speech intervocalic fricatives (for example) are always clearly distinguished
for voice, while in more rapid speech /s/ is realized as partially or wholly
voiced.  To the listener, this voicing is distinguishable from that of /z/
precisely because it does *NOT* bring about such things as lengthening of the
preceding vowel.

In this sense also, a voiced [s] is not the same as [z].

However, in a situation in which (say) intervocalic voicing has moved from
process status to rule status, it can very easily come about that the result of
voicing /s/ --please note the *phonemic* slashes--is [z], and identical to the
realization of /z/.

Finally, all this arose because of a confusion of *phone[tm]ic* transcription
and *orthographic* convention in Italian, in which <s> is the standard spelling
for [z], and <z> that for [ts].  (NB:  Angle brackets are used to represent
orthographic use of symbols that may otherwise be (mis)understood as phonemic
or phonetic.)

Oh, and for the record the pronunciation of the words "Aztec" and "asbestos" in
the dialects of American English with which I am most familiar are, roughly,

	[A:z'.tEk]
	[Az.bEs'.t@s]

where [@] ("ASCII IPA shwa") is probably too low, but I can't remember how to
indicate "barred i."  I, at least, consider the /z/ to be phonemic in both.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
