Questions tagged [phonology]
The study of the abstract aspect of the sounds or *phonemes* in a given language.
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Is there really an important Finno-Ugric substratum in some Balto-Slavic language? [closed]
The following paper mentions that the loss of neuter gender in some Baltic languages is due to Finnic substratum：
https://www.academia.edu/es/42106621/...
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What has happened to the World Phonotactics Database?
There was a resource named "World Phonotactics Database" once located at http://phonotactics.anu.edu.au/, but this location has gone. Searching for World Phonotactics Database on the web ...
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PHOIBLE as a graph database?
Is there a phonological inventory database along the lines of PHOIBLE, but represented as a graph database in the vein of e.g. Prolog or Datalog?
From the kinds of questions that get referred to ...
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Plosives with trilled release or allophones of /u/?
I've been looking at contexts where [ʙ] arises and I stumbled on the Namuyi wikipedium. This presents a really interesting phonology, with phonemic /pʙ/, /tʙ/, /bʙ/, and /dʙ/. Now I don't generally ...
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Difference between voiced and lenis consonants in English
What is difference between voiced and lenis consonants in English language.
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Violations of sonority sequencing principle in English
What accounts for these violations of the sonority sequencing principle in English: /strɛŋkθ/, /fʌdʒ/ （both have fricatives after stops in the coda)
Wikipedia says
In native English words, no phoneme ...
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Why do many languages analyse [e̞] as /ɛ/?
I experience that most analyses of many languages that I know, in particular Swedish, (Flemish) Dutch, Norwegian and Icelandic, analyse the languages' short ⟨e⟩ as /ɛ/, while they sound a lot more ...
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Why are English diphthongs not analysed as a vowel and a glide?
The English language has the diphthongs /eɪ aɪ ɔɪ aʊ əʊ/, analysed differently in some accents. They end in sounds that are very close to [j] and [w], yet are analysed as unsyllabic [ɪ] and [ʊ]. Since ...
user37123
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Question about Chinese stress
Does Chinese have stress, as many people suggested there’s stress on Chinese trisyllabic words?
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How to present affricates in onset consonant clusters
When an affricate is included in the onset of a word e.g., the Polish /ɡd͡ʑi/, is this a CCCV or CCV structure?
Following this, when putting it into a syllable tree, would the affricate be two ...
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What kind of stress is this?
I found the word "ice-free" is pronounced /ˈˌaɪsˈˌfri/ in Oxford English Dictionary, but what kind of stress is this? Should it be called 'there are two primary stresses and two secondary ...
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The A sound in Ask and At
I was reading a book on rhetoric today and it had the following table of pronounciation:
The thing I find confusing about this table is that I pronounce the A in "ask" and "at" ...
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About phonological history of Middle French
Schwa in hiatus dwindled in French a few centuries ago. Compare the example "saputum > sëu > su" at
Wikipedia/History of French
Does anyone know WHEN this sound change occurred? I ...
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Can I find an Ancient Greek parsing program that dissects words into their constituent phonemes from reconstructed Proto-Greek?
For example, suppose I enter "πράσσουσα" and it outputs πραάͳοντσα or even, πρααͳ-ο-ντ-σα (root, ablaut, participle marker, feminine). Or I put in πᾶς and it outputs πάαντ-ς (root, 3rdNS)...
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What's going on when people hear my voiced stops as voiceless unaspirated stops?
I'm native speaker of Georgian, a language which has phonemic distinction between voiceless, 'voiced', and ejective consonants (according to study and Wikipedia)
though when repeating Georgian voiced ...
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why do the plain voiceless stops sound like ejective stops?
Why do plain voiceless stops i.e [p t k] sound like ejective [pʼ tʼ kʼ]?
am a native speaker of a language which has phonemic distinction between voiced, voiceless and aspirated stops and affricates (...
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What is the linguistical terminology for (and if) letters of a given alphabet have(ing) their inherent meaning?
Letters or phonemes.
