Questions tagged [phonemes]
The discrete and distinctive units constituting the internalized inventory of sounds of a language. A sequence of phonemes is the preverbal form of a word. Phonemes may be systematically distorted upon verbalization, resulting in an allophone. Phonemes and allophones are both "phones".
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Phonemes vs. Distinctive Feature Theories
I'm a high school student who will be going to college to study linguistics next fall. I'm already knowledgeable about some areas, but I'm currently trying to expand my knowledge in phonology. I have ...
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Representation of /o/ phoneme in Cuneiform
I was reading Wikipedia's introduction into the Elamite language, where it says that it had a vowel inventory of /a/, /e/, /i/ and /u/. “What a coincidence,” I thought, “just like Akkadian!” Now, ...
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What written notation is used in IPA for the letter "A" in the English words "hand", "man", "and", et cetra?
In American English, the letter "A" is pronounced at least five different ways.
What written symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is used for the vowel, or vowel group, shown ...
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What this difference between phonemic and phonetic transcriptions? [duplicate]
Consider the Wikipedia article for phoneme, this is in Norwegian but one can easily translate, I will use this example for asking the question.
Fonemer er vanligvis plassert mellom skråstreker i ...
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Bilabial speech sounds with lower lip inserted between teeth
I have noticed the existence of several phones that can be produced with a place of articulation that I haven't seen discussed before. Basically, the two lips contact each other (as in bilabial sounds)...
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Do some languages use lexical stress to differentiate words with unrelated meanings?
In English, lexical stress is occasionally used to differentiate words with the same consonant and vowel phonemes and that have related meanings. (Please forgive the incomplete definitions.)
re ˈpeat ...
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Phonemes that rarely have voiceless/voiced distinctions cross-linguistically
There are some voiceless/voiced pairs of phonemes that seem to be far rarer than other pairs. For example, /p/ and /b/ are separate phonemes in a majority* of the world's languages (and especially ...
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Why do I hear the p, t, k in Portuguese as aspirated plosives?
First, some of my linguistic background: I'm a native Cantonese Chinese speaker. I speak fluent Mandarin Chinese but with heavy Cantonese accent. I have a working-level proficiency in English, meaning ...
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Which English phoneme varies the most among its dialects?
The phonology of English shows extensive variance among its multitude of dialects. Which phoneme(s) shows the most variance throughout the language?
I think the most immediately apparent choice would ...
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Should orthographies represent phonemes or phones?
I am currently working with Salvadoran Nawat, an endangered language that has never had a standardized orthography due to being primarily oral. As part of the revitalization process, we need to ...
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How do other cultures categorize phonemes?
I don't know where it came from, but the "west" at least as I have learned, came up with the idea of "vowels" and "consonants" at some point, and we just go with that ...
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There are roughly 46 speech sounds in the English language, however only 26 letters. Why?
There are roughly 44-46 speech sounds in the English language. However, we just have 26 letters which denote some of those 44-46 sounds. Why is that? Why we don't represent each of those 44-46 sounds ...
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Is there any free API that can translate from French to IPA? [duplicate]
I have invented a language that actually is just French but each phoneme is replaced by another one. So to build an application that can translate from French to that language, I need the phonetics of ...
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What are near-minimal pairs
What are near-minimal pairs? How are they different from minimal pairs? Can Allophones occur in near-minimal pairs?
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Why is there numerics in the phonemes? [closed]
I am new to Natural Language Processing and the first thing that I encountered is phoneme representation of a word. I am wondering how come "hello" gets converted to "HH AH0 L OW1"?...
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Do the acute-accent-e and grave-accent-e sounds exist in English?
The two sounds 'é' and 'è' are abundant in French. The sound 'ê' is also common enough.
Suppose you're teaching the e accent aigu (é) or e accent grave to an English speaker (from any continent). You ...
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how to speak text written in phoneme ? (reverse of TTS using spVoice)
I have successfully split a text into a list of phonemeId using spvoice (from spvoicelib SAPI 5.3).
