Questions tagged [phonology]
The study of the abstract aspect of the sounds or *phonemes* in a given language.
689
questions
1
vote
1answer
163 views
Final intonation of a question in a pitch-accent language
How do pitch-accent languages deal with potential confusion between the pitch to distinguish two words, and the pitch to make a question?
For example, if you got word 'Ab' and word 'aB', how could ...
-3
votes
0answers
46 views
Fundamental questions about natural classes in phonology [closed]
Could you help me with these questions?
Thank you in advance!
9
votes
2answers
2k views
How well do Semitic languages preserve consonants over time?
I'm not too familiar with the details of Semitic languages, but as far as I can tell it seems the tri-consonantal roots of words are relatively important. If the consonants change over time, did they ...
0
votes
2answers
206 views
Is there a linguistic term for replacing past tense verb with present tense?
In my dialect of English (North West England), we sometimes use the present tense of a verb when standard English employs the past tense, such as in the sentence below:
"I waits for the bus ...
0
votes
0answers
33 views
How can we trace the source of orthographic inconsistency?
It is known that orthography has both positive and negative effects on second language acquisition. However, I can't really figure out when the effect is due to the L1, the L2 or both.
For example, ...
2
votes
1answer
55 views
How were this feminine mutations originated in Welsh?
It is known that the celtic languages have mutations, for instance:
Welsh:
*transcription depicts North Welsh dialects
• normal form: Cymru [ˈkəmrɨ̞] (Wales);
• soft mutation: Gymru [ˈɡəmrɨ̞] (ex.:...
7
votes
3answers
306 views
Why do Spanish and Greek have such a similar phonology?
Is it just a matter of coincidence or did the two language influence each other in some way?
3
votes
0answers
84 views
The schwa in [meɪkəθ] for *maketh* in KJV English
This Wiki article seems to suggest that words like makes had lost their final syllable schwa in normal speech already by Chaucer's time (palmeres > palmers is the example they give). The rule, as ...
0
votes
2answers
107 views
Why are dental sounds rare?
Dental stops are rare in the languages of the world (other than in Australia). Most languages outside of Australia containing dental stops belong to Indo-European, Uralic, Kartvelian, and Dravidian. ...
13
votes
3answers
11k views
Is the “p” in “spin” really a “b”?
Daniel Everett claims in Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes (Ch. 11) that the English "p" and "b" in "pin" and "bin" are separate phonemes, since they alone distinguish the words "pin" and "bin," whereas ...
1
vote
1answer
64 views
Familiarity with any/innie merger in American English?
It was recently pointed out to me that I pronounce “any” ( and the related anything, anymore, etc.) as /ˈɪn.i/ instead of /ɛn.i/. Does anyone know a regional variation of American English that has ...
3
votes
2answers
87 views
What happened to “accented velars” in Anatolian?
One of the oldest splits within Indo-European was between the Centum and Satem languages; they differ in what they did to the "accented velar" phonemes (like *ḱ and *ǵ).
However, if I understand ...
5
votes
2answers
122 views
Does the analysis of syllables via mora imply that syllable duration is quantized?
From the wikipedia article:
"The definition of a mora varies. In 1968, American linguist James D.
McCawley defined it as "something of which a long syllable consists of
two and a short syllable ...
2
votes
1answer
93 views
Why are PIE C+glide clusters so rare?
I noticed that *Cj/*Cy (depending on if one uses IPA or IEist notation) and *Cw sequences are rare in PIE (with most being the result of schwebeablaut or regular ablaut). Among sequences that aren't ...
0
votes
3answers
115 views
Long vowels in the world languages
The English language has long and short vowel sounds. Short and long vowels also exist in some other languages. And it's interesting to know when native English speakers come to let it be the Czech ...
3
votes
1answer
54 views
Looking for Spanish varieties/accents
This might not be the right place to ask this, and if so, I apologize. I'm a student conducting research on Spanish varieties and I am wondering if anyone knows where I could find short texts read by ...
2
votes
1answer
99 views
Understanding VOT
I am a third year bachelor student of Linguistics. It would be nice if I don't get mean comments, because I genuinely do not understand what I am about to ask.
I have to write a paper on phonetic ...
