Questions tagged [articulation]
What the body (mouth, throat, nose, lungs) does to pronounce a sound or 'phone'. Se also phonetics.
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Why does stop VOT duration vary depending on place of articulation?
From the (albeit citation needed) section of the Wikipedia article on aspiration:
Spanish /p t k/, for example, have voice onset times (VOTs) of about 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds, whereas English /p ...
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Are there any languages or cultures where people speak while inhaling?
In English, a 'gasp' exclamation seems to be the only word spoken while inhaling. Though it is sometimes implied that the expression is not voluntary, it typically is in most conversations.
I was ...
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Has there been any research into the phonetics of ventriloquism?
I have always been impressed by the skills of ventriloquists - and I've been wondering lately whether anyone has done any work looking at the acoustic or articulatory properties of the speech of ...
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Any languages that consider the alveolar and uvular trill distinct consonant phonemes?
I am intrigued by the difference between alveolar and uvular trills (and related phones) within and across languages, e.g., per this map of European /r/ usage (taken from this comment), which seems to ...
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Do voiceless approximants exist? What is the consensus among phoneticians/phonologists?
Voiceless sounds that are produced with supralaryngeal configurations that would be considered approximants if voiced are attested in languages (i.e. [j̊], [l̥], etc.), but none are found to contrast ...
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Cross-linguistic association between velarization and pharyngealization
Articulatorily, velarization and pharyngealization are distinct, but they are often conflated in linguistic analyses I've seen:
Conflating them is common enough, I presume, that the IPA allocates the ...
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Do the qualities of a vowel determine its semivowel’s place of articulation?
[j] (the semivowel of [i]) is palatal.
[w] (the semivowel of [u]) is labial–velar.
[ɥ] (the semivowel of [y]) is labio-palatal.
Does the position of the vowel in the mouth play a part in determining ...
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Producing sounds that are not used in one's mother tongue
Why is it that someone who is fully capable of producing a sound foreign to their own language has trouble using that sound in languages that do use it?
For example, let's say that an English speaker ...
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Affrication-like sound in palatal plosive [c]
When I compare the plosive sounds in an IPA table with recordings (like this or this), the sound of [c] stands out to me as noisier and more turbulent than the rest of the series [p, t, ʈ, k, q, ʔ]. ...
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How is Donald Duck's voice produced, if not by buccal speech?
The Disney character Donald Duck is well known for his nigh unintelligible voice, which was originated by actor Clarence Nash in the 1930s. I have always heard this manner of speaking described as ...
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Pronunciation of D sound in British English
I could be wrong about this, but the D sound in British English (RP) sounds a little different from the American counterpart. Often when I hear the words "Lady", "Ready", "...
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Unaspirated plosives vs their voiced counterparts
I am having some trouble distinguishing ''aspiration'' from ''voice'' for plosives.
Now I know ''aspiration'' and ''voice'' sound like completely different concepts but let's take /p/ for example. /p(...
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Formant frequencies of consonants
In the old days, phones were defined by the requisite articulation, both consonants and vowels. As time wore on and science and technology advanced, vowels became better defined by their acoustic ...
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The difference between [w] and [u] (especially between the states of the lips)
While searching labialization on the Wikipedia, it is easy to find these statements: 'Labialized sounds involve the lips <...> When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded.'
In Russian, ...
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Multimedia materials for pronunciation learning
I randomly found this terrific site that contains a good structured collection of images, animations and videos to show how a sound is articulated in the German, Spanish and American English languages....
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Why is phonemic labialization often found only on dorsal consonants?
According to Merritt Ruhlen, over 50% of occurrences of phonemic labialization are applied to dorsal (velar and uvular) consonants, while coronals are usually left out. There are a few families where ...
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What is the relationship between on-glide/off-glide of a phone and the transition period between articulation of phones?
In this question, the most highly voted answer mentions that
Note, though, that on-glide and off-glide are also sometimes used to refer to the beginning and end of any sound, not necessarily a vowel, ...
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zh sound with a flat tongue?
This is from the Wikipedia article on retroflex consonant, but isn't this wrong? I assume that Mandarin zh, ch, sh, and r sound should be pronounced with your tongue curled up, rather than "flat?"
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Production and dialectology of Dutch /s/
I am trying to learn Dutch and I am struggling to produce the /s/ phoneme in the same way that some (most?) native speakers do. It seems that the usual pronunciation is such that it sounds closer to [...
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Phonetic characters of Arabic emphatic consonants
My native language is Korean. I'm not learning Arabic, but I'm curious anyway.
Refer to the following link for the letter names I recorded myself: Arabic pharyngeal consonants
I think I can ...
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Are the vowel charts of male and female the same regardless of scale?
The vowel chart of female is boarder than that of male. Are the two systems overlapping regardless of scale, i.e. by dividing by a number? If not, what are the differences and what does that mean?
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What is the phonological process whereby a speaker uses [ʊ] as a replacement for [l]?
What is the phonological process whereby a speaker would use [ʊ] as a replacement for [l]?
Some examples off the top of my head; [lɪtl] -> [lɪtʊ], [gɪgl] -> [gɪgʊ], [twɪŋkl] -> [twɪŋkʊ]
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Is there an articulatory explanation to spontaneous nasalisation in New Indo-Aryan?
This question is regarding the phenomenon of spontaneous nasalisation (emergence of nasalisation out of nowhere) in New-Indo-Aryan as it evolved from Middle-Indo-Aryan. This is a well-documented ...
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Secondary articulation vs assimilation
I was teaching a linguistics class and I came across this topic "secondary articulation". It was the first time for me to hear the term. I had always known that the effect of a preceding or following ...
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Why are constructions such as ‘AN historian’ commonly pronounced with a non-silent H?
