Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
736
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Is /ɧ/ a sibilant?
Is /ɧ/ a sibilant? It sounds like a sibilant to me but I'm not sure. I didn't find any evidence so I really have nothing else to include in my question.
The sj-sound (Swedish: sj-ljudet [ˈɧêːˌjʉːdɛt])...
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1answer
38 views
Differences between /ᵐb/ (prenasalization) and /mb/
What's the difference between prenasalized voced plosive /ᵐb/ and just the sound /mb/, if any? I've watched this video where /ᵐbʷ/ is pronounced, and I'd pronounce /mbʷ/ in the same way.
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1answer
112 views
About the “ᵊ” superscript in IPA
I apologize for a diletant question but does "ə" in "piᵊŋ" indicate a secondary articulation? I couldn't find it in the list of "Co-articulation diacritics" on Wikipedia'...
5
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1answer
178 views
What makes /l/ an approximant, instead of a fricative?
My understanding of approximants is that they are produced without the tongue coming into direct contact with any of the articulators in the mouth, which is true for /w/ /r/ and /j/. But /l/ is ...
3
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2answers
149 views
Are false cognates something languages tend to create?
It could easily be my own bias but I feel like false cognates are suspiciously common. Do similar meanings tend to acquire similar sounds in language evolution? Have there been any studies whether ...
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1answer
78 views
Is the phenomenon of liaison developed by dark L in British English in some areas?
There has been discussion about the dark L being heard as a vowel by L2 learners, though this view is often denied and corrected by L1 speakers, who point out that the dark L is indeed a consonant ...
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3answers
2k views
Is there a reason that /w/ isn't represented on the IPA chart?
The sound that represents the English <w>, as in "week", is the voiced labio-velar approximant /w/. In the "Consonant" section of the Wiki page for the IPA, however, /w/ isn'...
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4answers
987 views
Can languages restrict their number of distinct syllables when written by syllabaries?
Disclaimer: I am not a linguist, please provide any corrections for terminology.
From How languages compare with the number of different syllables from all words?, Yoon Mi Oh's thesis counted the ...
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2answers
732 views
How languages compare with the number of different syllables from all words?
Note: I am not a linguist, please provide any corrections for terminology.
I would like to find some approximate data (if it exists) comparing several languages with the number of different syllables ...
2
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1answer
160 views
What does it mean to say a language is phonetic?
I have often heard phrases like "Sanskrit is phonetic and Hindi is not". But what does it mean to say a language is phonetic?
A language is separate from the script we choose to write it in ...
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1answer
112 views
Is Sanskrit 100% phonetic?
Even though many languages are still written in Devanagari, they have a problem of schwa deletion. But that problem doesn't exist in Sanskrit. I know that almost all languages have phonetic ...
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3answers
250 views
term for gibberish intended to resemble specific language
Is any term identified, among linguists, for an effect by which some speech or text has no meaning, and yet superficially resembles, by following certain patterns, speech or text from
a particular ...
3
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1answer
146 views
Is h↓ the correct IPA representation of the ingressive “fast gasp”, meaning “uh-huh”, in French?
Spoken French has two ingressive forms of "yes". One is "ouais" [wɛ↓], equivalent to "yep" in English. The other is a "pure" ingressive sound, described ...
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1answer
824 views
What is the correct term for a “lazy L”?
This question is about a mild form of a specific speech pathology that seems to be gaining prevalence in Australia and if there is a term for it. It is not an "accent" issue, because it can ...
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1answer
117 views
Does anyone actually use /æ/ as an emphatic article?
In the movie "Wayne's World" (1992), Mike Myers's character (the titular Wayne) says "I don't even own æ gun, let alone many guns that would necessitate an entire rack." To my ears ...
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0answers
38 views
Praat script to remove boundaries for certain intervals
I'm new to Praat scripting and am trying to figure out a way to delete boundaries for consecutive intervals with a particular label (in my case, "sp"). The "sp" denotes silence, ...
0
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1answer
68 views
Confounding factors in the perception of foreign vowel sounds
I'm having a strange experience trying to reproduce a token of ɛ / æ from a native speaker of Thai. When I play my attempt back it sounds like a reasonable copy, but looking at it in Praat, the ...