So far so good.
Now it turns out that I need to do the reverse! I need to feed a text file (of array ...
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In which Slavic languages are [h] and [x] contrastive? [closed]
Starting from this question, I have a "prequel" question. In which Slavic languages are [h] and [x] contrastive?
As far as I know, there is no [h] in Russian, but only [x], but there is ...
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Can you provide a cheat-sheet for turning Proto-Indo-European dictionaries from the older style into laryngeal notation?
Much of the resources I have for Proto-Indo-European itself (not etymological dictionaries for other languages) either use Laryngeal notation but are limited in scope (like Wiktionary) or are written ...
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is schwa a phoneme in English?
or is it simply an unstressed allophone of unstressed lax vowels? I'm curious because I've heard some people claim that [ə] is not a phoneme and it is just a reduced allophone of all the unstressed ...
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Are there any examples in any language of words beginning with the sound [θð]?
While I have some difficulty pronouncing a hypothetical word ending with [θð], it seems perfectly possible to have such a sound at the beginning or in the middle of a word.
Is the sound [θð] ever used ...
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How is F0 determined?
I was reading Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (Authors and page numbers will be added when I get my iPad back). And I am learning the concept of 'F0' for the first time.
So according to this ...
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Could Cimmerian be a transitional language between Iranian and Slavic?
After a period of reflection, I am currently no longer considering a direct kinship between Iranian and Slavic languages, but rather turning to the existence of another transitional language between ...
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Why are English diphthongs not analysed as a vowel and a glide?
The English language has the diphthongs /eɪ aɪ ɔɪ aʊ əʊ/, analysed differently in some accents. They end in sounds that are very close to [j] and [w], yet are analysed as unsyllabic [ɪ] and [ʊ]. Since ...
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/ / vs [ ] - when to use which? [duplicate]
I'm a university student studying sound structure. It's a first-year course. No matter how many times it's explained to me in lectures, tutorials, help labs, or office hours -- I don't understand all ...
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Morphophonemic rules in phonology
I am wondering how the two phonological terms "morphonemic rules" and "morphophonemic rules" can be distinguished?
A morpheme might have different presentations (i.e. ...
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How does one transcribe a plosive that involves lip closure AND the velum sealing off the nasal cavity before releasing the air mostly thru the nose?
In the conlang I'm creating, I want the clusters /b/ + a nasal. When I say such a cluster, I find myself realizing the /b/ with simultaneous lip closure and the production of a stop consonant that ...
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What symbol, if any, signifies an audible nasal emission in the IPA?
I'm making a conlang and would like to include the consonant clusters /hm/ /hn/ /hɳ/ and /hŋ/ with /h/ realized as an audible nasal emission.
I don't have to worry about how these clusters would be ...
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Are there any natural languages in which /ʂ/ and /ʃ/ are distinct phonemes?
I'm having a difficult time trying to find languages that have a phonemic contrast between /ʂ/ and /ʃ/.
I can hear the difference without difficulty because /ʂ/ sounds like a lower frequency range of ...
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What language does the phonetic inventory of ERA's "Ameno" most resemble?
The lyrics of the 1996 song "Ameno" by Era are said to be in pseudo-Latin:
Dori me
Interimo, adapare
Dori me
Ameno Ameno
etc. Indeed, phonotactically (and, in one word — "imperavi&...
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How does r-coloring impact phonological analysis?
Edit: I realized I asked this very confusingly. I think what I really should have said was, are there any phonemic implications to r-coloring? Or thinking about it slightly differently, is there a ...
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Are there languages without the /j/ sound as in English "yellow"?
There are many languages without the /w/ sound as in English world, as in French oiseau, as in Spanish fuego, and as in Mandarin wang (the last three respectively mean bird, fire, and king). Some ...
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Finding phonetic similarity of names in different languages
I am trying to come up with a way using Python to find phonetic similarities between how
differently written names with different meanings in different languages might sound alike. Names can be ...
