Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
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What do these diagrams of vowels actually represent?
I've heard many times that spoken language is subjected to variations and we never make the exact same sound when we speak, even for the same word. If that's the case, how can you be so exact about ...
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57 views
AUDIO CLIP: What language is this? [closed]
I uploaded a short 15-sec audio clip here. Does anyone have a guess at what language this is (or is similar to)? Just very curious if it can be identified.
If this is not the right forum to ask, could ...
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Is it possible to extract a single word (may be in textgrid) from the textgrid file of a sentence through a code in praat?
Is it possible to extract a single word (may be in textgrid) from the textgrid file of a sentence through a code in praat?
Suppose, from a long file I have put boundary and created one textgrid ...
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93 views
Differentiating phonemes in foreign languages for adults
I've heard that past a certain critical period for language acquisition, our brain loses some neural connections and thereby the ability to differentiate phonemes not occurring in our maternal ...
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1answer
155 views
Did h2 and h3 change the phonetic reality of an adjacent *e in PIE under any circumstances?
Did h2 and h3 change the phonetic reality of an adjacent *e in PIE under any circumstances? Can we treat *a and ā as allophones of *e in PIE?
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57 views
Feature correlates of the length and tenseness contrast in the low vowel /a/
My ultimate goal is to be able to predict from external factors whether and what kind of vowel quality correlates an /a–a:/ contrast might have in a language, and specifically to determine which on is ...
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3k views
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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1answer
73 views
Breaking a word down into its constituent phonemes [duplicate]
How should the nonsense word 'frabjous' be broken down into its constituent phonemes (e.g. the consonant blend -fr)? I would like to determine how this word is regular in English phonotactics.
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some good books to read on the major areas in Linguistics
Can anyone please suggest some good books to read on the major areas in Linguistics, including Second Language Acquisition?
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76 views
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 ...
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1answer
283 views
Why are voiceless plosives (p, t, k) unaspirated after /s/?
Take for example English voiceless plosives such as /p t k/ which are aspirated at the start of a stressed syllable and before a vowel as in kill, tar, pie:
[kʰɪl]
[tʰɑː(r)]
[pʰaɪ]
But after a ...
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What is the difference between these two nasalization constructs in Telugu, ఁ ం?
One is a half circle, one is a full circle, they both seem to nasalize the preceding vowel, but what is the difference in terms of IPA, or another way to describe it?
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Is the vocalic R and L pronounced the same in all Indian languages?
Wondering what exactly is meant by the vocalic R and L in Oriya, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, and other related Indian languages. In many of these languages on Wikipedia, you find the IPA transcription ...
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1answer
72 views
Diphthong detection technique — reference?
I find it hard to directly detect which sounds a diphthong is composed of (or whether it even is a diphthong at all), but I found a little trick for it that seems to work. In song, one sometimes ...
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71 views
How diachronically stable is release type?
Are there examples of languages completely shifting from (vocalic) release of all coda stops to, say, nasal release?
I imagine substrate effects could account for some of these cases (cf. unreleased ...
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1answer
46 views
About the behavior of the larynx and glottis in the production of consonants
Consider the following three consonant sounds in intervocalic positions: a dental click, an (aspirated) voiceless alveolar stop, and a palatal nasal. I'm trying to understand what happens with (1) ...
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1answer
72 views
Is /v/ cross-linguistically semi-voiced and powerless in devoicing preceding consonants in case of regressive assimilation? How to explain it?
In Danish, /v/ is semi-voiced, like a combination of [f] and [v], though /f/ does exist in Danish phonology.
Russian features general regressive assimilation of voicing, but this rule doesn't apply ...
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1answer
87 views
What linguistics degree(s) would best equip someone to develop written languages from oral ones?
If one wants to work with people-groups that have an oral language but no written language and develop a written language for those people-groups, what linguistics degree(s) would best equip that ...
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1answer
40 views
Influence of sonorant consonants / semivowels on f0
I think it's fairly well established that voiced stops tend to depress f0 while unvoiced stops tend to raise it, but I'm less clear on other types of consonant. I'm especially interested in sonorant ...
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2answers
169 views
Are there languages where vowels are always oral?
I was surprised to find in Zsiga (2020: 120, 125) a claim (by Donegan & Stampe 2009) that vowels in Hawaiian, as well as oral vowels in French, are always oral.
Unfortunately Donegan & Stampe ...
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1answer
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The notion of categorization in phonetics
What is meant by "categorization" in phonetics? It's supposed to be related to transcription in the sense that transcription requires one to categorize speech in some two dimensions.
I only ...
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1answer
23 views
How should I understand these acoustic and perceptive terms from phonetics?
So, while reading the New Grammar of Spanish Language (a book from a very influential institute of the Spanish languague: Royal Spanish Academy) I found out these terms (they'll be in bold) from ...
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1answer
49 views
Which sounds in spanish sound louder: vowels or consonants?
I think vowels but I'm not so sure. I'm neither sure if vocal cords are what makes a phone be more audible and so what makes vowels be more audible than consonants or some of them.
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190 views
Evolution of [v] to [b] and vice versa
There are many examples that show that two phones [v] and [b] are related:
b
v
Meaning
Old English to New English
* habban
have
have
Middle Persian to New Persian
varan
baran
rain
Middle Persian ...
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What is the origin of the pronunciation difference between 'replicate' (noun) and 'replicate' (verb)?
In English, the noun 'replicate' is pronounced with a schwa (ə) at the end while the verb is pronounced with the diphthong 'eɪ'. The same is true for the word 'duplicate'. Is there a more general ...
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0answers
71 views
Intuitive phonemic transcription systems for various languages
When a text or video about pronunciation is aimed at the average reader, it often doesn't use the IPA to represent sounds. Instead, it might talk about the "AW" sound as in law, the "AH&...
