Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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 ...
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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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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 ...
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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, ...
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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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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?
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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'...
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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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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 ...
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In phonation vids the vocal cords don't close completely or very fast, but according to authors they're suposed to. Why this difference in data?
Suposed vibratory cycle (one open and one closure) of a normal adult male: 100Hz
Video discrediting the statement: https://youtu.be/v9Wdf-RwLcs
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With how much certainty can we say that all languages have at least one word with a secondary stress?
Apparently is common, so I wanted to know just how much.
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Why are vowels said to be segments produced with no obstruction whatsoever?
It's clear that in the production of many vowels air isn't free to go to every available space in the oral cavity once it leaves the pharynx. Our tongue even touches the molars in [i]. That's just an ...
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How these close sounds are distinguished in native language
This is not a comprehensive list but just a few snippets from languages that have a few consonants that sound pretty much the same to me. I wanted to ask how I can learn to hear the difference between ...
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Why vowels sound different from each other
This might be a basic question but I am confused about how mouth shapes for vowels, at a deeper level, are producing different sounds. Wanted to see if one could demonstrate with another instrument ...
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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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To phonate [ɹ], is there a picture for pressing tongue tip against the lower gum and raising tongue's blade to the mouth's roof?
Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication (2017 7 ed). pp. 74-75.
Do the sentences marked by my red and blue arrows refer to 2 different manners of articulation? To wit, the ...
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List of vowel and consonant sequences across languages
Wondering if there is any sort of list either across languages or for individual languages, either complete or partial, that list the sequences of vowels and/or consonants used in that language. If no ...
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What is the story behind the pronunciation of Logic? [closed]
The English pronunciation seems a peculiar to me, /lɑdʒɪk/, compared to the Greek λόγος, /ló.ɡos/ root, Latin legere carries the hard "g" with only the first vowel sounding different.
English pulls ...
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If we can say the following sounds when whispering
In learning about the IPA consonants, a big distinction is between voiced and unvoiced consonants.
When whispering however, we use no voice (I think). Yet, I feel like I can still hear these voiced ...
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German vowel charts with phonetic accuracy
German vowel charts used in the wikipedia article Standard German phonology do not locate vowels with great details. For example German [e] is a bit higher than the IPA [e] (something like what is ...
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Types of Sound Variations (Like Accents and Tones) in Languages
So in Spanish and other languages there are accents like:
café
tú
And in Chinese there are tone shifts as in this graphic:
The tones are accounted for in English / Romanization by adding accent ...
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Do animal sounds have linguistic symbols or classifications?
Wondering if animal sounds have any formal classification or linguistics symbols like the IPA.
For example:
Chicken sounds (pretty awesome, done by a human)
Cat sounds (purr, like trilled t, or ...
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If there is a rolling `g`, or a few other sounds, found in any language
Like a rolling r, if there is a rolling g like gurgling in any language. There is a rolling h like ħ.
Like ch or sh, if there is a psh or bjsh, like booj but shorter. Likewise, a gsh or gj sound.
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Complete list of sounds in all languages (IPA)
Wondering if there is a list of all the IPA sound combinations and how to pronounce them. Searching brings up a bunch of partial and not too well done lists, so wondering if there is a standard or ...
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Why did German <d> and <t> flip over?
I speak English and Norwegian and a little German and a little Dutch and I discovered a pattern while thinking about words which are obviously cognate. The pattern is wherever English, Norwegian and ...
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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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Problems of adding ToBI Manual command on Praat
I have tried more than 20 times of adding a command on Praat, but it still doesn't work. Just shows like the following picture! Tried to edit the directory but also failed! Don't know why! Is there ...
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is voicing continuous in a voiced fricative?
If i say [va] will the vocal folds be continuously vibrating through the [v] or will they start vibrating at the initial onset of [v], lower in amplitude, and then start again at [a]?
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Apical postalveolar approximant [ɹ̺] and retroflex approximant [ɻ]: What is the difference?
English [ɹ] has two realizations: apical and bunched (aka molar). ExtIPA (extensions to the IPA) thus recommends the use of [ɹ̺] and [ɹ̈] to differentiate the two. But I also often see English /r/ ...
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How to transcribe 'courage' in IPA
I am very new to linguistics, and am trying to transcribe the word 'courage' into IPA. I have come across a few different transcriptions, but I think the correct one might be "kʌrɪdʒ". Is this correct?...
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/l/ environments in English and Introductory Phonology by Bruce Hayes
Note: I am on my phone, so linguistic symbols are not intuitive to type, so I typed out phone names in prose
Hello, apologies if this is a dumb question, but I'm reading through Bruce Hayes' "...
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Why is [n] easy to be velarized efter a back rounded vowel?
So [n] becomes similar to [ŋ], as in "on" and "-ion". What is the phonetic phenomenon and in what languages becomes /ŋ/ separated diachronically from /n/ affected by the vowels?
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Looking for minimal pairs showing lenis/fortis distinction (preferably for German pronunciation)
I have read many descriptions of the lenis/fortis distinction, but they don't make any sense to me.
I have searched in vain for minimal pairs (preferably with audio/vidoe) illustrating the difference ...
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How to analyse stops place of articulation?
Works which focus on differences in place of articulation of stops (like Sundara 2005, 2006) usually use spectral measurements (COG, skewness, SD, kurtosis) and relative burst intensity. It is not ...
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Why do the most common words children say contain bilabial consonants?
I noticed that most words that children say contain /b/ or /m/ is that just a coincidence or there is a reason behind that?
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Trying to make sense of “…but voiced obstruents are not always voiced”
I came across the following phrase in a description of German pronunciation:
The basic rule is that voiceless obstruents are always voiceless, but voiced obstruents are not always voiced.
...which ...
