Unvoiced Plosives... Aspirated or Unaspirated?

If you're new to these arts, this is the place to ask "stupid" questions and get directions!
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Taurenzine
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Unvoiced Plosives... Aspirated or Unaspirated?

Post by Taurenzine »

So up until now, and perhaps continuing after this question is answered, I have been confused about a certain topic. How do you pronounce an unvoiced plosive in the coda when nothing follows it? Every time I try, no matter how I try, It always sounds at least a little bit aspirated. Is that to say that you can't pronounce it in the coda (when nothing follows it) without it being aspirated? or am I misunderstanding this?

For all of the languages that I've attempted to make up to this point, I have either made it not allowed to end a syllable with a plosive, or made any plosives that end a syllable aspirated. So yeah.
Nachtuil
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Re: Unvoiced Plosives... Aspirated or Unaspirated?

Post by Nachtuil »

I may not quite understand your query.

Pulmonic consonants by their very nature will always have some air coming out that you can detect. It certainly is possible that it is just a dialectal thing if you have light aspiration in coda. I don't think aspiration is necessarily a binary factor as you can have light and heavy aspiration on stops etc. For myself, my stops are normally plain in final coda and match the stops in clusters. For me the p in spit and tip differ from the p in pit.

Are you able to reliably distinguish and produce between aspirated and unaspirated consonants? As a native English speaker distinguishing plain and aspirated stops took me quite a while. Sometimes English speakers turn final coda stops into aspirated stops or even ejectives when emphasising them.

Check for ejectives in English at 12:40 in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa6cHEJIjYI (granted.... it is uncommon)

This may help on aspiration, but maybe you already have a good handle on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PSdlctYBsw
You may want to do the paper test that the guy demonstrates. He also has a second video on aspiration.
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