Aspirované souhlásky v čínštině a v angličtině
Aspirated Consonants in Mandarin Chinese and English

Summary/Abstract: The article treats the phenomenon of aspiration in Mandarin Chinese and English within a broader linguistic context. The topics discussed are (1) both the general and language-specific articulatory and acoustic make-up of aspirated consonants (long overall duration, tense articulation, long VOT; the alternative sources of aspiration friction are recalled, as opposed to a common view emphasizing mainly the glottal friction) and (2) the dissimilar functioning of aspiration in English and Mandarin Chinese (English: a secondary phonetic feature of stops /p/, /t/, /k/ in particular positions; Chinese: an essential distinctive feature of the consonantal subsystem operating in three pairs of stops and three pairs of affricates). After reviewing possible options for making phonological contrast in stops (and affricates) employing the laryngeal phonological features [±voiced] and [±aspirated], the author presents cross-linguistically manifold ways of phonetic realizations of the phonological categories chosen by a particular language (the polarization principle, Magnet Model theory and Trubetzkoy’s „phonological sieve“ are introduced as a possible explanation of the diversity). The author points out that the described complexity causes numerous problems in consonant production and perception in L2 learning, the mistakes being diverse depending on the native language of the student.

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