Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
657
questions
6
votes
1answer
163 views
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]. ...
1
vote
1answer
53 views
Why do English words comprising of one syllable and ending with a y sound with a vowel preceding it correspond to German words ending in a g sound?
Few examples:
Lay-legen
Day-tag (I know that the d here shifted to a t due to a sound change described in Grimm's Law)
Slay-(Er)schlagen
I am aware of the fact that German and English share a common ...
2
votes
1answer
51 views
Why are PIE C+glide clusters so rare?
I noticed that *Cj/*Cy (depending on if one uses IPA or IEist notation) and *Cw sequences are rare in PIE (with most being the result of schwebeablaut or regular ablaut). Among sequences that aren't ...
0
votes
3answers
100 views
Long vowels in the world languages
The English language has long and short vowel sounds. Short and long vowels also exist in some other languages. And it's interesting to know when native English speakers come to let it be the Czech ...
-1
votes
1answer
79 views
Modern phonetics and the word “sure” [on hold]
How true is it that there is a modern phonetical tendency in the English language to pronounce the word "sure" rather like"shore", but not a classical "sure"?
0
votes
2answers
93 views
Are there any letters in the International Phonetic Alphabet that are considered universal?
English is full of sounds that are difficult for people of other cultures to hear and pronounce. H (for the French), L (for many Asian languages), Th (for pretty much everyone), etc.
What, if any, ...
2
votes
1answer
75 views
Understanding VOT
I am a third year bachelor student of Linguistics. It would be nice if I don't get mean comments, because I genuinely do not understand what I am about to ask.
I have to write a paper on phonetic ...
0
votes
2answers
116 views
/i:/ as in feet and /i/ as in city
Please explain the difference between /i:/ as in feet and /i/ as in city and very. I presume it sounds the same except that the 2nd one is shorter. Am I right?
-1
votes
1answer
51 views
What is the phonetic transcription of the Lithuanian name Austėja? [closed]
I do not know how to transcribe this name.
1
vote
1answer
65 views
What does unreleased voiced stop mean?
There is [d̚] in the official IPA chart, and it's very confusing for me. My native language is Korean, whose unreleased stops are either voiceless or nasal.
If a voiced stop is unreleased, that would ...
1
vote
1answer
46 views
Are there any standards for the manual modification of fundamental frequencies in Praat?
While analysing pitches with Praat, I'm often faced with the problem, which is, I must modify the F0 data manually since there are always some octave up points or other points which is impossible to ...
8
votes
2answers
204 views
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 ...
1
vote
3answers
72 views
Source of syllable statistics of languages?
I wish to compare the syllable diversity and length distributiin of different languages. En-Fr to start with, phonetically even more than in writing.
I want to check the theory that short word short ...
4
votes
1answer
164 views
Is the study of triphthongs a must to master English phonology?
Most universities in India are teaching only pure vowels (monophthongs), and diphthongs. Now we find triphthongs. ...
Is the study of triphthongs a must to master the phonology of English? ...
7
votes
2answers
2k views
Phonetic distortion when words are borrowed among languages
When languages borrow words from other languages, they sometimes deliberately distort words to make them phonetically easier to pronounce.
For example, when Japanese speakers are taught the word "...
2
votes
2answers
108 views
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 ...
4
votes
1answer
114 views
How to measure auditory distances between vowels
(Followup to this question, also related to this answer.)
The Handbook of the International Phonetic Association (1999: 11–2) defines the values of cardinal vowels as follows:
[T]wo fully front ...
3
votes
1answer
80 views
Is it possible to recognize place of articulation of consonants through spectrograms?
I am trying to undestand how PRAAT works and to recognize consonants through spectrograms. I Know that it's possible to distinguish fricative consonants from nasal ones (for example) but is it ...
-3
votes
4answers
131 views
What is the most universally understood way to represent the “ay” sound of “CAKE” substituting the standard a for a single character?
I am making up an imaginary word to be used as a name.
Right now I seem to have it ending in "tata", but want it to be clear it is pronounced as "tay-tah" not "tah-tah"
I admit that I do not know my ...
2
votes
2answers
144 views
Is it possible to speak like a native speaker of English by mastering the phonology?
I know some professors of phonetics teach phonetics(in a country like India) in a laboratory almost similar to that of the native speakers.But when they come out of the class their pronunciation does ...
3
votes
0answers
30 views
Are there languages more suitable for loud or crowded situations than others? [duplicate]
I'm an Italian native speaker but I speak English everyday for work.
When I'm with English native speakers I often hear them asking to repeat words, especially if there's a lot of noise around.
I ...
2
votes
1answer
106 views
How many consonant clusters can a human being utter?
Most Indian languages have three consonant clusters.I think that English has got three consonant clusters.Example, strange.
I would like to know which language has got the most consonant clusters.
I ...
5
votes
1answer
124 views
Why were the formants of high and back vowels difficult to obtain? And why not anymore?
I was reading the second chapter of Three Areas of Experimental Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged (1967), in which he summarizes the studies he conducted in the 1950s and 1960s which demonstrated practical ...
34
votes
4answers
6k views
Why isn't “I've” a proper response?
Suppose someone asked me the question, "Have you completed the project?". A standard response would be "I have". Why does the equivalent "I've" sound so strange and never used as a replacement?
I am ...
0
votes
1answer
78 views
Relationship between Uvular and Dorsal Consonants articulation
I have a question regarding the physiological production of uvular and dorsal consonants. what are the physiological aspect of both consonants articulation? As uvular consonants articulated with the ...
2
votes
1answer
213 views
Does the southern pronunciation of Jenny have a triphthong in it?
You know when Forrest Gump yells Jenny's name and it sounds like "Jenneay". I'm wondering if there actually is a triphthong at the end there, of it is a figment of my imagination. I believe the ...
