Questions tagged [phonetics]
The study of the production and perception of sounds or "phones".
786
questions
4
votes
1answer
265 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?
5
votes
2answers
113 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 ...
6
votes
2answers
952 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,...
1
vote
2answers
3k 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 "...
13
votes
1answer
399 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 ...
2
votes
4answers
168 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
votes
1answer
31 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
259 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 ...
1
vote
1answer
174 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-...
1
vote
4answers
914 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 ...
3
votes
2answers
193 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
votes
2answers
61 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
89 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
152 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
220 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?
4
votes
0answers
97 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
171 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
302 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?
13
votes
1answer
292 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
votes
1answer
267 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
450 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
156 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 ...
1
vote
1answer
104 views
Interpreting formant intensity
I was wondering whether there is any practical way to tell whether differences in formant intensity are due to different harmonics in the source or different formants in the filter. Is there any data ...
2
votes
1answer
147 views
Formants - beyond F2
I have read that for front vowels, the cavity behind the lips (I think this must correspond to the space between the lips and the hump of the tongue) is F3, whereas for back vowels it is F2.
In that ...
3
votes
0answers
49 views
Is there such a thing as an articulatory home base for a given language, and how could it be characterized?
I've been mulling over the idea that articulatory gestures should be looked as excursions from a home base that varies according to language and accent, and that defining sounds just in terms of the ...
1
vote
1answer
125 views
Does English have syllabic fricatives (allophonically)?
When speaking rapidly, it doesn't seem that I make a schwa at all when saying a phrase like, say, "the bus." It seems like I'm saying [ð̩.bʌs]. Is this a documented phenomenon?
6
votes
1answer
161 views
What might account for different numbers of formants in plots of male and female speakers pronouncing the same vowel?
I have been looking at a Thai vowel in Praat.
I have several exponents from native speakers, though only one of them is male.
The female plots all show four formants. The male plot shows five ...
-1
votes
1answer
187 views
What is the maximum number of IPA diacritics that can be added on a vowel?
What would the symbol look like, and how would it sound like? E.g. a long rhotacized nasalized vowel with tone?
1
vote
1answer
54 views
In the sound change [t] to [ð], what steps would normally take place in which order?
Say, the situation is intervocalic, for example:
[ata] > [aða]
The differences of the two sounds are whether the tongue touches the palate and voicing.
So if I assume voicing happens first, the ...
2
votes
1answer
289 views
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 ...
2
votes
2answers
201 views
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 ...
1
vote
3answers
264 views
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 / ...
0
votes
1answer
100 views
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 ...
0
votes
2answers
38 views
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 ...
2
votes
3answers
607 views
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 ...
0
votes
1answer
82 views
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 ...
1
vote
3answers
101 views
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 ...
1
vote
1answer
228 views
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 ...
7
votes
1answer
236 views
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 ...
0
votes
1answer
77 views
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.
0
votes
1answer
39 views
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 ...
3
votes
1answer
407 views
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 ...
2
votes
1answer
19 views
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 ...
1
vote
1answer
182 views
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, ...
0
votes
1answer
72 views
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 ...
2
votes
1answer
61 views
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?
2
votes
1answer
64 views
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'...
3
votes
3answers
506 views
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, ...
1
vote
3answers
2k views
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 ...
0
votes
1answer
26 views
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
