Questions tagged [phonology]
The study of the abstract aspect of the sounds or *phonemes* in a given language.
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Terminology about elongating a monothong or a diphthong by duration and tone
Which terminology is applicable when a monothong or diphthong is elongated in duration and with a slightly higher pitch? Would it be vowel breaking or fracturing or something else?
Example 1 (...
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1answer
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How to write these rules in features?
I was wondering how do you write these rules in features using the minimum number of features to describe the segment(s) targeted by the rule in the input. I am still super new to linguistics! Thank ...
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Number of tones in Cantonese vs. Mandarin and final stops
The emergence of tones in Chinese languages (and actually most tonal languages) is, roughly speaking, due to the loss of final consonnants of syllables at an earlier stage of the language. In ...
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1answer
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Is there a phonological division in Slavic languages as important as the La Spezia-Rimini line? If not, is there a most important partition anyway?
All divisions of Slavic languages based on phonological criteria that I have seen so far are rather minor and/or localized (e.g. spirantization (Czech, Ukrainian) or not (Russian, Polish) of g). Is ...
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What is the name of this sound change, and do we have it in English?
I'm a Persian, I'm from Iran, and I speak Farsi.
Here, we have a very strange rule that we turn آ into و in informal conversations.
For example:
خانه = house (formal) /kh a ne/
خونه = house (informal) ...
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1answer
72 views
What part of speech is a phoneme?
I wanted to know what part of speech a phoneme might be or I wanted to know if a phoneme might be a part of speech and I wanted to know if a phoneme can be an affix. I also wanted to know what a ...
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2answers
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Voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate in english?
The "officially" voiceless alveolar-palatine affricate does not exist in English. But I can clearly hear it in the sentence "Ouch that hurt" (when the computer reads this sentence ...
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Looking for contrastive feature hierarchies for Irish, Manx and/or Scottish Gaelic
Where might I find ready-made contrastive feature hierarchy trees for these languages? In the case that they aren’t available anywhere online, I may need to make my own, in which case I’m looking for ...
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Evidence that ø and œ are separate phonemes in French?
Are there any minimal pairs between ø and œ or other evidence that these are separate phonemes? I have been studying French, and so far it seems like ø is found in open syllables and œ is found in ...
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How to make a sonority curve for a word where a 'syllabic consonant' is followed by a vowel or vice versa
I've learnt that the number of peaks of sonority in a sonority curve determines the number of syllables in a word.
The number of syllables depend on the pronunciation. It may also be true for other ...
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Phonological parallel of a Lexical Decision Task
Lexical Decision Tasks have been used in psycholinguistics for long. It basically asks the participant if the word shown is meaningful (e.g. GIRL) or not (e.g. GISL) (ref: link).
But does a test like ...
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4answers
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Sanskrit consonant clusters
I thought it'd be fairly easy to find a list of Sanskrit consonant clusters online, but the last hour or so has proved me wrong. There's information out there about how to write conjoined consonants ...
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What does @ mean? [closed]
What does “@“ sign mean in phonology or historical linguistics?
I saw “*@” in the context of restriction.
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1answer
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Is there any reflex of initial *h₁?
It's commonly posited that all PIE roots consist of two groups of consonants, neither of which can be empty. For example, the root *h₁ed- has the groups *h₁ and *d.
However, I'm not aware of any ...
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1answer
120 views
What does the double colon sign (::) mean in phonology?
What does the :: sign mean in phonology or historical linguistics?
Here's an example I saw:
yeri :: yatu
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What does the ◌͇ diacritic mean in the IPA?
I once saw [ʐ͇] and couldn't figure out what the diacritic meant.
Any help is appreciated.
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List of major languages that can and cannot have their pronunciation generated programmatically from the spelling [closed]
Which languages can you directly convert the spelling of the word into a "standard" pronunciation? From my understanding so far:
Chinese (through pinyin)
Hebrew (seem to have a rigid ...
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Stress bearing suffixes in Optimality Theory
Stress bearing suffixes in English words like Chinese, Japanese, cigarette, fifteen violate the non-finality constraint. Can anyone explain what other constraints outrank non-finality and allows the ...
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I have read that in Mishnaic Hebrew, some pronounced the 6th letter as waw/w and some as vav/v What is the evidence of this?
I have read that in Mishnaic Hebrew, some pronounced the 6th letter as waw/w and some as vav/v What is the evidence of this?
I see it mentioned here https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/%D7%95-vav-...
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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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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 ...
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Why are there languages that distinguish between /j/ and /i/?
Both phonemes sound practically the same, so it's understandable that there are languages such as Spanish and Italian in which /j/ shares grapheme with /i/ in diphthongs. That is, in these and other ...
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What is a markedness constraint in Optimality Theory?
Here is my answer but I'm not sure whether it is correct or put in a formal way. Could you help me see this?
Markedness constraints allow the markedness of a feature based on universal principles of ...
