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Aspiration (phonetics)
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In
phonetics, '''aspiration''' is the strong burst of
Earth's atmosphere air that accompanies the release 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'' and then ''store''. 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.html">International_Phonetic_Alphabet#Extended_IPA_diacritics
Extended IPA, the superscript equal sign, {{IPA|[â?¼]}}.
Voiceless consonants are produced with the
vocal cords open. (Voicing involves bringing the vocal cords close together.) 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. However, aspirated consonants are not always followed by vowels or other voiced sounds; indeed, in Eastern
Armenian language Armenian, aspiration is contrastive even at the ends of words:
{| class="wikitable"
!colspan=2|Final aspiration in E. Armenian
|-
|{{IPA|bard͡z}}||''pillow''
|-
|{{IPA|bart͡s�}}||''difficult''
|-
|{{IPA|bart͡sʰ}}||''high''
|}
English language English voiceless stop consonants are aspirated when they are word-initial or begin a
stressed syllable, as in ''pen'', ''ten'', ''Ken'', but this is not distinctive. That is, these consonants have unaspirated variants in other positions, such as word-finally or in an initial cluster with [s], as in ''spun'', ''stun'', ''skunk''. In many languages, such as
Cantonese language Cantonese,
Hindi,
Icelandic language Icelandic,
Korean language Korean,
Mandarin (linguistics) Mandarin,
Thai language Thai, and
Ancient Greek, {{IPA|[pâ?¼ tâ?¼ kâ?¼]}} ''etc.'' and {{IPA|[pÊ° tÊ° kÊ°]}} ''etc.'' are different
phonemes altogether.
Alemannic German Alemannic German dialects have unaspirated {{IPA|[pâ?¼ tâ?¼ kâ?¼]}} as well as aspirated {{IPA|[pÊ° tÊ° kÊ°]}}; the latter series are usually viewed as
consonant clusters. In
Danish language Danish and most southern varieties of
German language German, the "
Fortis and lenis lenis" consonants transcribed for historical reasons as {{IPA|<b d g>}} are distinguished them from their "
Fortis and lenis fortis" counterparts {{IPA|<p t k>}} mainly in their lack of aspiration.
Icelandic language Icelandic has '''pre-aspirated''' {{IPA|[Ê°p Ê°t Ê°k]}}; some scholars interpret these as consonant clusters as well.
There are degrees of aspiration. Armenian and Cantonese have aspiration that lasts about as long as English aspirated stops, as well as unaspirated stops like Spanish. 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.) An old IPA symbol for light aspiration was {{IPA|[ Ê» ]}} (that is, like a rotated ejective symbol), but this is no longer commonly used. There is no specific symbol for strong aspiration, but {{IPA|[Ê°]}} can be iconically doubled for, say, Korean *{{IPA|[kÊ» ]}} vs. *{{IPA|[kÊ°Ê°]}}. Note however that Korean is nearly universally transcribed as {{IPA|[k]}} vs. {{IPA|[kÊ°]}}, with the details of voice onset time given numerically.
Aspiration also varies with
place of articulation. Spanish /p t k/, for example, have voice onset times (VOTs) of about 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds, whereas English /p t k/ have VOTs of about 60, 70, and 80 ms. Korean has been measured at 20, 25, and 50 ms for /p t k/ and 90, 95, and 125 for {{IPA|/pÊ° tÊ° kÊ°/}}.
The word 'aspiration' and the aspiration symbol is sometimes used with voiced stops, such as {{IPA|[dÊ°]}}. However, such "voiced aspiration", also known as
breathy voice ''breathy voice'' or ''murmur'', is less ambiguously transcribed with dedicated diacritics, either {{IPA|[d̤]}} or {{IPA|[dʱ]}}. (Some linguists restrict the subscript diacritic {{IPA|[ ̤]}} to
sonorants, such as
vowels and
nasal consonants, which are murmured throughout their duration, and use the superscript {{IPA|[ʱ]}} for the murmured release of obstruents.) When it is included as aspiration, voiceless aspiration is called just that to avoid ambiguity.
Reference
*Taehong Cho and Peter Ladefoged, "Variations and universals in VOT". In ''Fieldwork Studies of Targeted Languages V: UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics'' vol. 95. 1997.
See also
*
Voice onset time
*
List of phonetic topics
*
Phonation
Category:phonetics
da:Aspiration (sang)
de:Aspiration (Phonetik)
he:×ž× ×•×©×¤×•×ª העיצורי×?
id:Aspirasi
ja:有気音
ko:격음
nl:Spiritus (taalkunde)
sv:Aspiration (fonetik)
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