(Lack of) aspiration in English

[vlad]

Aspiration is near-universal in modern English, but it wasn't always. I want to use this thread to collect evidence of the lack of aspiration in English, starting with descriptions of Chinese which compare Chinese aspiration to English.

The consensus seems to be that in the 1800s, aspiration was present in America and Ireland but absent from England. When did linguists first start describing English English as having aspiration?

Dictionary of the Hok-Këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language (1832) by Walter Henry Medhurst (born 1796 in England): English lacks aspiration, but German and Dutch have aspiration. (Modern Dutch does not have aspiration.)


A Grammar of Colloquial Chinese, as Exhibited in the Shanghai Dialect (1868, second edition) by Joseph Edkins (born 1823 in England): English English and Scottish English lack aspiration, but American English and Irish English do have aspiration.


Chinese-English Dictionary of the Vernacular or Spoken Language of Amoy (1873) by Carstairs Douglas (born 1830 in Scotland): English generally lacks aspiration, but Irish English and Scottish Highland English have aspiration.


Primary Lessons in Swatow Grammar [Colloquial] (1884) by William Ashmore (born 1821 in America): English has aspiration, but it's weaker than Chinese aspiration.



A Progressive Course Designed to Assist the Student of Colloquial Chinese as Spoken in the Capital and the Metropolitan Department (1886, second edition) by Thomas Francis Wade (born 1818 in England) and Walter Hillier (born 1849 in Hong Kong): English generally lacks aspiration, but Irish English has aspiration.


First Lessons in Chinese (1893) revised edition by John Alfred Silsby (born 1858 in America): English generally lacks aspiration, but American English and Irish English do have aspiration.


Hangkow Syllabary (1899) by James Addison Ingle (born 1867 in America): English does have aspiration.


A Course of Mandarin Lessons, Based on Idiom (1900 revised edition) by Calvin Wilson Mateer (born 1836 in America): British English has very weak aspiration. American English has stronger aspiration, but not as strong as Chinese. Irish English has the same level of aspiration as Chinese.

[Darren]

Interesting! In modern Australian English, aspiration is very pronounced; /t/ (often) and /k/ (sometimes) are affricated to [t͡s k͡x]. I've witnessed people map Mandarin /t͡sʰ/ to plain /t/ rather than /ts/ or /s/.

It's weird how germanic languages seem to be predisposed to aspiration of voiceless stops; Grimm's law, the High German consonant shift, allophonic aspiration in numerous descendants at different times. Seems to of happened independently several times. There might be some kind of deeper phonological correlation, maybe with stress-timing (?)

[vlad]

It's weird how germanic languages seem to be predisposed to aspiration of voiceless stops; Grimm's law, the High German consonant shift, allophonic aspiration in numerous descendants at different times. Seems to of happened independently several times. There might be some kind of deeper phonological correlation, maybe with stress-timing (?)

I don't think it happened independently, I think it happened once in Proto-Germanic and was conserved in most Germanic languages.

[Darren]

It's weird how germanic languages seem to be predisposed to aspiration of voiceless stops; Grimm's law, the High German consonant shift, allophonic aspiration in numerous descendants at different times. Seems to of happened independently several times. There might be some kind of deeper phonological correlation, maybe with stress-timing (?)

I don't think it happened independently, I think it happened once in Proto-Germanic and was conserved in most Germanic languages.

It happened independently in English it would seem (unless aspiration was lost and subsequently regained from a dialect which never lost it). I think Grimm's law and the HG consonant shift require stages without aspiration, otherwise you have d → tʰ which doesn't make sense.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I've always imagined Germanic had weaker voicing than the rest of Indo-European (I'm not sure I've seen this documented anywhere, but I do notice my own voicing is rather weak when compared with other languages I've studied, like French and Japanese, where I find myself voicing the voiced stops much more strongly), probably pushing the fortis stops to become aspirated if they weren't already.

[Travis B.]

A persistent, recurrent aspiration-ogenesis in Germanic could be explained by having relatively weakly voiced lenis stops, which would then encourage fortis stops that are not aspirated to become aspirated to enhance the distinction with lenis stops. In Germanic languages without aspiration, such as Dutch and Finland Swedish, the lack of aspiration could be due to the interference of languages without aspiration, namely Romance and Finnish, which has acted to prevent aspiration-ogensis or even reverse it.

[Travis B.]

It's weird how germanic languages seem to be predisposed to aspiration of voiceless stops; Grimm's law, the High German consonant shift, allophonic aspiration in numerous descendants at different times. Seems to of happened independently several times. There might be some kind of deeper phonological correlation, maybe with stress-timing (?)

I don't think it happened independently, I think it happened once in Proto-Germanic and was conserved in most Germanic languages.

It happened independently in English it would seem (unless aspiration was lost and subsequently regained from a dialect which never lost it). I think Grimm's law and the HG consonant shift require stages without aspiration, otherwise you have d → tʰ which doesn't make sense.

