Chapter 10: phonetics II: voiced sounds COMMENTARY ON ACTIVITIES

Activity 10.1

Nasal stops such as [n] and [m] are normally voiced. Burmese is cited by Ladefoged (2005: 135) as a language with voiceless nasals. Voiceless nasals are transcribed with the diacritic for : [n̥ ], [m̥ ] etc.

Activity 10.2

[f] voiceless labiodental as in [fɔːn] fawn [v] voiced labiodental fricative as in [vɔːn] Vaughan, but over and many other words would have been alright. [θ] voiceless as in [θaɪ] thigh [ð] as in [ðaɪ] thy, or other etc. [ ʃ ] voiceless post-­alveolar fricative as in [ ʃɑːk] shark [ʒ] voiced post-­alveolar fricative as in [ʒɑːk] Jacques (in a rather English imitation of French), or the middle sound in measure, for example. The voiced counterpart appears on the immediate right of each voiceless fricative within a cell.

Activity 10.3

x ʃ s ð z v z z ɦ s f O h , s h e s e e s h o s e v a s e s a h e a d a r e s a f e .

θ h z f v ð z ʒ ʃ z E a r t h h a s a f e w o f t h e s e A s i a n s h o e s .

Many people do Asian with voiceless [ ʃ ], instead of its voiced counterpart [ʒ]. Some speakers do those and these with an initial [v] and earth with a final f[ ]. To complete the underlining you needed to know that [n] is voiced and that [d] counts as voiced.

Activity 10.5

2 The tap [ɽ] is out of place in a set of nasals. 3 Voiceless [s] does not belong in a set of voiced sounds. 4 Dental [ð] is the odd one out in a set with alveolar . (You might also have said that as [n] is a nasal, it doesn’t belong with the others which are all oral sounds.) 5 As a voiced sound, [ʙ] does not fit with voiceless ones. 6 The glottal [ʔ] is the only one that is not a fricative. Even [ɹ̝ ] is a fricative, and hunting around in the IPA table of diacritics should help you to work out why this is so.