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1answer
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Data analysis of æ (tense) and æ: (lax) (Lexical Phonology)
I am struggling with performing a phonological analysis (within the framework of Lexical Phonology) on the following data.
In an unspecified English dialect, the distribution of the vowels æ (tense) ...
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Some questions about counterbleeding
Here are two words, "writing" and "riding". I know that there are two rules for them, as in the pictures. But in the first picture, can I say the /ai/ raising rule counterbleeds ...
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What are the phonological rules or constraints for these pairs of words?
Mongol-Mongolia
Arab-Arabia
Babylon-Babylonian
Boston-Bostonian
comedy-comedian
colony-colonial
I know that the vowel in the second syllable is lengthened, but what are the rules or constraints for ...
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1answer
100 views
Is there evidence for accentuation in Classical Arabic?
Wright's A grammar of the Arabic language lays out claims for where the stress should be in §§28-31. Most of the claims are connectable (in my experience) to contemporary renditions of Classical ...
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118 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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A question about Optimality Theory
Here is a line, "The optimal output in OT need not be the ideal candidate in the sense of complying with all the constraints." (quoted from Roca and Johnson (1999:656). I really feel ...
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1answer
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What are the similarities between rule-based phonological theory and Optimality Theory?
The only similarity is that they both involve the underlying form and surface form right?
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530 views
Is a final -u in Semitic languages known outside of Akkadian?
Consider Akkadian bētu vs. Hebrew bayit (בַּיִת) (meaning "house") and Akkadian daltu vs. Hebrew delet (דֶּלֶת) (meaning "door"). Are these endings known outside of Akkadian? If so, when did they ...
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Speakers of a foreign language in a nation sounding similar in 'mispronunciations'
For pronunciation of a foreign language, do foreign speakers from a certain country speak with the same accent because they learn in their country from someone with that accent, or their native ...
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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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Resource for finding languages that contain certain phonemes [duplicate]
In particular /w~b/ or other sounds that could be transcribed as <w> or <b>.
Background: A person gave his name variously as 'John Barosa' or 'John Warosa' in writing from which I figured ...
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According to the Elsewhere Principle, can a syntactic rule block a morphological one, or a morphological rule a phonological one?
I read up on the Elsewhere Principle. In the linked article two examples are given:
The syntactic comparative "more + adjective" can be overruled by the morphological comparative "adjective+er" for (...
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The letter <u> in Provençal: when is it [y] and when is it [œ]?
In most dialects of Occitan, the letter <u> is pronounced [y] generally. However, in Provençal it appears to be pronounced [œ] by some speakers some of the time.
This wikipedia article states (...
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Looking for references about the orthographic transparency
I need to have two tables as showing both grapheme-phoneme and phoneme-grapheme relationships in a couple of languages to be compared mathematically. In fact, I want to know how many phonemes stand ...
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Is there a name for when a 'c' becomes an [s] sound in words like rusticity, when originally it was a 'c' in rustiC?
I know it's a sound change, but is there a specific name for it? It's for an assignment I'm writing on the phonological transparency of the suffix -ity.
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What are cyclic and non-cyclic application in Phonology?
I'm still confused about the two abstract definitions. Can you give some examples to explain?
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Guttural pronunciation of {h} in American English
I'm not a native speaker. I've noticed that some Americans pronounce {h} as a guttural sound sometimes. Is this a documented feature of American English?
Examples:
https://youtu.be/j2I9LpDF708?t=7 (...
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1answer
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What is “metrically free elements”?
According to the Free Element Condition, only metrically free elements may undergo metrical construction. But what is "metrically free elements"?
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Pronouncing h as /x/? [closed]
I am curious about phonics and wonder if pronouncing the /h/ sound as /x/ would be distinguishable. This is basically turning a k into a fricative, and this is basically h fronting.
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What is the relation between sonority and stress?
Are there any relations between stress and sonority? Does stress denote high sonority?
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What is the difference between Minimal Onset Satisfaction and Onset Maximization Principle?
Since they both describe that onsets take priority over of codas, what is the difference between them?
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Is there a principled reason behind differing compound verb stress in English?
Is there a principled difference between compound verbs in English with stress on the first root and those with stress on the second root?
First root stress compound verbs:
Dropkick
Spoonfeed
...
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137 views
what is the difference between [g] and [ɣ]?
Does [ɣ] appear in english anywhere? I've seen [ɣ] listed as occuring in the spanish word "amigo" but I don't notice any difference between it & [g]. The Arabic equivalent is [غ].
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Why do we pronounce the letter “A” as the “eɪ” in Stake, and as “æ” in Cabbage?
I wondered about the difference between those vowels. Is there a rule that decides what articulation fits the syllabe in each word and what is that rule. I tried phonogical analysis on those vowels in ...
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1answer
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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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Do ongoing sound changes often impact L2 speech production?
I'm trying to find out whether L1 ongoing sound changes often impact speech productions in an L2.
For instance, an ongoing sound change in Brazilian Portuguese (i.e. the arising of new consonant ...
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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?