Note, though, that Upper German varieties typically lack aspiration, and StG is a compromise between Upper German and Central German under the influence of Low German, so StG d → tʰ could very well be due to such a compromise.

[Travis B.]

I should note, however, that Upper German varieties typically make up for a lack of aspiration with a consonant quantity contrast instead.

[alice]

[face-straightness=forced]
The tendency towards aspiration in Germanic is of course easily explained by the fact that it has typically been spoken in relatively cold ciimates.
[/face-straightness]

[Rounin Ryuuji]

And yet I speak with aspiration in a place where it's uncomfortably hot outside.

[Travis B.]

[face-straightness=forced]
The tendency towards aspiration in Germanic is of course easily explained by the fact that it has typically been spoken in relatively cold ciimates.
[/face-straightness]

That doesn't explain the strength of the aspiration in Australian English, considering that Australia is hot enough to be nigh uninhabitable in the summer.

[zompist]

[face-straightness=forced]
The tendency towards aspiration in Germanic is of course easily explained by the fact that it has typically been spoken in relatively cold ciimates.
[/face-straightness]

That doesn't explain the strength of the aspiration in Australian English, considering that Australia is hot enough to be nigh uninhabitable in the summer.

You need to aspirate strongly to foosh away the venomous spiders.

[Estav]

As I understand it, "aspiration" is not a phonetic binary: stops can be more or less aspirated. (Wikipedia refers to "degrees" of aspiration). So I'm skeptical that statements that English did not have stops that were as strongly aspirated as the aspirated series of Chinese or Hindustani can really establish that aspiration was completely absent in the described variety of English. Does "The consensus seems to be that in the 1800s, aspiration was present in America and Ireland but absent from England" refer to a consensus of modern linguists, or is it an inference drawn from the descriptions in the listed sources?

Otto Jespersen (born in Denmark), writing in 1909, describes aspiration in English /p/, /t/ and /k/ as follows:

When the lips are removed from one another there is a weak aspiration before the voice of the following sound begins to be heard.

(A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles: Sounds and spellings, page 390)

The fourth edition of Henry Sweet (born London 1845)'s Primer of spoken English (1911) describes aspiration:

The voiceless stops k, t, p are always followed by a ' breath-glide ' or slight puff of breath, which is, of course, strongest at the beginning of a strong syllable. If followed by a voiced consonant, they devocalize its first half, as in trai ' try', plijz 'please' = trhrai, plhlijz. After non-initial stops, as in bætl 'battle' there is less devocalization, and still less when the two consonants belong to different syllables, as autlet 'outlet'.

(page 9)

The idea that speakers from Ireland aspirate noticeably more than speakers from England is found in John Walker's Critical Pronouncing Dictionary (1791):

I shall make no observations on the accuracy of this list, but desire my reader to observe, that the strongest characteristics of the pronunciation of Ireland is the rough jarring pronunciation of the letter R, and the aspiration or rough breathing before all the accented vowels. (For the true sound of R, see that letter in the Principles, No. 419.) And for the rough breathing or aspiration of the vowels, the pupil should be told not to bring the voice, suddenly from the breast, but to speak, as it were, from the mouth only.

[bradrn]

[face-straightness=forced]
The tendency towards aspiration in Germanic is of course easily explained by the fact that it has typically been spoken in relatively cold ciimates.
[/face-straightness]

That doesn't explain the strength of the aspiration in Australian English, considering that Australia is hot enough to be nigh uninhabitable in the summer.

You need to aspirate strongly to foosh away the venomous spiders.

Obviously you haven’t ever been to Australia if you think a little fooshing is enough to move one of those things.

I've always imagined Germanic had weaker voicing than the rest of Indo-European (I'm not sure I've seen this documented anywhere, but I do notice my own voicing is rather weak when compared with other languages I've studied, like French and Japanese, where I find myself voicing the voiced stops much more strongly), probably pushing the fortis stops to become aspirated if they weren't already.

I feel this is the correct explanation. From what I’ve seen, languages like to keep a bit of space between their VOT settings: so you could have a fully voiced vs tenuis distinction, or a partially voiced vs aspirated distinction, or even a slack vs stiff distinction (as in Javanese), but a partially voiced vs tenuis distinction would be unstable.

[WeepingElf]

I've always imagined Germanic had weaker voicing than the rest of Indo-European (I'm not sure I've seen this documented anywhere, but I do notice my own voicing is rather weak when compared with other languages I've studied, like French and Japanese, where I find myself voicing the voiced stops much more strongly), probably pushing the fortis stops to become aspirated if they weren't already.

I feel this is the correct explanation. From what I’ve seen, languages like to keep a bit of space between their VOT settings: so you could have a fully voiced vs tenuis distinction, or a partially voiced vs aspirated distinction, or even a slack vs stiff distinction (as in Javanese), but a partially voiced vs tenuis distinction would be unstable.

Where's the Like button when I need it? Because this is precisely what I think about this, too.