Letters, like runes according to this article:
https://sonsofvikings.com/apps/fireamp/blogs/history/viking-runes-guide-runic-alphabet-meanings-nordic-celtic-letters
At least that'...
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Morphophonemic rules in phonology
I am wondering how the two phonological terms "morphonemic rules" and "morphophonemic rules" can be distinguished?
A morpheme might have different presentations (i.e. ...
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What is the difference between a Diphthong and a heterosyllabic sequence of two vowels?
For example what is the difference between /aɪ/ and /a.ɪ/ or between /au̯/ and /a.u/? how they be distinguished from each other?
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Does English obey the maximal onset principle?
Does English always obey the maximal onset principle?
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How is the word 'second' phonologically split into syllables?
The Cambridge dictionary says that the word 'second' is uttered as /ˈsek.ənd/, in which the first syllable is /sek/ and the second is /ənd/. My question is thus the following: why doesn't this word ...
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Why is a voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and aspirated distinction so rare cross-linguistically?
Why is that a lot of languages have the distinction between voiceless-voiced consonant but not a lot of languages have three-way distinction between voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and aspirated ...
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What the process is here?
Here is a phonological rule:
-ViC(-) > -VCʲ(-),
where i both /i/ or /j/;
and its vice versa:
-VCʲ(-) > -ViC(-).
(I think that -VeC(-) is possible too).
But I don't know what is the name of ...
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Are there any natural languages in which /ʂ/ and /ʃ/ are distinct phonemes?
I'm having a difficult time trying to find languages that have a phonemic contrast between /ʂ/ and /ʃ/.
I can hear the difference without difficulty because /ʂ/ sounds like a lower frequency range of ...
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What's the difference between a syllabic consonant and a schwa followed by a consonant?
I'm a native speaker of a language which has syllabic consonants, here are the examples
კლდე/k'lde, [kʼl̩dɛ] "cliff"
ქრთამი/krtami, [kʰɾ̩tʰami] "bribe"
ბრძენი/brdzeni, [bɾ̩d͡zɛni] &...
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What would /ɯ/ most likely be replaced by? [closed]
If a language was borrowing words from another language that has /ɯ/, what would the first language possibly substitute it with?
Borrowing language phonology -
Consonants:
m n ɲ p b t d c ɟ k g ts dz ...
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How do non-English speakers perceive English /b d g/?
Based on some reading that I've done, the English "voiced" stops /b d g/ aren't actually voiced word-initially. For instance, /bæt/ is realized as [pæt] or [b̥æt], rather than [bæt]. The ...
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Is there any real phonemic distinction between semivowels and their vocalic counterparts?
So my understanding is that semivowels are phonetically identical (or nearly identical) to their vocalic equivalents, and that the distinction between the two is primarily based on how they behave ...
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How to exactly pronounce IPA
I'm a native Korean speaker, and I somtimes have trouble pronuncing some of the sounds which is not used or not distinguished in Korean.
For example, ɛ and e are equivalent to Korean phoneme ㅐ and ㅔ. ...
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Are there languages without the /j/ sound as in English "yellow"?
There are many languages without the /w/ sound as in English world, as in French oiseau, as in Spanish fuego, and as in Mandarin wang (the last three respectively mean bird, fire, and king). Some ...
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what is a "non-derived" environment?
what is the meaning of derived and non-derived environments in phonology?
for example, non derived environment blocking, that does it mean?
I've looked everywhere but I could not find the actual ...
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Phonological Development from PIE to Greek
I found the following phonological development (from PIE to Greek) patterns very interesting.
*kw>t / __ {e, i}
(e.g., *penkwe- > πέντε)
*gw>d / __ e
(*gwelbhu- > δελψύς)
*gwh>th / ...
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Is the Romanian verb "pișca" etymologically related to Spanish "pellizcar" ( to pinch )?
From wiktioanry: "pellizcar (Spain) /peʝiθˈkaɾ/, [pe.ʝiθˈkaɾ]
(Latin America) /peʝisˈkaɾ/, [pe.ʝisˈkaɾ]- From Vulgar Latin *vellicicāre, from Latin vellicāre, most likely ultimately from vellus (...
