Phonetic and Phonological Representation of Stop Consonant Voicing

This paper argues for a more structured view of the relation between the phonological feature [voice] and its specific phonetic implementations. Under the theory of universal phonetics proposed here, the implementation of [voice] is sharply constrained: the opposition is defined relatively, as more or less voicing, along a dimension consisting of exactly three discrete, ordered categories, which can be shown to have clear articulatory and acoustic bases. While the phonological feature allows certain rule equivalences across languages to be expressed, the phonetic categories describe possible contrasts within languages, and express markedness relations.