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2answers
50 views
Finding articulatory profiles
I have two questions. The first is how is it better to call such pictures? Is the term 'articulatory profile' alright? The second: is there a place on the internet or elsewhere which contains many ...
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2answers
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Is it a coincidence that words ending in -ooch in English tend to be colloquial? If not, why?
There are several words in common English usage that end in -ooch:
brooch
cooch
gooch (these two refer to body parts)
hooch (alternatively written "hootch")
klooch
looch
mooch
pooch
scooch
scrooch
...
2
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1answer
53 views
The reason for a partly voiced hold in I’d
In I’d take ’d t can be pronounced as [t] with the first part of the hold voiced (the second one and the plosion with aspiration are voiceless).
How is it better explained: is it because of [ai] (...
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0answers
89 views
Aspiration of p, t, k in English
I'm trying to figure out when exactly p, t, k should be aspirated in (American) English.
Here's what I found here:
Voiceless stops are aspirated at the beginning of a word, and at the beginning ...
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1answer
74 views
Citing Praat script APA
I'm currently using a Praat script I found online and I would like to cite it in my thesis.
Does anyone know whether there is a specific APA format for citing Praat scripts?
I've tried looking into ...
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1answer
95 views
Volume and speed of exhaled air in different languages
In the days of COVID-19 people are concerned with breath and speech micro-droplets and how far they travel without a mask.
This video I saw in Twitter, posits that Japanese people have it better ...
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1answer
80 views
How can I learn to produce “harsh voice”
I'd like to work on my ability to identify creaky and harsh voice. Creaky voice is not a huge problem - I already have a reasonable idea of what that sounds like and there are a million YT videos ...
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1answer
54 views
How much intra-speaker variation is there in the cardinal vowels?
I realise that the cardinal vowels are supposed to be fixed points of reference, but then we don’t all have exactly the same equipment. I am wondering whether vowel frontness etc. is really defined (...
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1answer
62 views
What is the dividing line between phonetics and phonology? [duplicate]
From my understanding, Phonetics is the study of physical aspect of sounds, including how sounds are produced (articulatory phonetics), how they are perceived (auditory phonetics) and the physics ...
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1answer
70 views
Characterising a difference in the realisation of a vowel
When I've looked at Thai in the past I've noticed that there is something different about the vowel transcribed as /ʉ/ or /ɯ/ when it follows certain consonants, especially /m/. The same goes for the ...
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2answers
74 views
What is the difference between “ɪ”, “i”, “i:”? [duplicate]
What is the difference between “ɪ”, "i", “i:”? Is “ɪ” lax and short, "i" tense and short, "i:" tense and long?
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1answer
92 views
Why is the vowel speech sound (called “ash”) in “Tank” and “Cat” considered the same?
The vowel in "Tank" sounds more like ɛ to me, yet the IPA spelling for "Tank" (as pronounced in General American English) employs the ash [æ] to represent the vowel. The same for the word "thank" in ...
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1answer
60 views
What is the difference between tense vowel and vowel with diacritic “:”?
I'm learning the vowel part of phonology. It says the cardinal vowel "i" is tense. But what is the difference between this cardinal "i" and "i:"? They are both tense, right?
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Hypercorrection or reverse compensation/substitution?
What is the correct name for the phenomenon in phonetics/phonology when an L2 speaker of English reverse compensates/substitutes a phoneme. I'd be grateful for some references. I'm sure I read about ...
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1answer
77 views
Phonemes with complementing allophones
Assume the following example:
In its phoneme set, language X has the vowel /e/ which corresponds to the phone [e], except when followed by /r/, in which case it is realized as the phone [æ].
At the ...
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1answer
75 views
Is there software (eg. desktop or mobile app) out there that helps learners learn all the sounds of the world with the IPA?
I wished there was one where the app would synthesise a sound for some phoneme X, displaying the IPA symbol at the same time, then ask the user to repeat the sound, which the software checks for the ...
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0answers
31 views
How can I obtain a list / cross-comparison table of phonemes in the world's languages? (preferably in softcopy, online etc., and in the IPA) [duplicate]
How can I obtain a list / cross-comparison table of the occurrences of phonemes in the world's languages? (preferably in softcopy, online etc.)
