The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
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1answer
26 views
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 ...
0
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0answers
9 views
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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1answer
39 views
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]?
3
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1answer
55 views
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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1answer
86 views
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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2answers
38 views
/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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1answer
59 views
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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3answers
80 views
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 ...
2
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0answers
24 views
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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1answer
42 views
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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2answers
531 views
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 ...
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1answer
29 views
Difference between sounds and segments
I have always wondered whether there is a clear distinction between (speech) sounds and segments. The two words appear to be used interchangeably in some places while in others they are considered to ...
3
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1answer
48 views
What’s a good example a language phenomena in which f0 is NOT correlated to pitch?
It’s standard doctrine that “pitch is perceived f0”, and that f0 is phonetic and corresponds to pitch which is phonological ... no problem there. (Even if this is a simplification)
But I wonder if ...
5
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1answer
57 views
What are the features that distinguish a velar /k/ from an uvular /q/ in a spectrogram?
I am trying to annotate a recording of a language that has both velar k and uvular q. It’s tricky because I can’t always distinguish the two phonemes by ear.
What features may I see in a spectrogram ...
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1answer
49 views
Voiced aspirated alveolar trill
Was there voiced aspirated alveolar trill in Ancient Greek? It was written in some sites in Russian that all Ancient Greek words which began with "rho" pronounced with the sound [rʰ], but it was ...
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1answer
49 views
Correct to say that accent defines the mapping between phones and phonemes?
I'm trying to become acquainted with the language (hah) of linguistics (specifically speech perception, from the perspective of auditory signal processing), so that I can write and converse about the ...
2
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0answers
72 views
Is there any epenthesis in German by which “eins” sounds like “eints” and how frequent is the phenomenon?
The phenomenon works also on the cluster ls and thus it becomes [lts]. Both examples are alveolar sounds.
The epenthesis does not occur universally, but often works on "eins" anyway.
This does not ...
3
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0answers
51 views
How many different vowels can be reliable annotated?
This question is similar to How many different vowels are there? but with a different twist: here I am not interested in the minimal difference between two vowels that can be heard, but in reliable ...
2
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2answers
38 views
Three questions regarding the distinctions between certain broad and slender sounds in Irish
I think I've got the distinction between broad and slender consonants in Irish more or less down, but a few details keep eluding me:
1.
What on earth is the difference in pronunciation between "mar" ...
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2answers
82 views
Arabic /R/ - correct pronunciation in Modern Standard Arabic
Arabic has many dialects, but in general the /R/ in Modern Standard Arabic is an alveolar trill (or is it not?) - like the Spanish perro - according to Wikipedia and it is also what I have heard from ...
3
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1answer
35 views
What books give a comprehensive analysis of intermorphemic consonant clusters in English?
Some examples here. The clusters are marked:
A law that states that...
I spend three months there.
the best structure
It reflects those differences.
It seems that people reduces these ...
5
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3answers
150 views
Sounds that are treated as phonetically equivalent
I suspect that I will not use the right terminology here. Apologies in advance.
Is there a word for the phenomenon in which speakers of a language treat two different sounds as equivalent, even ...
2
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0answers
57 views
Andrea Bocelli Aspiration
I have been listen to Andrea Bocelli's songs lately. A noticeable feature of his pronunciation while singing Spanish songs is that he constantly pronounces the plosives (especially at word-initial ...
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2answers
119 views
Why does Laam sometimes get pronounced as the next letter in Arabic words? [duplicate]
I'm trying to learn how to read Arabic and I noticed that sometimes the letter Laam (ل) is either silent or takes the pronunciation of the following letter, as in this text from Wikipedia:
As-...
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2answers
42 views
What is the pronunciation of English word “feeling” in General American accent? The normal sound [ˈfilɪŋ] or add the “l” sound, [ˈfiɫ lɪŋ]?
What is the pronunciation of English word feeling in General American accent? The normal sound [ˈfilɪŋ] or double the "l" sound, [ˈfiɫ lɪŋ] ?
6
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1answer
115 views
Online tool for IPA pronunciation synthesis
I've already found this tool from 0n0e.com but the problem is that it pronounces the words too quickly. Is there any other phoneme synthesis online which speaks a bit slower?
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2answers
143 views
How many different vowels are there?
There are generally accepted estimates on how many shades of grey (far less than 50!) or how many colours the human eye can distinguish.
How many different vowels can the human ear distinguish? To ...
3
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1answer
95 views
Why does saying the word “fuck” help vent frustration?
I have observed a good number of people muttering "fuckfuckfuck" under their breath when nervous. It somehow seems to vent the frustration out, and calm the person down. Why does this happen?
I found ...
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1answer
66 views
Why are phonemes called “mental” objects
I understand the distinction between phonemes and allophones, but why are phonemes considered as mental objects and not psychological objects? Isn’t everything mental also, in a sense, necessarily ...
