rainbowcult wrote: ↑04 Oct 2020 22:11
Salmoneus wrote: ↑04 Oct 2020 22:04
Perhaps you could explain what you mean by "lightly"?
Well I'm not the best at explaining things, but if you were to say it quieter, I guess? A consonant that is barely able to be heard but still there.
I wonder whether you may be mistaken in your analysis of what you're hearing?
To the best of my knowledge, no language uses volume meaningfully (other than as one indicator of stress or emphasis).
In particular, and issue here is that many consonants - stops - are in a very real sense already 'not there'. A stop, like /t/, /k/ etc, is literally a silent gap in the airflow - they're only recognisable through small variations in the sound generated as the airflow is closed, and sometimes, when applicable, when it is opened again. In a very real sense, you cannot say /k/ more loudly or more quietly - its really only the vowels (or other non-stops) on either side that have volume, though for phonemic purposes some characteristics of the vowels are counted as part of the phoneme.
Is this 'lightness' or 'quietness' you're interested in a possible trait of ALL consonants, or just stops? That is, does it apply to /s/, /n/, /w/, etc, or just to /t/, /k/, /p/?
Conversely, you can make a fricative like /s/ louder quite easily, but you generally do this by a) increasing the rate at which you expel air, and b) pressing the fricative 'closer', making the gap for the air to pass through smaller. But you can't do either of those with a stop, which aleady has zero air going through and 100% closure.
To get more concrete, I'm not sure what you mean by your analogy to French. You say "almost like French but with at least something there" - but of course French consonants already have 'something there' (even if it's only on the surrounding vowels), or else they wouldn't be consonants. So I'm not sure exactly what you mean.
The fact you say 'extremely lightly unless there's a vowel in front of it' (by 'in front' I presume you mean immediately following in time, rather than in front in a transcription, i.e. immediately preceding it in time) does perhaps suggest you're thinking of an unreleased stop, as these are often word-final. Although you may also be thinking about something to do with aspiration?
To pronounce an unreleased stop, I think it's helpful to start with a geminate. Say "bat", and listen to the /t/ - this will probably be a released /t/. Now say a common compound word like "bat-tango". Not "bat tango", with the two words as separate, but hyphenated, as "bat-tango". The /t/ closes at the end of 'bat', and then opens at the beginning of 'tango', as it were. You can hold that sound (or, more accurately, that silence) as long as you want, to listen more carefully to each half of the sound - the closure and the release; the sound of the 't' of 'bat' in 'bat-tango' will probably be an unreleased stop. Is this anything like you're thinking of?
However, non-release only really applies to stops - you can't have an unreleased /s/, for instance. And while you can have aspirated and unaspirated /s/, it's not an important distinction in many languages, including European ones, so I'm not sure that's what you're thinking of.