3
votes
1answer
46 views
What sort of features contrast in some signed languages but not others?
I don't know anything about sign language linguistics, and the Wikipedia page on ASL phonology wasn't very helpful, and suggested wide ranges of allophony.
In considering phonemes as equivalence ...
3
votes
1answer
87 views
How to read and understand linguistics articles?
I was wondering if there is a good way to read and understand Quantitative linguistics articles that has graphs in it?
For example,
For a class, I am currently reading: "Recognition of spoken ...
1
vote
1answer
79 views
Glottal stops- comparative frequency among commonly spoken languages
I'm a brand new member who enjoys words and languages but I am not a trained linguist.
Which common languages of the world, and families of languages, are considered the most glottal (most glottal ...
9
votes
2answers
239 views
Do voiceless approximants exist? What is the consensus among phoneticians/phonologists?
Voiceless sounds that are produced with supralaryngeal configurations that would be considered approximants if voiced are attested in languages (i.e. [j̊], [l̥], etc.), but none are found to contrast ...
2
votes
2answers
80 views
What's a good introduction to constraint-based phonology?
I am playing with the idea of building a language parser/transformer and getting into the structure of pronunciations. This leads me to try and come up with rules for the parser for understanding how ...
3
votes
1answer
68 views
What is known about the voicing of Hittite consonants?
Most consonants in Hittite appear in two variants, conventionally called "voiced" and "voiceless": "voiceless" consonants are written twice in a row, while "voiced" consonants are written only once. ...
4
votes
1answer
196 views
Is the study of triphthongs a must to master English phonology?
Most universities in India are teaching only pure vowels (monophthongs), and diphthongs. Now we find triphthongs. ...
Is the study of triphthongs a must to master the phonology of English? ...
3
votes
0answers
269 views
Does pre-fortis clipping only operate within a syllable? If not, what is its actual scope?
English is known to have a phenomenon of "pre-fortis clipping": in certain contexts, vowel and sonorant phonemes before a fortis/voiceless consonant are realized with shorter duration than the same ...
7
votes
2answers
2k views
Phonetic distortion when words are borrowed among languages
When languages borrow words from other languages, they sometimes deliberately distort words to make them phonetically easier to pronounce.
For example, when Japanese speakers are taught the word "...
2
votes
0answers
48 views
(proto-)Germanic evidence for Late Latin vowel length
I would like to find a list of borrowings illustrating the reflexes in (proto-)Germanic of Latin long and short vowels. In particular I would like to find substantiation to the standard claim that it ...
3
votes
1answer
97 views
Is it possible to recognize place of articulation of consonants through spectrograms?
I am trying to undestand how PRAAT works and to recognize consonants through spectrograms. I Know that it's possible to distinguish fricative consonants from nasal ones (for example) but is it ...
2
votes
0answers
56 views
How do people pick an abbreviation for a technical term?
Today I heard “regex,” short for “regular expression,” out loud for the first time with a /dʒ/ instead of a /g/ as I had always guessed. I felt the same experience when I first heard the abbreviation ...
2
votes
2answers
151 views
Is it possible to speak like a native speaker of English by mastering the phonology?
I know some professors of phonetics teach phonetics(in a country like India) in a laboratory almost similar to that of the native speakers.But when they come out of the class their pronunciation does ...
0
votes
1answer
33 views
Phonology: adjacent ordered rules (Kisseberth, 1970)
I have a question when reading the paper Kisseberth(1970). It’s about when rules can be collapsed. My question is about "adjacent rules". I don't quite understand what "ordered before" and "ordered ...
3
votes
2answers
324 views
Can languages have both the alveolar approximant and the alveolar tap?
I'm trying to find a natural instance of both the alveolar approximant and the alveolar tap existing in a natural language's phonology. Could this naturally happen or do languages converge to one of ...
13
votes
1answer
1k views
Have ejective consonants ever arisen on their own?
In an old comment on another question, jlawler mentions in passing:
Much the same can be said about ejective consonants -- other languages can pick them up, but nobody knows where they come from. ...
2
votes
2answers
69 views
Who are the first theorists to represent syllable structure as a hierarchical branching structure?
I have attached an example of this structure for the word 'dream', from Blevins' chapter in the Handbook of Phonological Theory, 1995.
