{"id":326,"date":"2025-06-16T15:54:52","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T15:54:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/?p=326"},"modified":"2025-06-17T23:05:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T03:05:40","slug":"voiceless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/?p=326","title":{"rendered":"Voiceless"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[voiceless]<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n

Counterpart<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

[voice]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Feature System<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Jakobsonian Features<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Definition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Phonemes classified as [voiceless] are \u201cproduced with a glottal opening that is so wide that it prevents vocal vibration if air flows through the opening\u201d (Chomsky & Halle 1968:327).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purpose<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The opposition of [voiceless] with [voice<\/a>] demonstrates how physical differences in the vocal tract manifest acoustically (Jakobson 1949:422).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The opposition [voice] and [voiceless] was introduced by Jakobson and Lotz (1949) not as distinctive features but as descriptors of the [tense<\/a>] vs. [lax<\/a>] opposition. \u201cThe tense consonants (vs. lax) demand not only stiffened walls but also a stronger airstream: they are fortes vs.<\/em> lenes. The fortes, when not followed by lenes, are voiceless, and the lenes, except before fortes, are voiced\u201d (Jakobson & Lotz 1949:430).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opposition between [voiced] and [voiceless] were introduced as distinctive features in 1952 by Jakobson, Fant, & Halle. They called [voice] phonemes \u201cbuzz\u201d phonemes and [voiceless] phonemes \u201chiss\u201d phonemes. They note that the \u201cmost striking manifestation of \u2018voicing\u2019 is the appearance of a strong low component which is represented by the voice bar along the base line of the spectrogram\u201d (Jakobson et al. 1952:26). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lombardi (1991) argues that laryngeal features are privative because phonological rules do not tend to target [-voice], given the assumptions of underspecification in phonological derivations and neutralization outputs (Lombardi 1991:2-3). For some scholars, [-voice] or [voiceless] is obsolete, being simply in the laryngeal node in feature geometry and having no dependent features (Lombardi 1991:35). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chomsky, Noam; and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English<\/em>. New York: Harper and Row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jakobson, Roman. 1949. On the identification of phonemic entities. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague<\/em> 5.205-213. Reprinted in 1962 in Selected writings: Vol. 1: Phonological studies<\/em>, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 418-425. \u2019S-Gravenhage: Mouton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jakobson, Roman; and John Lotz. 1949. Notes on the French phonemic pattern. Word<\/em> 5.151-158. Reprinted in 1962 in Selected writings: Vol. 1: Phonological studies<\/em>, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 426-434. \u2019S-Gravenhage: Mouton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jakobson, Roman; Gunnar Fant; and Morris Halle. 1952. Preliminaries to speech analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates.<\/em> (MIT Acoustic Laboratory Technical Report 13). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lombardi, Linda. 1991. Laryngeal features and laryngeal neutralization<\/em>. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [Published by Garland, New York, 1994.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Gregory K. Iverson; and Joseph C. Salmons. 2011. Final devoicing and final laryngeal neutralization.  The Blackwell companion to phonology, vol. 2: Phonological processes, ed. by Marc van Oostendorp et al., 1622-1643. Malden, MA: Blackwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ainsley Graf<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[voiceless] Counterpart [voice] Feature System Jakobsonian Features Definition Phonemes classified as [voiceless] are \u201cproduced with a glottal opening that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"disabled","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}