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What are the stress-distinguished minimal pairs in English?
I already know of two non-homograph ones: insight and billow.
Insight /ˈɪnsʌɪt/ is phonemically identical to incite /ɪn'sʌɪt/ except for where the stress falls (first syllable in insight, second ...
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Is tone actually phonemic in Mandarin?
Mandarin Chinese is often used as an example of a tonal language (one where the meaning of a word depends not only on its articulation but also on its pitch contour).
However, going by what I've read, ...
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Experiment to show that phonemes are not invariant: stimuli!
The fact that phonemes are not invariant is shown in many studies. The first one, so far as I know, is that of Liberman, Delattre and Cooper (1952) in their report on the identification of synthetic, ...
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Where are the original research papers on when phonemes are acquired developmentally?
I received this as a guide to when the phonemes are acquired developmentally, such as:
1-2 years - The child is able to say the following sounds in words - /p/, /b/, /m/, /n/, /t/, /d/
Where can I ...
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Languages without phonemes?
Based on my understanding and reading of Wikipedia, phonemes help distinguish one word from another and each phoneme is an "abstraction over of a set (or equivalence class) of speech sounds (...
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Proper phonetic names and IPA symbols for Russian [i] in линия and English [i] in happy
They have [i] on both IPA:Russian wiki and IPA:English wiki
On the Russian page the example is линия and on the English page it's happy.
And in practice these are similar but clearly different sounds ...
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Is there any site where I can find the list of natural languages that dont have a list of phonemes?
Is there any site where I can find the list of natural languages that dont have a list of phonemes?
I want to discover the minimum amount of vowels needed to make sure each natural language has at ...
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What is the difference between ðˤ and ðʕ in Arabic?
I am wondering if the emphatic and pharyngealized sounds of Arabic are the same thing as the letter followed by /ʕ/. So ðˤ, sˤ, tˤ, and dˤ would be ðʕ, sʕ, tʕ, and dʕ. If it's not the case, can you ...
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Why's IPA constrainted by phonemic, not phonetic, contrastivity?
To try to understand phonetics vs. phonology, I already read What's the difference between phonetics and phonology?, Oxford Univ. Prof. John Coleman's page, ResearchGate, Univ. of Pennsylvania ...
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Is there a way to classify all languages that have a guttural ch (as in Achmed) sound?
Some languages, like Hebrew, Arabic, and Gaelic, have a guttural ch sound, like the clearing of your throat, as in "Achmed". What is the term for this sound and is there a term to classify ...
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Is there an effort to prove phonemes?
For 44 claimed phonemes, we need 44*43/2 = 946 minimal pairs. If we can't find even one of them, then it is possible to claim that English has 43 phonemes and not 44 due to complementary distribution (...
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When did the vocalic allophones of the consonant phonemes in PIE become independent vowel phonemes?
The sonants in PIE have consonantal and vocalic allophones, so the consonantal sonant and the vocalic sonant are regarded as one consonant phoneme. But many daughter languages of PIE (at least at some ...
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Is there a British English language minimal pair for the schwa and the 'long schwa?'
I know that we can find phonemes by looking for minimal pairs. However, I cannot find a minimal pair for the schwa, on the one hand, and the vowel that usually appears on British English vowel charts ...
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How does the nonsense word "frabjous" conform to English phonotactics?
I am aware that this question is rather more complex than I am treating it, but I am looking for a few general rules (e.g. basic phonotactic constraints) that would lead to the conclusion that the ...
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Visemes analogue for phoneme pangram?
There are several famous short texts which covers most of the English phonemes.
For example "With tenure, Suzie'd have all the more leisure for yachting, but her publications are no good." ...
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How to find allophones and phonemes in a foreign language?
I have problems with finding allophones and phonemes in foreign languages.
My paper says this: Consider the phones [e], [æ] and [ɛ] in the Russian data. Are they allophones of a single phoneme, or do ...
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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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