Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
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1answer
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Rhythm of Italian language [on hold]
Just a quick question. Could anybody help me out clarifying to which rhythm language does Italian belong to?
Where could I find references on it?
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2answers
67 views
Does assimilation of voice produce different phonemes, or just allophones?
During assimilation of voice, voiced consonants become voiceless and vice versa: s - z, d - t, etc.
cats ([ts])
dogs ([ɡz])
missed ([st])
whizzed ([zd])
Are these sound pairs different phonemes, or ...
0
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1answer
50 views
What does a long mid-high unrounded back vowel sound like?
I'm trying to figure out what the Livonian character ȱ sounds like. As far as I can tell, it's a long mid-high unrounded back vowel. In IPA it seems to be written as /ɤː/ but that seems to be a non-...
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0answers
47 views
Forensic Linguistics; 'Stupid people' or 'Stupid woman' - Do we know what Jeremy Corbyn said?
I asked this question on EL&U a month or so ago and didn't get any proper answers. I'm asking here, because the question is not necessarily about English, but about lip-reading, articulatory ...
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0answers
23 views
Back vowel fronting in Old French
Why did the back vowel "u" become a fronted "y"?Is this phenomenon the same that caused the same vowel to become slightly fronted in english?
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4answers
122 views
Cause: [z] --> [s] at the end
Someone said that there is a sound beginning [z], turning into [s] at the end of words like cause. Maybe, this is just a recommendation on how to pronounce English consonants correctly, but if it is ...
2
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1answer
38 views
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, ...
2
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2answers
43 views
Number in the upper lefthand corner of Praat soundwave
What does the number in the purple box (0.4649) indicate? I always thought it was a measurement of amplitude, but when I get the RMS amplitude of the highlighted selection, Praat returns a value of 0....
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1answer
49 views
What problems does co-articulation cause in speech recognition?
I know it becomes harder to find the start and end of phonemes due to co-articulation. I want to know about other problems that co-articulation causes in speech recognition.
3
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3answers
131 views
What do you call the same phoneme that behaves a little bit differently in particular environments?
Not Allophones!
My point is, when the same phoneme looks different in different places (has the same IPA representation, but look different on spectrograms) (regarding to speech analysis): (like the ...
2
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3answers
90 views
About [s] being replaced by the voiceless postalveolar fricative in the US
I'm recently listening this replacement a lot on youtube, it's as if the practice is on the rising. Is it? what conditions such occurrence? Where in the US is it happening? And how did it all begin?
3
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0answers
76 views
*through* vs. *tough*: ME*-ough* /uːx/ > –? How are the sound shifts from ME -ough explained?
How is it explained that the sound sequence /uːx/ -ough has developed so differently in different words?
Not-dipthongized in through, shortened and unrounded and retained fricative in tough, lowered ...
4
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1answer
102 views
Change from labialized velar to labial
Is there a specific auditory reason for which a labiovelar such as "kʷ" becomes a "p" sound?This could also be applied to the change in Latin from "duellum" to "bellum"
5
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1answer
79 views
Click consonant development
Can click consonants arise from non-click consonants?Or are they an original feature of all languages that was lost in the majority of them and only retained in few?
8
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1answer
91 views
Whispering in languages heavily dependent on pitch or phonation distinctions
When whispering in English all (segmental) phonological distinctions can – as far as I am aware – still be made, which may be due to redundancy (or simply because voicing is optional). I even ...
0
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1answer
86 views
What type of stress does French have
So I know that there are on the one hand pitch-accent languages (like South-Slavic languages, Greek, Norwegian, etc.) where the accentuated syllable is indicated by a particular pitch contour/tone ...
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6answers
227 views
Does a coherent sentence which is a cross language homophone exist?
Consider a basic example of the French word oui, and the English word we. Phonetically these words are pronounced identically (okay some French speakers may put emphasis on the oo sound in oui, but ...
0
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1answer
77 views
Is there a variation in the point of articulation for the alveolar tap depending on word?
