ABSTRACT
Prosodic characteristic of speech sounds that so far has only been physically measured in approximate values, since objective parameters for boundaries between individual speech sounds cannot be ascertained owing to the fact that speech proceeds in an uninterrupted flow. While the absolute duration of speech sounds depends on the speech tempo and one’s personal way of speaking, the relative duration may function to differentiate meaning, for example in English the opposition of long and short vowels (e.g. heed vs hid) that is accompanied by qualitative characteristics ( quality). Three distinctive qualities are found, for example, in Estonian. Long and short consonants as well as long and short vowels are found, for example, in Greenlandic: [ma:'n:a] ‘now,’ [ma’na] ‘this,’ [u:'nεq] ‘burn’ [un:'εq] ‘leather,’ [a:'naq] ‘stepmother,’ [a’naq] ‘excrement.’ Long consonants (geminates) can also be differentiated from short ones in that they are formed when pulmonic (or in the case of ejectives, pharyngeal) air is forced with great pressure through the resonance chamber. ( fortis vs lenis)
References
phonetics
Group of languages spoken from Columbia to Chile (about 7 million speakers); the largest language is the dialect of Cuzco (about 1 million speakers). Together with
are also links with Penutian.