4
votes
1answer
45 views
Lexeme phonological form
I am self-studying morphology and came across this paragraph in Martin Haspelmath book "Understanding Morphology".
Although we must assign names to lexemes to be able to talk about them, lexemes ...
2
votes
2answers
88 views
What is the standard representation of a stop which could be either ejective or aspirated?
I’m working with a language which differentiates between aspirated and ejective stops. Is there a linguistic convention that I can use in writing descriptive rules for processes which both aspirated ...
1
vote
2answers
81 views
What’s the standard way of showing phonemic inventory and orthography in the same table?
I’m describing the phonology of an Asian language. I put all the phonemes in a clear table. Since I use a local (Roman letter-based) orthography in my transcribed examples, I think it’d be handy to ...
0
votes
1answer
96 views
Need data on # of syllables per word in languages with CV & CVC syllables only
In languages with limited syllable structures (CV and CVC), how can I get data on the respective percentages of words in the known vocabulary that have 1 syllable, 2 syllables, 3 syllables, and 4 ...
2
votes
2answers
87 views
Is sonority phonological or phonetic?
I've seen several mentions of "sonority" in different works, most of which define it as something like "how loud a particular sound is in relation to other speech sounds".
This seems like something ...
7
votes
0answers
127 views
How to synthesize French vowels
I am trying to synthesize the French vowels [o] and [ɔ] for running a perception experiment. I have been using the Praat Vocal Toolkit and got pretty nice results with the following formant values: F1(...
8
votes
2answers
181 views
Did Classical Hebrew and/or Aramaic have allophonic continuant length?
It's well-known that Classical Hebrew had phonemic length distinctions in the stops, since geminated stops didn't turn into fricatives: compare רַב raβ "rabbi" against רַבִּי rabbī "my rabbi".
But I'...
4
votes
1answer
113 views
How did vowel a in L. maneō “to remain” come from PIE *mn-eh₁- “to remain” < PIE *men- “to stay, stand still”?
AHD-IER (Watkins, 2011) P97 gives PIE *man-e- for L. maneō:
Variant suffixed (stative) form
*man-e-. MANOR, MANSE, MANSION, MENAGE; IMMANENT, PERMANENT, REMAIN, from Latin manere, to remain.
...
0
votes
1answer
37 views
Interactive class exercises with Praat
I’m teaching a seminar crash course in linguistics to first year undergrads next term. It’s just 3 one hour lectures, and should be fun and engaging. I want it to be hands-on, and give students a ...
1
vote
2answers
155 views
Finding Natural Classes
I have a question regarding exercise 1, chapter 4, Introductory Phonology by Bruce Hayes.
Suppose we have the features high, low, back, round. We are given the table below, representing the vowels ...
3
votes
2answers
198 views
Is there a term for the way that 'th' is pronounced differently in 'thin' and 'this'?
The point of the example in the question in the title is that, to my knowledge, there are no minimal pairs that contrast [ð] and [θ] in English, yet, if someone pronounced a word with those sounds ...
8
votes
2answers
699 views
What is the best linguistic term for describing the kw > p / gw > b change, and its usual companion s > h
Celtic, Italic, Greek and several other IE languages have a P- and a Q-variety (from kw > p and gw > b). The P-variety usually also has h for ancient s.
What would be the best linguistic term for ...
0
votes
2answers
246 views
If *h1 were a glottal stop, and virtually all German word initial vowels have an implicit glottal stop
If *h1 were a glottal stop, and virtually all German word initial vowels have implicit glottal stop then would the claim about regular laryngeal loss have to be revised?
There's a rather recent ...
19
votes
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".
...
8
votes
5answers
1k views
What's weird about Proto-Indo-European Stops?
I was reading Wikipedia, and it maintains that it's unusual for a language to have a voiceless-voiced-breathy distinction (without a voiceless aspirated), but that the Sanskrit 4-way distinction is ...
4
votes
5answers
396 views
Word meaning as function of the composition of its phonemes
tl;dr
Linguists like to claim that the mapping from sounds to word meanings is mostly arbitrary. Can you point out research that supports this claim? Specificllay I am looking for hard evidience in ...