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58 views
How to extract specific data from a TextGrid file?
I'm new here. Just found that there is a linguistics community on stack exchange!
I have a TextGrid file that has been output from a forced aligner, webMAUS and I mainly want to understand how to ...
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0answers
32 views
Central – lateral dichotomy for labiodentals
In the IPA chart, there's no labiodental lateral approximant. The cell isn't even left blank, it's shaded out and therefore the articulation is judged impossible.
One of the explanations is (see, e.g.,...
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91 views
Diphthongoids and diphthongs
In Russian linguistics, there's a term дифтонгоид (diphthongoid). For example, in textbook Современный русский литературный язык (Modern Standard Russian) by S.V. Knjazev and S.K. Pozharitskaya, it is ...
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1answer
34 views
Identifying natural classes
After I Stated the phonetic environments in which the sounds [n] and [ŋ] appear.[from a list of words]
How should I identify natural classes of sounds that appear in the environments I’ve provided?
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1answer
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VOT of word-final plosives?
Some arguments against its "existence" could be terminal devoicing (which doesn't happen in all languages), lack of a sonorant after the plosive since it's at the end of the word, or the ...
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1answer
33 views
Getting some mess when trying to “draw” a textgrid file in Praat
I created a textgrid file that looks like this:
Then when I select the audio file together with the textgrid file and click "Draw", I'm getting not what everyone would expect. I'm getting ...
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0answers
53 views
The possible sound change when /t/ sound is preceded by fricatives or affricatives
Here, I am talking about the assimilated /t/ sound that is one of the most common features of Standard Southern British English (such as /t/ at the beginning of a syllable, time, task, Twitter, twice, ...
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1answer
35 views
Phoneme production metrics
(Apologies in advance for the expected misuse of terminology; I am not a linguist. Please correct as appropriate.)
I am considering a Deep Learning language evolution experiment and would like to ...
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1answer
100 views
What is the difference between phone (speech sound) and a sound?
I am not sure if I am asking a question in the right site. I don't know know if I am even asking a biological, linguistic or physics question. But I recently started learning about language and its ...
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2answers
101 views
Why does /zd-/ require more effort even though both the consonants have the same voicing?
In most language, the rule for combining consonants is that they should have the same voice. For example: in English, a word can never start with /zt-/ but can start with /st-/. It's not that /zt-/ ...
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2answers
114 views
What is the exact position of the tongue for [ n ] in these circumstances?
Hi I am an English learner, and I recently had this question about pronouncing n sound. I understand the standard way of pronouncing n sound is to put my tongue behind the top teeth, however, when I ...
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1answer
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Unmoving F1 / formant below F1?
I'm trying to understand some basics, hope this is an ok question.
Here's a recording of me producing /i/, /ɛ/, /a/: https://namakajiri.net/misc/i%c9%9ba.webm
nevermind the transition between the ...
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2answers
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What cues would you look for in this spectrogram to figure out the word? [closed]
(It is produced in American English and the word is one syllable. The time scale is arbitrary so feel free to ignore it.)
I was wondering what cues everyone would look for when reading this, and ...
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1answer
89 views
Are there any attested languages with a VCV or VC syllable structure?
In Googling this question, I found out about Arrernte, which is arguably VC(C). Are there any other languages which have been argued to be a VCV language? And is there any reason why they're so rare ...
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1answer
145 views
How can the continuum s-sʲ-ç-ɕ-ʃ-ʂ be described in technical terms?
To me, it seems clear that there is a continuum between this group of sounds, as all of them (apart from ç, which I will touch on later in the post) are sibilants, and the only difference between them ...
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1answer
175 views
Why does Polish have male and female accents?
This is particularly interesting to me as I can't seem to find any information on the topic, but, having listened to numerous Polish speakers from both sexes, the male─female pronounciational split is ...
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3answers
106 views
What is the name of the category that describes the ways a number can be read?
About 6 days ago, I asked this question in the English Language and Usage section but have yet to receive any answer. In hindsight, the lack of answers is entirely understandable since that was not ...
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What is the difference between m̥, mʰ, and mʱ?
I am looking at Help:IPA/Nguni and Help:IPA/Welsh, and wondering what the exact difference is between these sounds, and if there are any good audio recordings (or if you can make one!) showing how ...
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1answer
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Why there are few aspirated fricatives in the world?
Since there are many aspirated stops and affricatives in the world's languages, why there are few aspirated fricatives in the world? Are there any differences per se between them that make it hard to ...
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2answers
105 views
/ɫ/ interacting with /ɨ/ in Russian: Pharyngealized, uvularized or velarized?
In the Russian language:
/ɫ/ is pharyngealized
/ɨ/ velarizes the preceding consonant.
In words such as лысый, /ˈɫɨsɨj/, is ɫ velarized, uvularized or pharyngealized?
I was unable to find any ...
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0answers
81 views
What is the official/correct orthography for Alsatian / Elsässisch German?
As per the Wikipedia article on the Alsatian language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alsatian_dialect#Orthography) the orthography
includes the latin letters A,B,C ... X,Y,Z and the following vowels ...
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1answer
88 views
Is there Wis-consin and Wi-sconsin?
This is so subtle that I don't know if I'm imagining it. I think I hear two different pronunciations of this word. Are these really distinguishable? Wikipedia says /wɪ ˈskɒnsɪn/, but their audio link ...
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1answer
125 views
Does the English word 'six' violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle?
I'm aware that it's spellt with an X, however phonetically it's [ks]. According to the SSP, plosives should come after fricatives word-finally. Does the spelling with an x stop it from violating the ...
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1answer
44 views
Approximant and vowels
Are there vowels considered as approximants, since some linguists consider /iː/ as high glide?
I'm not sure of it but I remember I read an article about it.