I don't know if this is true, but it seems to me that the point of articulation of the tongue tip against the roof of the mouth for the alveolar tap varies depending on the kind of sound that precedes ...
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0answers
46 views
Rhotic gutturalization in French
While reading my tutor's paper I came across a term which I would like to understand better.
Uvular trill [R] appears in certain French dialects. That sound often
changes into a voiced uvular ...
1
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1answer
21 views
Interpreting formant intensity
I was wondering whether there is any practical way to tell whether differences in formant intensity are due to different harmonics in the source or different formants in the filter. Is there any data ...
2
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1answer
70 views
Formants - beyond F2
I have read that for front vowels, the cavity behind the lips (I think this must correspond to the space between the lips and the hump of the tongue) is F3, whereas for back vowels it is F2.
In that ...
3
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0answers
42 views
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 ...
0
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1answer
87 views
Does English have syllabic fricatives (allophonically)?
When speaking rapidly, it doesn't seem that I make a schwa at all when saying a phrase like, say, "the bus." It seems like I'm saying [ð̩.bʌs]. Is this a documented phenomenon?
5
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1answer
92 views
What might account for different numbers of formants in plots of male and female speakers pronouncing the same vowel?
I have been looking at a Thai vowel in Praat.
I have several exponents from native speakers, though only one of them is male.
The female plots all show four formants. The male plot shows five ...
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1answer
61 views
What is the maximum number of IPA diacritics that can be added on a vowel?
What would the symbol look like, and how would it sound like? E.g. a long rhotacized nasalized vowel with tone?
0
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0answers
32 views
Which sub-dialect /accent of Spanish is the most removed from Northern Spain Spanish?
I imagine the answer to be something like Argentinian Spanish due to the differing double L sounds, or some dialects that pronounce R's as throat sounds (voiceless uvular fricative?) such as some ...
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1answer
42 views
In the sound change [t] to [ð], what steps would normally take place in which order?
Say, the situation is intervocalic, for example:
[ata] > [aða]
The differences of the two sounds are whether the tongue touches the palate and voicing.
So if I assume voicing happens first, the ...
0
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0answers
17 views
Does short throat or stronger constriction cause a higher F3 in a vowel spectrum and why?
What factors determine the throat length? is the throat length positively correlated with the individual's frequency (male 5000 and female 5500)?
Stronger constriction here means that at the place of ...
2
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1answer
145 views
Other languages like English whose orthography is “not quite” phonetic
Most languages it seems are pretty much phonetic. (I'm only focusing on alphabet languages, so not Chinese for example). From what I've seen, Spanish is phonetic, Cherokee too, Finnish, Inuktitut, and ...
2
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2answers
118 views
Given both a word and the corresponding IPA, how to match/map the letters together?
Given both the word and the corresponding IPA equivalent, is there any stable algorithm for mapping the letter of each word to the IPA letter?
For example, given close-quote and IPA kloʊzkwoʊt -- I'd ...
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2answers
73 views
If any phonologies / languages make a distinction between voiced/voiceless nasals, approximants, vowels, trills, or flaps
So there are voiced/voiceless stops and fricatives in many languages, but I'm wondering if there are the same sort of voiced/voiceless distinctions for nasals / approximants / trills / flaps / ...
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1answer
60 views
How linguists determine the sounds a speaker is performing
So I see things like:
Sharanawa has /ɸ/ instead of /β/, and Shanewana has a labiodental fricative /f/ instead of /ɸ/.
where the table shows [β] as the symbol.
That, along with other examples like ...
2
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0answers
44 views
Pronunciation of Fermat in Gascon/Occitan
A math professor mentioned that the final segment of Fermat's name would probably have been pronounced [t] because of "where he was from." She didn't clarify further but I looked up where he's from ...
0
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2answers
31 views
What factors can be involved and make a compensation when different heights don't make difference among vowels?
