We’re digging into /t/ and /d/ on Glossonomia this week. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss how we make this cognate pair of consonants, voiceless and voiced alveolar stop/plosives.

Today’s Topics include:

• the concept of Lenition (softening), in particular, the terms Fortis vs. Lenis.

• Voice Onset Time (VOT): when does the voicing begin? Normally, /t/ in English is aspirated at the beginning of stressed syllables. In English, initial /d/ in stressed syllables is, essentially voiceless but unaspirated, whereas intervocalic (between two vowels).

• In Phonecian, the word for the letter D was, in fact “door”—daleth.

• T comes from Greek Tau, and Semitic Tav, which resembled a simple cross.

• Spellings: t (Ted, atop, get), th (Thames, Thomas, thyme), pt- (ptarmigan, pterodactyl, pterigoid)

• Wikipedia has a paragraph on the origins of the name Thames, and its Greek influenced Th- spelling

• IPA [th] for aspiration, [t=] for unaspirated; [d]

• There is no perfect phonetic way to notate things; there are many ways to heaven in the phonetic realm

• Apart from English, there are many languages where /t/ is not aspirated

• “Cool” words of the week—prevocalic: before a vowel; postvocalic: after a vowel; intervocalic: between 2 vowels.

• No audible release of final /t/ “but, not, that” IPA [ bʌt ̚ nɒt ̚ ðæt ̚ ]

• devoicing of consonant clusters tr-, -tl, tw-,

• preceding /s/, as in steam, “deaspirates” the /t/, and may reduce the devoicing in stream.

• past-participles: -ed endings following a voiceless consonant are /t/ e.g. hoped is pronounced [ hoʊpt ], following a voiced consonant or vowel are pronounced /d/

• Orthoepy: the “correct” pronunciation of a language, or a tradition of pronouncing words as they are spelled; e.g. often with a /t/ or not

• Intervocalic /t/: In North America typically a voiced tap [ɾ] or [ t̬ ]

• Sound Patterns of Spoken English by Lynda Shockey

• Glottaling, using the glottal stop, as it “Hit me, baby, one more time”

• Assimilation, where the sound is moved to the place of the following consonant

• Glottal reinforcement: /t/ supported by closure in the glottis

• Ejectives: non-pulmonic is “not from the lungs” IPA [ t’ ]: the glottis is closed and the larynx rises to pressurize the [ t’ ] behind the closure at the gum ridge

• geminate or twinned consonants, e.g. hit Ted, either the first is unreleased, or we may use “double tapping” (to release both /t/ sounds)

• Raymond Hickey Irish English Resource Centre slit /t/ and in Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand; Kath & Kim’s grayshsh; JIPA: The acoustic character of fricated /t/ in Australian English: A comparison with /s/ and /ʃ/ by Mark J. Jones and Kirsty McDougall

• Palatal versions of /t/ and /d/ (IPA [c] and [ɟ] )

• Back of tongue sloppiness vs. Front of tongue agility; greater phonetic variation with tongue tip

• /t/ epenthesis, e.g. Prince vs. prints; tense vs. tents; sense vs. cents

• Prescriptions: watch out for [ts] in initial settings “splashy /t/”; skills to be able to do unaspirated /t/ or to have an early voice onset on /d/ (I’d probaby notate that as [d̬]

“Some of the things we’re talking about are questions of precision. ‘Inappropriate Precision’ is what robots do. What dancers do is ‘appropriate precision,’ we hope. And so, dancers of the mouth ought to be equivalently curious about, and in love with, the possibility of precision but only as it achieves the gracefulness, or expressiveness, or wildness that’s required of the artistic endeavour in front of them.”

Next week we’re on to the vowel sound happY.

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