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Korean tense/lax vs. English tense/lax
Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology, English has "tense" sounds: "p", "t", "ch", and &...
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Where do the "îs" and "îi" forms of "a fi" ( "to be" ) originate in dialectal Romanian?
perhaps the Latin first person singular indicative "sum" with an "î" of uncertain origin? Im not sure about "îi". I guess from the short "e" /je/ form of "...
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German contraction "wara" - morphology or phonology?
The regular form
War er ... 'was he ...'
would, in certain positions of sentence in my idiomatic sociolect, sound approximately as
* wara /vaːʁɐ/.
I can not imagine at the moment how this came ...
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How did latin "de post" become Romanian "după"?
Wouldn't the expected result be: "dopă"? I understand that the short "e" was assimilated by the long "o" from the next word, and then /o/ -> /ə/, but why o -> u ?
...
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Do Diphthongs occur in Georgian?
I'm asking this question because of this study https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A7DCF9606BA856FCA5CC25918ADB37EF/S0025100306002659a.pdf/standard-georgian.pdf ...
user36230
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what is tonal crowding in intonation literature
What is tonal crowding, especially under Autosegmental-Metrical Framework?
Is it simply a collection of different intonation tones associated with one segment?
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Why do we spell 'aaaah' with an 'h' at the end?
In English, we generally spell 'Ah', 'Aah', or 'Aaaaaah' (as it seems, any number of a's is possible) with an 'h' at the end. Someone just asked me why and I have been searching all over the internet ...
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What are the stress-distinguished minimal pairs in English?
I already know of two non-homograph ones: insight and billow.
Insight /ˈɪnsʌɪt/ is phonemically identical to incite /ɪn'sʌɪt/ except for where the stress falls (first syllable in insight, second ...
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What does 'anterodorsal' mean?
In the context of places of articulation of consonants, what does "anterodorsal" mean?
I came across it in the 2008 paper by Wai-Sum Lee: The Articulation of the Coronal Sounds in the Peking ...
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What is the name of the property of what part of the tongue produces the sound?
For consonants, IPA describes 'place of articulation': the part of the mouth the tongue makes contact with, and 'manner of articulation': how the sound is produced there.
Speakers may use the blades ...
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Are alveolo-palatal consonants more likely to be followed by high vowels, whereas retroflex consonants are more likely followed by low vowels?
It seems to me that high voles like i would more naturally follow alveolo-palatal consonants because the need to "spread the lips" (in the popular description of the latter) seem to more ...
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Why is IPA Transcriptions of Georgian so inconsistent?
for example why do some sources transcribe ღ and ხ as /ɣ x/ while others transcribe it as /ʁ χ/
also ა is transcribed as /a/ by some while others transcribe it as /ɑ/
can anyone explain to me what's ...
user35957
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What is the phonetic realization of /ɣ/ and /x/ in Georgian? are they velar? or are they actually uvular?
I'm confused as to which symbol should I be using when transcribing Georgian with IPA.
as native speaker of Georgian myself, I feel my /ɣ/ and /x/ sound more like uvular than velar.
I could be wrong ...
user35957
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Are there any detailed studies on Phonology of Georgian language?
As a native speaker of Georgian, I'm interested in learning more about Phonology of my native language.
user35900
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Autodidact here reading phonology
I am Studying phonological processes on my own now. Need help with some basic stuff:
What do the bold parts mean?
1- Cvoiceless →voiced
2- /u/→[ʊ] / __Cɪ
for (1) __VCvoiceless = does this mean when ...
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Consonant clusters in English - how many exist exactly?
I am really struggling to find a complete list of all consonant clusters that are possible in the English language. Can anyone point me in the direction of one?
I have spent hours looking online with ...
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Did Dutch ever have a G like in Garden sound?
In Modern Dutch I do not see or hear any hard G sound. Garden would be pronounced like Harden.. how did that happen?
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