I found out the problem in my German recording. I knew I had to open my mouth a bit more when I pronounce an /e/ than in /i/, and I did so. But when I analyzed them in a spectrum, they got all ...
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3answers
139 views
non-aspirated voiceless stops versus their voiced counterparts before a vowel
Is there a real distinction in say, a spectrogram, between unaspirated voiceless stops and their voiced counterparts before a (voiced) vowel? For example, /ka/ and /ga/. Are they actually different ...
0
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1answer
36 views
Automatic secondary articulator
I have this assignment to do and it has to with automatic and non automatic secondary articulators. This is my first time. I checked books at my disposals including Wikipedia, but none discussed ...
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3answers
43 views
What does it mean to claim something about the phonemic or allophonic status of a speech sound?
Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication (2017 7 ed). p. 551 Bottom.
phone A speech sound. This term is generally used to avoid making any claim
about the phonemic or allophonic ...
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1answer
91 views
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 ...
7
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1answer
118 views
What makes certain sounds linguistically “rarer” than others?
Every sound is equally as capable of being performed by the human mouth, and I (correct me if I'm wrong) remember my psychology teacher telling me that infants go and say every sound babbling - even ...
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1answer
46 views
Are alveolar stops really alveolar stops?
I noted that to make the sound the sides of the tongue make an occlusion in the laterals, this would mean the point of greatest constriction isn't just in the alveolar ridge.
0
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0answers
45 views
Fricative Alveolar Trill?
I found an interesting sound myself while trying to speak some German. When I hear German people speak their language the r sound is either uvular or alveolar. While the uvular r seems more common I'd ...
0
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1answer
29 views
How can we get the precise articulation resulted from adding diacritics?
I am not sure about the articulation of the sounds with diacritics [sʰ sʲ lʲ] and so on, since [s] is originally aspired; [sʲ] could be taken as [ɕ] in some documents.
Are there any books or texts ...
3
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1answer
156 views
Is Daniel Jones' cardinal vowel system auditorily or articulatorily based?
Two of my textbooks said it was the former, while one pointed it was both. No further details about the truthfulness of these affirmatives were given. I personally think is auditorily and ...
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1answer
15 views
Extract time from frames in LPC objects
I want to take other acoustic measurements (voicing, F0, RMS, tilt) at the same time as the frames of my LPC coefficients. Is there a way to extract the exact times that Praat is using to find the LPC ...
0
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1answer
56 views
Phonetic mapping between English accents
Does anyone know if there is a resource which lists the mappings between phonemes in different English accents? e.g. a given phoneme in RP maps to this phoneme in Liverpool, that phoneme in Newcastle, ...
0
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1answer
47 views
Example of a language with tones, stress, and umlauts all in one (or something more complex)
Wondering what the languages have the most bells and whistles added to latin characters. For example, pinyin has ǘ which has the umlaut and the acute accent (just 2 additions). But I'm wondering if ...
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1answer
25 views
What is the articulatory nature of [lʲ] and how is it normally lenited world wide, especially compared to [l]?
[l] is lenited in some languages like English (dark L), and in Polish (Ł). How is [lʲ] developed further if it does?
1
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1answer
34 views
Why have we come up with symbols for secondary articulation?
I've just noted that [tja] and [tʲa] sound exactly the same. It seems that [ʲ] would only be relevant in classrooms when having isolated pronunciations such as [tʲ], [kʲ], [dʲ] due to the fact we don'...
2
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3answers
128 views
Are There Any Monophthong [o] Words in English?
Whenever I look up a transcription for a word containing [o], it's either an [oɪ] diphthong or an [oʊ] diphthong. Is it not possible to pronounce [o] without gliding through [ʊ] too? Is it possible, ...
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2answers
321 views
When should I use /ə/ or /ɪ/ and why does it seem like they're not used correctly?
So I'm trying to learn the vowel sounds of the IPA, and I'm looking at the words "temerity" and "moment" in AmE. What is especially confusing is that first word, where wiktionary lists the ...
