Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
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0answers
10 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
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3answers
62 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 ...
11
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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
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2answers
780 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
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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
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0answers
39 views
Phoneme, allophone and semiotics
It occurs to me that the relation between phoneme and allophone (ad/or a phone?) can be construed as a semiotic one, even represented as a semiotic triad.
I’m sure someone else, doubtlessly much ...
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2answers
63 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 ...
0
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2answers
117 views
Why do some linguists say vowel length isn't contrastive in Italian?
That's what I get in Caillou & Leite (2009) and the article "Main stress in Italian nonce nouns" by Martin Krämer. The latter brings a case where vowel length is proven to be contrastive (ancóra/...
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0answers
31 views
phonetics name of vibration in the wind pipe [duplicate]
A very angry, sonorant voice may have the vocal lips, wind pipe and whole throat vibrating.
For example, we may see this as phoneme in e.g. imitation of a wolfs growl, "grrr", a game show's bad-...
2
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0answers
72 views
Phonetic similarity between alveolar and uvular trill
In a few languages of Europe (French,German,Italian),these phonemes are in free variation. To my ears they sound quite distinct,but maybe it is because I lack sufficient knowledge about their acoustic ...
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0answers
21 views
qTA model and lexical tone
I have only recently come across the qTA model and it seemed interesting, but so far it does not fit my connected speech data at all - words with the same tone come out with wildly different pitch ...
0
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1answer
54 views
Is there a difference between foreign and native accents?
As the title says, are there any linguistic differences between accents acquired from birth/childhood and accents ued by adult language learners who speak the language fluently, but still with a ...
0
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1answer
78 views
The TRAP vowel: a or ä?
If my mouth is open and my tongue is completely relaxed, do I make an [a] or an [ä]?
Which one is more common for the TRAP vowel in British English?
4
votes
3answers
175 views
What exactly is the definition of a syllable?
I do not consider myself a linguist. I just teach English to Japanese audience. So please excuse my ignorance if this is too basic a question.
What exactly is the definition of a syllable? What I ...
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0answers
20 views
Experience with PENTATrainer?
I recently discovered the PentaTrainer scripts and PentaTrainer2 plug-in for Praat. These are potentially very useful to me and it's great that all of the underlying work has been made available like ...
1
vote
1answer
24 views
With SSML phoneme tags using IPA phonetic symbols, how can I insert pauses to slow down pronounciation?
Note
For my text to speech engine (I use Cereproc, William Voice).
The engine can be used on the website here:
https://www.cereproc.com/
and it supports the ssml tags used in this question..
...
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1answer
93 views
4
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1answer
142 views
Phonetic similarity between *s* and *j*
I've recently discovered that Latin s at the end of words became the palatal approximant j in Italian. I remember reading that this process is also observed in some Occitan dialects,so it cannot be ...
4
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1answer
114 views
Mechanism of glottal stop - effect on tension in vocal cords
I understand that vocal pitch basically depends on tension in the vocal cords, which I'm visualising in terms of the cords being stretched along their length.
I understand that the glottal stop is ...
1
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2answers
71 views
What is the most precise/accurate/reliable way of determining whether a speech sound has been reproduced correctly by a person?
What is the most precise/accurate/reliable way of determining whether a speech sound has been reproduced correctly by a person?
I am looking at something like perhaps an inspection of a person's ...
7
votes
3answers
580 views
What's the difference between /ɪ/ and /i(ː)/?
In English there's the vowel sound /ɪ/ as in "bin" and /i(ː)/ as in "been".
My girlfriend, who is Greek, cannot perceive the difference, but to me they sound very different.
Is the difference ...
0
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3answers
73 views
Identifying phonemic boundaries in Praat
I am trying to segment some connected speech in Praat, and want to get the boundaries between phonemes as accurate as possible. I am finding that in many cases, one sound blends into another and it's ...
2
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0answers
59 views
Is there any language where stress can be comprised of diminished expiratory force?
I can swear I read an online article that gave a resouding yes to that question but I've lost it and my memory is uhm, not the best so I'd like a confirmation.
3
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3answers
298 views
What are the characteristics of a glide in English?
I’m wondering how exactly do you make a “w” and “y” sound in English. These two are considered the glides of English, but what exactly makes it a glide? What are the characteristics of a glide sound? ...
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1answer
73 views
Can anyone confirm if this is a true released glottal stop?
It sounds like one to me but I'm not sure regarding how it is made. I noticed that when I consciously try to close my glottis the glottal stop is much more soft while when I don't think about closing ...
2
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2answers
80 views
Does the voicing of morpheme-initial /z d/ in German transmit to the preceding voiceless consonant in the same consonant cluster?
Here are som examples:
[t͡sʰ], [t͡s] or [ʣ]?
Wie alt sind Sie?
nicht sehr
[s] or [z]?
Was sind Sie von Beruf?
Das Sofa
[st], [sd] or [zd]?
das du weißt
The consonant clusters ...
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0answers
22 views
Differential information load of frequency ranges
Are there any studies trying to quantify the amount of information carried by different frequency ranges in speech in different languages?
3
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1answer
229 views
Shift from /sk/ → /ʃ/
I'm not sure if this is a legitimate question to ask,but I noticed this sound change in a few germanic languages, such as Old English and German. How did it happen?
4
votes
2answers
86 views
How does the Sankt Goar isogloss work?
The Sankt Goar line crosses the german town of Sankt Goar and separates the dialects that have t in words like wat and dat and the dialects that have s in the corresponding words was and das. Is this ...
5
votes
2answers
860 views
Pronunciation of umlaut vowels in the history of German
I know that the umlaut vowels were also written as ae oe and ue, and this orthography shows the process of assimilation with a high vowel. But were these vowels ever actually pronounced as a diphthong,...
0
votes
2answers
2k views
How did Ancient Greek 'πυρ' become English 'fire?'
fire is derived from the Ancient Greek πυρ. My question is: how did the plosive become a fricative?
I believe pyre is also derived from πυρ; why is it that pyre didn't also undergo this "...
10
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1answer
272 views
Is there any other language containing the sound of the “evanescent l” in Venetian?
Venetian (the Italo-Romance language spoken in the area of Italy roughly corresponding to the Veneto region) has a weird sound which is usually called l evanescente (evanescent l). It varies ...
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4answers
92 views
Are there other aspirated phones in English?
It is known that English has a set of aspirated consonants, the allophones [pʰ], [tʰ] and [kʰ] of /p/, /t/, /k/, respectively. Are there other consonants with aspirated allophones? In which cases do ...
-1
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1answer
26 views
Experiment design: forced choise test for auditory recognition
I need help in experiment design.
As an analogy, lets take English: I want to test if speakers can distinguish between the the word "red" and "read" if listening to recordings of it.
I want to do ...
2
votes
2answers
134 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
votes
1answer
64 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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vote
4answers
140 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
votes
1answer
50 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
44 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....
1
vote
1answer
56 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
votes
3answers
137 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 ...
3
votes
3answers
121 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
84 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 ...
5
votes
1answer
111 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
votes
1answer
106 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?
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1answer
103 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
93 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 ...
6
votes
6answers
236 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
votes
1answer
87 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 ...
0
votes
0answers
55 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 ...
