Читать книгу Applying Phonetics - Murray J. Munro - Страница 50

☛ Cut a rectangle of thin paper (20 × 5 cm) and hold it about 3–5 cm in front of your lips. Now say the word pair pay–bay slowly. You'll find that the /p/ of pay causes the paper to move much more than does the /b/ in bay. The difference is in the sequence of events that occurs for each consonant. For /p/, the plosive release and the vowel are separated by a puff of air called aspiration. As a result, the vowel doesn't actually start until some time after the release. For /b/, there is little or no puff of air; the vowel begins immediately after the release. This timing difference underlies the voiceless–voiced distinctions for /p/–/b/, /t/–/d/, and /k/–/g/ when they are produced at the beginning of a word.