Questions tagged [phonology]
The study of the abstract aspect of the sounds or *phonemes* in a given language.
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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 ...
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Did the word "until" come to exist by prothesis?
According to Wikipedia, prothesis is "the addition of a sound or syllable at the beginning of a word without changing the word's meaning or the rest of its structure".
In its entry for the ...
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1answer
78 views
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 ...
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1answer
75 views
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.
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49 views
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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1answer
106 views
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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1answer
87 views
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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85 views
What acoustic similarities are there between phonetically similar consonants?
I really want to know what exactly the similarity between consonants depends on.
For me, the core might be the place of articulation, manner of articulation and voiced vs. voiceless. For example, b/p/...
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99 views
Is "dzeru" : "ceru" a minimal pair in Latvian?
I'm finding it a bit hard to determine the prosody of these words. I'm basically asking if "dzeru" and "ceru" are prosodically identical.
If "dzeru" : "ceru" ...
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4answers
458 views
Are there any tonal languages with syllable-final consonants that are not unreleased, or even aspirated?
All the tonal languages I have some familiarity with, Mandarin, Thai, Lao, Vietnamese, and Cantonese either lack stop consonants in syllable-final position, or allow only "unreleased" stop ...
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114 views
Is there any articulatory difference between these two IPA symbols?
Is there an articulatory difference between the voiced palatal nasal [ɲ] sound and the nasalized voiced palatal approximant [j̃] sound?
If there is a diference, what is it? I ask that because in ...
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How did Latin "aqua" became sardinian "abba" and romanian "apă"?
The way I believe it happened was by the change of "w" into "v" and the fall of the velar "k". Furthermore, betacism caused the change of "v" to "b" ...
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133 views
Is there a rule which accounts for a d in PIE becoming a b in Latin?
According to Wikitionary, the Latin word verb is derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *werdʰh₁om which is the etonym of the English word word and the German wort. I am familiar with Grimm's Law ...
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87 views
Do Polish 'rz' /ž š/ and rhotic English have something in common? [closed]
This is a bit of a silly question that will need an explanation of the background that motivates this question.
Background. I met a man named Andrzej. He was called approximately An-jay /dʒ/, or ...
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1answer
131 views
If mora are potentially sufficient to describe language, then what do syllables add, in theory?
Following the answer to the recent Question, Why is/was Gokana claimed to lack syllables?, I don't really understand the difference.
I have heard of moras in the context of poetry before and didn't ...
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123 views
Why is/was Gokana claimed to lack syllables?
Wikipedia says that Gokana has been argued to lack syllables, a radical claim because syllables are traditionally considered to be universal, offers no details, but points out that later the claim has ...
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30 views
What are the differences of word stress, lexical stress and metrical stress?
It is said lexical stress is word stress, but I don't understand why they named it differently.
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77 views
Has anyone ever ranked the prevalence of phones by number of speakers worldwide?
I'm interested in knowing the most-used and least-used phones worldwide. According to Wikipedia, the IPA charts about 140 pulmonic consonants, 80 non-pulmonic consonants, 30 co-articulated consonants, ...
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1answer
637 views
Is there a certain rule for dividing syllable in a word?
I am new in linguistics and I am an ESL student. When I check dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster, Random House Webster, Webster’s New world college, American Heritage, Cambridge dictionary etc and ...
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1answer
131 views
Where does Google's pronunciation notation come from?
When you search for "X pronunciation" on Google, it shows the "Sounds like x·y·z" box with phonetic respelling. Does anyone know if this respelling system is based on a particular ...
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1answer
98 views
Is /f/ more sonorous than other fricatives?
Tashelhiyt permits any segment to act as a syllable nucleus, regardless of sonority. There's lots of theoretical analyses out there, but descriptively, Tashelhiyt consonant syllabification moves left ...
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79 views
Simple Way to Determine if IPA Words Rhyme (English)
As a follow-up to my question at Mathematics of Rhyme (perfect, slant), I have been able to map most English words to IPA using a mix of custom code and a dictionary stored at flancast90.github.io.
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2answers
118 views
Does modern greek really nasalise intervowel γγ?
During my previous studies I was introduced to ancient Greek and, among other things, I learned that we believe double gamma γγ was pronounced like a prenasalised gamma, something like "ng", ...
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85 views
Why is it called labialisation and not roundedness
I strongly feel that “Labialised” consonants aren’t really labialised, and perhaps “rounded” consonants would be a more suitable term, given that you can have a “labialised labial plosive”, which ...
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127 views
Difference pronunciation of the word cometh in Middle English and Early Modern English?
Does anyone know how you pronounce the root vowel of the word cometh in ME and EModE? What is this particular sound change called?
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109 views
Did Classical Latin lack tenseness contrast in long and short vowels?
Contrary to the traditional supposition of /ɪ ʊ ɛ ɔ/ vs /iː uː eː oː/, the idea that Classical Latin contrasted the short and long versions of high and mid (or just mid) vowels only quantitatively, ...
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1answer
100 views
How many vowels does spoken Hindustani have and what are the proper values of /e/ and /o/?
On the Wikipedia page for Hindustani phonology, it lists Hindustani as having ten vowels, three short and seven long. More importantly, it claims that there is a distinction between /o/ and /ɔ/, and ...
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3answers
751 views
Where are these Danish sounds in IPA?
I worked with a native Danish translator, using a simplified version of IPA for transcribing Danish words into their pronunciation. They pointed out 3 sounds that weren't covered by the system (which ...