1
vote
2answers
141 views
Lengthened voiced stops and the airstream through the nose
I am going through Catford's Practical Introduction to Phonetics, experiments 31-32. After explaining how to produce voiced stops [b], [d], [g] by superimposing a closure upon the voiced air-stream, ...
3
votes
1answer
43 views
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 ...
1
vote
1answer
65 views
What's the relationship between harmonics and formants?
I'm new in speech-processing and there are some notions confused me.
Through Fourier Transform, we can get spectra of specific sound signals, the harmonic frequencies can be shown as the peaks in the ...
4
votes
0answers
75 views
What's the name for using a letter to represent its name's sound?
It's often whimsical to substitute a single letter for a group of letters phonetically identical to the letter's name.
Such as rewriting "barbecue" as "bar-b-q", or the entirety of William Steig's ...
2
votes
1answer
53 views
Should I include this piece in the vowel? [spectrogram]
I'm trying to measure vowel length in 'beat", utterance-final. Should I place the marker where it is now or further to the right, as there is some activity there?
2
votes
2answers
188 views
How can I write an interdental lateral in phonetic transcription?
Inspired by this answer here is my question: How can I write a interdental lateral in phonetic transcription (IPA preferred, but not a necessary requirement, other wide spread phonetic notation ...
asked Jul 28 at 19:12
jknappen - Reinstate Monica
14.2k2 gold badges34 silver badges63 bronze badges
2
votes
2answers
57 views
Voicing Into Closure? [segmentation, waveform and spectrogram form Praat]
I'm wondering for how long the voicing persists into closure here, if at all. At about 50% into the closure I would say it's noise only from there on, nevermind F1. But what about the oscillations ...
0
votes
0answers
129 views
Why did Moti Lieberman associate 子 with onset, and 了 with coda?
Screenshot's from YouTube. I don't speak Chinese and don't understand the relevance of these ideograms. I emailed him twice, but after 5 months, got no reply.
2
votes
2answers
79 views
Is sonority phonological or phonetic?
I've seen several mentions of "sonority" in different works, most of which define it as something like "how loud a particular sound is in relation to other speech sounds".
This seems like something ...
7
votes
0answers
121 views
How to synthesize French vowels
I am trying to synthesize the French vowels [o] and [ɔ] for running a perception experiment. I have been using the Praat Vocal Toolkit and got pretty nice results with the following formant values: F1(...
2
votes
2answers
166 views
Can medial /t/ and /d/ before syllabic /n/ be distinguished easily?
Addendum (0:00am, June 27th, JST): After reading Draconis' answer, I did a little more research and added my findings below the horizontal line.
Can medial /t/ and /d/ before syllabic /n/ be easily ...
2
votes
1answer
149 views
IPA Sound used for grapheme 'R' in some English dialects?
A number of years ago, I was working with some friends on conlanging for a fictional society. At the time, we didn’t know about IPA or formalized sound descriptions like “voiceless ...
0
votes
1answer
35 views
Interactive class exercises with Praat
I’m teaching a seminar crash course in linguistics to first year undergrads next term. It’s just 3 one hour lectures, and should be fun and engaging. I want it to be hands-on, and give students a ...
0
votes
2answers
62 views
Source on approximant fortition
I'm starting a project that examines the phonetics of palatal approximant fortition (with a variety of outcomes) in several dialects of Spanish.
There's a great deal of existing Spanish linguistics ...
1
vote
0answers
75 views
Examples of languages with complex “formules de politesse”
French uses complex word arrangements to say "best regards" and "yours sincerely" to finish well written letters, i.e.:
Nous vous prions d’agréer, Monsieur, l’expression de nos sentiments respectueux ...
4
votes
1answer
97 views
Where does Texan English derive its l-vocalization?
My English teacher grew up in Texas and unsurprisingly her native dialect is Texan English. I noticed that when intervocalic /l/ is followed by /i/, the /l/ is elided and /y/ takes its place. For ...
1
vote
1answer
95 views
Marking phoneme boundaries - how to decide on the transitions?
I'm currently labelling some singing data, which contains very slow transitions between vowels. The data often have prenuclear glides and diphthongs together. The picture below is an instance (the ...
0
votes
0answers
29 views
phoneme-level forced aligners?
I am aware of a few available aligners: P2FA, ProsodyLab Aligner, Montreal Aligner, etc.
Specifically, I'm trying to use the Chinese version so I tried Chinese P2FA. It can align syllables quite well,...
9
votes
1answer
115 views
Are there languages that can speak of continous things without discretizing them?
All languages I know of discretize qualities when trying to describe them. For example, languages generally sample a few words for describing a range of continous things like feelings ('terrible', '...
5
votes
3answers
118 views
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 ...
12
votes
2answers
1k views
Non-African Click Languages
Paralinguistic clicks are quite common across world's languages. But paralinguistic clicks usually appears as ideophones. But why is Africa the only continent that uses click consonants? Are there any ...
6
votes
2answers
860 views
Why is vowel phonology represented in a trapezoid instead of a square?
Given that the internal area of the human mouth is approximately a square, why the vowels pronunciation chart is usually represented by a trapezoid?
19
votes
4answers
2k views
Is the schwa sound consistent?
The first syllable in "about" (ə'baʊt) is schwa, so is the second one in the "salad" ('sæləd), but iv'e never heard them pronounced the same way.
in salad it sounds more like the i in "trick".
...
0
votes
2answers
70 views
British English offglides
The offglide of the English diphthongs /aʊ/ and /əʊ/ is represented by the vowel /ʊ/. In other languages, such as Portuguese and Spanish, they are represented in the same way, but they sound ...
