![]() Meaning that we cannot use the state of the glottis alone to determine the difference between voiced and voiceless stops in English. But according to Ladefoge & Johnson (2011), most speakers of English have no voicing during the closure of the so-called voiced stops in silence initial position, or when they occur after a voiceless sound as in for example, “bag” /bæg/ or “brass band” /bæs bænd/ respectively. voicing usually occurs throughout the stop closure) when they occur in between two voiced sounds. Interestingly, the amount of voicing in each of the so-called voiced stops depends on their context. It is this interval that shows that the stop is aspirated. But it is clear that in “pie”, there is a moment of aspiration (a period of voicelessness) after the release of the lip closure for /p/ and before the start of voicing for the vowel. As they noted, most people have very little voicing when the lips are closed during the production of for example, /p/ in “pie” or /b/ in “buy”. But the difference is not just one of voicing during the consonant closure (see Ladefoge & Johnson, 2011). That is, voiced stops in English contrast phonemically with the voiceless ones. In English, we can distinguish two types of contrastive stops: voiced /b, d, g/ and voiceless /p, t, k/ stops according to the state of the glottis. According to (Kaur, 2015), it is a measure of the time between the burst of a plosive and the onset of voicing of a subsequently voiced phoneme. It is defined as the period between the release of the articulators for a stop and the onset of vocal fold vibration of the following segment. In phonetics, voice onset time (VOT) is a very important feature in the production of stop consonants. Also, understanding words having the initial voiced stops before and after a pause and weakly aspirated stops produced by Ghanaians will not be a problem to listeners. It is clear that Ghanaian speakers of English would have no difficulty distinguishing weakly aspirated stops from voiced stops before and after a pause. However, speaker sex seems to have no effect on the length of the VOT. The length of the VOT was found to have been affected by place of articulation and vowel contexts. However, for some of the stops, voicing coincided with the release, while for some voicing began after an appreciable amount of time after the release burst. The study has revealed that for all the voiceless stops, voicing for the following segments began after the stops were released, and there was no pre-voicing or voice lead. The study used 112 Ghanaian speakers, 76 for a production test they produced 21 tokens of the stops in a /p/-, /t/- and /k/- initial words, and 36 for a perception test they listened to words produced with voiced stops in a /b-b/, /d-d/ and /g-g/ environments. Specifically, it sought to examine the voice onset time of the stops, and whether listeners are able to distinguish English stops made with weak aspiration from the voiced stops before and after a pause. ![]() What this study sought to do was to investigate the production of English initial voiceless stops, /p, t, k/ in Ghanaian English. ![]() However, listeners are able to distinguish the voiceless stops from their voiced counterparts. Interestingly, voiceless stops in many Ghanaian indigenous languages appear to be weakly aspirated they are perceived to be made with a very short voice onset time. Voice onset time, therefore, serves as a significant cue in distinguishing English voiced stops from their voiceless counterparts. Thus, in distinguishing the two, listeners most often depend on the onset of voicing of the following segments. There has been a general perception that the English voiced stops /b, d, g/ before and after a pause or silence are more often confused with the initial voiceless stops /p, t, k/.
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