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3answers
419 views
How many sibilants did Old Akkadian cuneiform distinguish?
According to fdb's answer to another question:
It is believed that Old Akkadian (at least) still retained the Semitic distinction of s₁, s₂ and s₃ and used different signs for syllables containing ...
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0answers
22 views
Book recommendation on language acquisition of phonetics and phonology in American children?
I'm looking for answers to the following questions about language acquisition, as far as phonetics are concerned. I'm particularly interested in American English, though failing that any language ...
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2answers
384 views
Are there traces of lost PIE laryngeals in Sanskrit?
I read on wiki that
"Hittite retains laryngeals that disappeared entirely in Sanskrit (but left plenty of traces showing that it must once have existed).
In Proto-Indo-Iranian, the laryngeals ...
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52 views
How to differentiate between consonants and vowels on praat? [closed]
I am student of MA and i need your help to know about the praat software. i am stuck in my research in last section. If any one hear to know so i thoroughly and rigorously sorry to say and please help ...
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79 views
Are there any constraints on how dead languages could have been spoken?
Considering written languages that we know, restricting ourselves to alphabetical languages if helpful: Can we make any general statements or assert any constraints on how a language could have ever ...
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1answer
71 views
Why are phonemic transcriptions used in English pronunciation courses (instead of phonetic ones)?
I'm doing an English pronunciation course. There, I'm asked to pronounce, for example, the following:
/i:/
In each case, I'm presented with articulatory and mouth position guidelines. However, if I ...
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2answers
82 views
What were the pronunciations of PIE velar stops?
What might be the pronunciations of PIE "plain velar" series *k *g *gʰ, the "palatovelar" series *ḱ *ǵ *ǵʰ, and the "labiovelar" series *kʷ *gʷ *gʷʰ ?
Was the *gʰ same as ...
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questions regarding satemisation in sanskrit
I have some questions regarding satemisation in sanskrit.
why there are still k in sanskrit if pie k tunred into sanskrit s ? It seems to me that pie *kʷ turned into k in sanskrit. is that right ? If ...
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92 views
Probability based algorithm to convert IPA into english language text
For a student job i'm creating a neural network-based method of determining the probability that two written names are referring to the same person (e.g. what is the probability that kelly m. refers ...
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156 views
What is the best book to learn about the linguistics features of American English (particularly phonology and phonetics) in detail?
I have a fairly good understanding of the IPA, Chain Shifts, variations within dialects but I still have troubles with lots of phonological ideas like devoicing, weird consonantal clusters tongue ...
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207 views
Are there any languages that have syllabic /w/ or /j/?
I heard somewhere that the following consonants can make a syllable on their own (i.e. syllabic consonants): /l/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /r/, /w/, /j/. Of these, I've seen /l/, /m/, /n/, /r/ that make a ...
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51 views
Evidence for segmental phonology in the acoustic speech signal
What evidence for segmental phonology could be found in the acoustic speech signal?
I think the parameters of acoustic speech signals include f0, amplitude, duration, wave form, etc., which are ...
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1answer
172 views
Claim that the american r sound is actually [ʁ] out west
This quora answer by Kit di Pomi (and if you browse his other answers he uses a similar uvular transcription) claims that: [ʀ] isn’t used anywhere off-stage as far as I know, typically American ...
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57 views
Proof of definite beginning and ending of syllables where three or more consonants in between?
(Note: I am not sure on how to phrase this question, so if you can, please edit for clarity)
So, recently a question came into my mind about whether we can actually define where syllables begin and ...
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1answer
63 views
How should I study additional texts?
This might sound a bit stupid. I just completed phonetics and phonology from Grady's "Contemporary Linguistics". I'm still in my schools and preparing to join bachelor of arts linguistics in ...
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174 views
What do these diagrams of vowels actually represent?
I've heard many times that spoken language is subjected to variations and we never make the exact same sound when we speak, even for the same word. If that's the case, how can you be so exact about ...
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Is there a way to classify all languages that have a guttural ch (as in Achmed) sound?
Some languages, like Hebrew, Arabic, and Gaelic, have a guttural ch sound, like the clearing of your throat, as in "Achmed". What is the term for this sound and is there a term to classify ...
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What makes East-Asian languages sound different than European languages?
I'm not sure if this is on-topic here. If I get reasonable amount of comments telling that it's off-topic, I'll delete my post.
I wrote a code that generates random human-readable strings. Every other ...
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1answer
106 views
When did the vocalic allophones of the consonant phonemes in PIE become independent vowel phonemes?
The sonants in PIE have consonantal and vocalic allophones, so the consonantal sonant and the vocalic sonant are regarded as one consonant phoneme. But many daughter languages of PIE (at least at some ...
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1answer
185 views
Did h2 and h3 change the phonetic reality of an adjacent *e in PIE under any circumstances?
Did h2 and h3 change the phonetic reality of an adjacent *e in PIE under any circumstances? Can we treat *a and ā as allophones of *e in PIE?
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65 views
Feature correlates of the length and tenseness contrast in the low vowel /a/
My ultimate goal is to be able to predict from external factors whether and what kind of vowel quality correlates an /a–a:/ contrast might have in a language, and specifically to determine which on is ...
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2answers
91 views
Is a long consonant counted as C or CC in syllable structure?
There are languages that have consonants that are a bit longer in duration i.e. the same as long vowels (e.g. like /iː/). So a long consonant is represented by writing /ː/ after it: long L = /lː/, ...