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1answer
62 views
Is the voiceless alveolar affricate, [t͡s], phonetically present in General American?
I've run into a lot of sources that indicate [t͡s] is not in GA. While this might be true phonemically, I don't entire believe this to be true for the actual phonetics.
By the definition of an ...
2
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1answer
95 views
When does the “dark l” sound in English date back to?
There is no "dark l" sound in Proto-Germanic language and Proto-Indo-European language.
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4answers
564 views
What was the original pronunciation of 'ä' in German?
I always learnt it was pronounced the same as how 'e' is usually pronounced in German (in either its short or long forms respectively). But then the question is: why have a different letter for it? ...
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3answers
990 views
Why did the pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /r/ change after the 2ndWW in public speech?
For example why did radio presenters roll the r on the BBC before the war and not after? Why did Brecht roll the r extensively? Why did Hitler roll the r extensively? My perspective is from the ...
2
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2answers
58 views
Deducing a rule out of set of examples
Consider the following Spanish words, written in IPA (with their English translation):
And the same question for middle position and final position
My answer is:
Initial position: Looking at the ...
3
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2answers
1k views
Why do Americans and Canadians pronounce “t” with flap [ɾ] in unstressed syllables in English?
Most Americans and Canadians pronounce "t" with flap [ɾ] in unstressed syllables. Why?
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1answer
129 views
Why does so many languages have both an alveolar “light L” [l] and a velarized “dark L” [ɫ] allophone?
Various dialects in all three of English, Portuguese, and Dutch have accents that contain velarized L allophones, which are sometimes known as “dark L’s”, at the syllable coda.
Why is this?
There ...
6
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2answers
146 views
Do languages generally tend to avoid palindromic syllables?
E.g. /knank stjajts smoms/ even they do follow the Sonority Sequencing Principle
2
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0answers
46 views
Do we have an Intonation “etymology”?
Recently I was thinking about a language I'm currently learning and its similarities with my own native language. While I assume grammar to change considerably depending on language it came to mind ...
2
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1answer
47 views
What is the first formant (F1) dependent on in reference to the vocal tract?
From the resolved exercise below, it is mentioned F2 is related to the pharynx cavity and F3 is related to the front cavity.
F1 is calculated taking into account the whole shape of the vocal tract. I ...
4
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1answer
95 views
Does the primary distinction of retroflex consonants lie in their effect on surrounding phonemes?
As an English speaker, I've had very little experience with retroflex consonants, but have recently come upon their use in Polish, and am having difficulty hearing them as particularly distinct from ...
0
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2answers
104 views
there is no relation between phonetic sounds and letters. explain? [closed]
So I got this question in my midterm exam and it was out of nowhere. All what I could think about that time is that letters are written and sounds are spoken, the letters are made from a vowel and a ...
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1answer
86 views
When plotting vowel space, why does using F2-F1 better resemble the idealized vowel chart than using F1?
When plotting the chart of the acoustic space of AmE vowels, we can represent F1 values on the y-axis and F2 values on the x-axis, like a chart on this site: http://sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/...
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1answer
64 views
Why do most Austronesian and Polynesian languages have low consonant vowel ratio?
Refer: WALS feature 3A
A simple Google search yielded -
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5529419/
which could be one of the reasons. But can anyone come up with some other reasons maybe ...
0
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2answers
63 views
Are there examples of phonetic mood markers at syllable/word boundaries?
Generally, Mood is marked by suffixes, prefixes, infixes etc. But are there languages which have mood marked by phonetic changes at syllable / word boundaries?
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2answers
146 views
How do ideophones and onomatopoeia work in English?
I was reading about ideophones on Wikipedia, and the way it was described seemed like it was describing onomatopoeia. Apparently the claim is that onomatopoeia is a sub-class of ideophone. In the main ...
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1answer
29 views
Measuring phonetic correlates of stress (intensity in particular)
It's normal enough for people to say that we can attribute the percept of 'stress accent' to certain acoustic correlates – usually higher relative fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration of ...
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0answers
24 views
How to show a multichannel spectrogram in Praat?
I'd like to see a spectral representation of my left and right channels individually. I'm not sure which channel Praat's spectrogram corresponds to. How do I show multiple spectrograms, with each ...
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1answer
91 views
Is the “r” in “universe” syllabic?
Good morning,
Is the "r" is the word "Universe" syllabic?
I learned how to identify the syllabic letters, but still find it hard to do so.
3
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1answer
137 views
What is the difference between double, secondary and primary articulation?
I'm studying the secondary and double articulation, but got confused. Is double and primary articulation the same thing or what is the difference?
2
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1answer
103 views
When Using “$”, what specifically does it mean?
My Professor will write something like this,
[+consonantal, - sonorant, - continuant] → / _____ $
But I can't seem to figure out what it means. Does it mean at the end of a syllable?
Can someone ...