I am looking for something like:
...
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2answers
104 views
Semi-nasalization of the preceding vowel
In this French Wikipedia article on the pronunciation of Occitan, semi-nasalization of the preceding vowel is mentioned. For example, from the table of consonants:
-n final
muet en général ([n] dans ...
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1answer
81 views
Strange Vocal Trills (L, Th, and Q)
I’m currently spending my quarantine working on the language for my novel. The language is alien-like, so I wanted to make it extremely difficult in it’s phonology. There are several trills. The ...
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4answers
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Why is there (almost) no variety to the Hebrew accent in Israel?
Hebrew is my native language, and I grew up and spent most of my life in Israel.
Unlike English, in Hebrew we don't have a variety of accents. In fact, generally all of the people in Israel have the ...
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0answers
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Is there a software solution to create sets of stimuli for a listening experiment?
I have a set of recordings of speakers of two different languages pronouncing certain sounds. Specifically, I have recordings of 6 speakers of language A, and 6 speakers of language B, 3 male and 3 ...
0
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1answer
77 views
What might explain this change in place of articulation? [closed]
I'd like to know if there's anything about /patitʰin/ that suggests itself as a reason why it might sometimes be pronounced [patikʰin]. I don't know what other words to look at to see if there's a ...
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0answers
67 views
Does a synchronically reduced or diachronically changed trill /r/ often become an [ɾ] rather than [ʐ] and why?
In the phonology of a series of languages, /r/ exists as a trill, and is reduced into a flap in informal speeches or in a syllable-final position. Why is it happened to be a flap, not a fricative?
I ...
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4answers
123 views
What is it called when a person pronounces the letter t in the word “metal” as something more similar to a d sound?
What is it called when a person pronounces the letter t in the word "metal" as something more similar to a d sound? And what is it called when a person stresses the t in the word "metal" to be more ...
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2answers
95 views
Distinguishing between [s] and [ʪ] in spectrogram
Is there is a way to differentiate between [s] and [ʪ] using spectral analysis (Pratt or spectrum view or any other software)? Is there is any particular pattern that only appears with the [ʪ]?
[ʪ] ...
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0answers
28 views
Extracting durations values for more than 3 tiers
I'm trying to extract duration values form three different tiers. I have five tiers in total, but I just want to the duration values for every labels in form the first 3 tiers along with the ...
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1answer
86 views
Labialised /r/ in RP
Is /r/ in RP labialised in all positions?
For example: In words like real, free, proud, tree, brother, borrow, dream, throw etc.
Is it labialised in all positions (like intervocalic, post-...
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Oral posture and articulatory settings
It seems that there is a lot that remains to be discovered about the vocal tract and that, in any case, it would be horrendously complicated to try to derive the setup of all the articulators just ...
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2answers
1k views
American production of /ɾ/ in other languages
Why is it common for Americans who study foreign languages to keep producing /ɾ/ as a retroflex sound, even though [ɾ] is present in their pronunciation of native words like city and water?
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Need speech corpora for stop-vowel (CV, CVC and VCV) for acoustic phonetics research
I'm looking for a controlled-setting, open-source speech corpus for CV, VCV, CVC syllables. C = stop consonant, and V = all vowels in American English.
More consonantal contexts (fricatives, stops) ...
0
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1answer
83 views
What is the maximum possible number of formants?
I'm planning to make my own virtual singer software, like Yamaha's Vocaloid. Contrary to Vocaloid which composes voice syllable-wise, my software should compose voice phoneme-wise.
As a consequence, ...
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2answers
130 views
Do the DRESS vowel (/e/) and SQUARE vowel (/ɛː/) have the same vowel quality in contemporary RP?
I understand that the SQUARE vowel is now often realized as the long monophthong /ɛː/ instead of the traditional diphthong /eə/ in contemporary RP. The DRESS vowel is now also closer to the open-mid ...
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1answer
57 views
Determining tongue root position
As far as I'm aware, languages which do not have contrastive tongue root advancement/retraction can still differ in terms of tongue root position. Are there any acoustic measurements that can be used ...
