Haskins Publications

Number	720
Year	1989
Drawer	13
Entry Date	11/15/1999
Authors	Abramson, A. S.
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Publication	PASAA, 19(2), 85-93.
url	http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Reprints/HL0720.pdf
Abstract	Much work has been done on the relevance of the timing of glottal pulsing relative to the occurrence of consonantal closure for phonemic distinctions between homorganic stops. In this paper, I have assembled old and new work on the plosives of Standard Thai, including the addition of data on the palatal affricatives. In word-initial position, in both production and perception, the traditionally labeled voice, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated stop consonants are well separated by voice onset time (VOT). The two palatal affricates are likewise so distinguised in production, although perceptual experiment have not yet been run for them. In word-final position, where there are no contrasts of voicing and aspiration, the only plosives that occur are the stops; they show no voicing in their closures. A limited sampling of running speech indicates that, with some reduction of range, the distinguishing mechanism is quite robust. Temporal control of the laryngeal source, then, is sufficient to account for the three-way voicing distinction of Standard Thai.
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