It is well-known that the determiner a is substituted with an when the following word begins with a vowel (letter or sound). In some cases, however, an has been used preceding words beginning with (as ...
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Is there such a thing as an articulatory home base for a given language, and how could it be characterized?
I've been mulling over the idea that articulatory gestures should be looked as excursions from a home base that varies according to language and accent, and that defining sounds just in terms of the ...
user23078
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Where can I find a list of phonetically possible consonant clusters?
I wanted a list of consonant clusters 2 to 5 consonants long that are phonetically possible, in other words, possible for the human speech mechanism to produce. Unfortunately, I have been unable to ...
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Evidence of connections between f0 and a physiological parameter?
I have the impression that physiological parameters like e.g. the size of neck will alter their f0. It's just an impression but it seems to hold - I can usually guess someone's neck size over the ...
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Dental plosives without top teeth
I have practically never had my front right tooth because of skateboarding, and even before that I crawled off onto a parking block - after that I learned Vietnamese without retroflexing the S. Now im ...
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Is this diagram accurate for [ɾʲ]
I've been having trouble realizing the /ɾʲ/ sound in Irish, and I wanted to know if I am interpreting the IPA correctly.
I find it very difficult to tap the alveolus with my tongue raised to the ...
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Disambiguating place vs Manner of articulation
Some aspects of the IPA chart are not intuitive to me. I tend to think of "place of articulation" as "where a sound is produced" and "manner of articulation" as "how a sound is produced".
Is this a ...
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Should secondary articulation in front of the uvular nasal have a sonic effect?
I was performing some Catford-style "experiments" with nasal consonants, and found that slight opening of the mouth or rounding/unrounding of the lips has no particular sonic effect on, for example, [...
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Can the term "homorganic" be applied to vowels and glides?
As I understand it, "homorganic" means having the same place of articulation, and is said of sounds like [k] vs. [g] and [s] vs. [t]. (I couldn't find a definition from a linguistics source on the ...
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Looking for a more general model/theory of pronunciation similar to the IPA chart for vowel sound
I have been introduced to the IPA diagram (the triangle/trapezoid) for vowel sounds and I find it interesting as a model of pronunciation as it represents the mouth position so it can be very ...
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The reason for a partly voiced hold in I’d
In I’d take ’d t can be pronounced as [t] with the first part of the hold voiced (the second one and the plosion with aspiration are voiceless).
How is it better explained: is it because of [ai] (...
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How many ways are there to produce alveolo-palatal fricatives?
My textbook mentions three: laminal prepalatal, dorso prepalatal and postalveolar palatalized. If we take each name strictly, they'll surely denote different gestures. I'm okay with this, what ...
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During second language acquisition, is it common for the speech organs to get tired by speaking the second language?
I am a non-native speaker of English (I'd rather not say what my native language is). I have noticed that my speech organs (tongue, lips, jaws and also the palate but I'm not so sure if it's the ...
user30668
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What's the difference between articulatory features and articulatory gestures?
I'm confused about those two terms, but based on my understanding articulatory gestures are represented by the vocal tract variables and articulatory features include all units are involved in ...
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Can a single vowel (or consonant) be pronounced in multiple ways (different place/manner of articulation)
I recall from my undergrad Phonetics course (many years ago), the professor was talking about the limitations of describing phonemes by place and manner of articulation.
I seem to remember an example ...
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proper terms for tipper and dipper S articulation
I just learned for the first time from a WIRED video about movie accents (at 4:30) that American English has multiple possible places of articulation for the "S" sound. I was able to find terms for ...
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How does passing air through a narrow glottis cause vibrations?
I'm studying phonetics as part of a Linguistics degree, and in my textbook, the author discusses how we make our vocal folds narrow, almost touching, such that air passing through vibrates. This is ...
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Dental and labiodental fricatives with different relative positions of the articulators
Are there distinct phonemes for labiodental fricatives articulated with the upper teeth touching the lower lip from the inside (like in English /f/) and ones that are articulated with the tip of the ...
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Voiced fricatives are just breathy approximants?
When I pronounce [v] and [ʋ], [v] sounds just like [ʋ̤]. This led me to analyze them via spectrum. So I recorded [f], [v] and [ʋ] with my smartphone, moved them to my computer, normalized them with ...
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Is there a region in which velarized L is the primary (and sole) articulation? Or is it indicative of an articulation disorder?
Listening to Ira Glass the other day, I noticed his 'l', to my ears, sounds exclusively velar with little to no dental component. Here's a clip (he says the word "like" a couple times in ...
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Mapping the pulmonic consonants in English to its corresponding place of articulation
I'm following this wiki chart to map the English consonants into its corresponding place of articulation. I can see that some sounds in English like /w/ they do not exist in that char. So, I'm ...
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Is a creaky voice a glottal trill?
When I pronounce an approximant, a trill, and then a stop, I have an impression that they are discriminated by the strength of articulation (the "strength of articulation" here means the strength of ...
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What is the role of watching articulation in learning pronunciation?
It's obviously easier to pronounce and, perhaps even acquire, a sound or sequence not present in one's native language if one watches carefully a speaker's mouth. What is this phenomena called? Where ...
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IPA Terminology--Articulatory Target versus Articulators
In phonetics (IPA) terminology, what is the difference between an Articulatory Target and an Articulator. I used to think that the former is just another name for the Passive Articulator or the Place ...
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Roles of the vocal cords
I've heard that there are 3 parts to the vocal cords: the true vocal cords, and the "false" vestibular folds and ventricular ligament. I read that the vestibular serves some function in chanting and ...
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Why are mid-open/open vowels considered [- tense]?
I found the following chart (which was taken from Donegan (1976)) on a book and something reminded me of a simple question I always had, but I never came across a definitive answer: why are some open ...
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