Questions tagged [phonology]
The study of the abstract aspect of the sounds or *phonemes* in a given language.
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Is "cone" a typo for "come" in the answer to the question, "Etymologically, why is there a v in 'Giovanni'" [migrated]
"Etymologically, why is there a v in 'Giovanni'"
It comes ultimately from Hebrew "Yochannon", via Greek Ioannes, from which German "Johannes" and Spanish "Juan" ...
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Investigating the role of Functional Load in Speech Recognition
I am currently delving into the application of Stokes and Surendran’s Functional Load (FL) in the context of Dutch CVC (Consonant-Vowel-Consonant) words. Stokes and Surendran (2005) propose FL as a ...
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Pronunciation of ‘hₐ’ in PIE
I have tried to find the sound hₐ-, for example "hₐeust(e)ro" engl. 'east', or hₐel, 'burn' , but also example hₐner, 'man' pronunciation, but I can't find it anywhere on the internet, ...
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Old English weak noun 'Sweora'
I've been reading about diphthongization and i umlaut of diphthongs and I came across the example of the OE word for 'neck'.
I have been led to understand that:
the original vowel is 'i'.
-rh- ...
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About similarity of sounds in Swedish and Danish
In all sources I found there are symbols /ð/ for Danish 'd'. It is something between the English /ð/ and /l/ with a tongue moved a bit back, touching the teeth a bit.
So, actually, I am curious to ...
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What is the difference between double articulations and secondary articulators?
I need to know the examples that makes secondary articulators and double articulations different.
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How many beats is a syllable?
I’ve read some sources that say a syllable is “one beat” but I don’t understand that. Wouldn’t it depend on the tempo of the pulse. I.e, if a tempo is 60bpm can’t you fit different numbers of ...
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Looking for examples of natural languages with affricates but no corresponding fricatives/plosives
I was thinking about how Spanish has a /t̠ʃ/ but (in most dialects) no /ʃ/, and how many native Spanish speakers have trouble producing the sound ʃ by itself. I don't see why this couldn't apply to ...
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Why is binarity emphasized so much in linguistics?
I'm an aspiring linguistics student, not a professional, so my thinking may be misguided or elementary.
In my personal research about linguistics, I have discovered many important theories and ...
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Why are some phonemic sounds not included in their language’s phonemic inventory?
Sorry for the weird wording and the beginner question,
I’m trying to ask why, as an example in Finnish, do we not put the long vowels in the vowel chart while Māori’s long vowels are represented in ...
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Why is vowel length not considered phonemic in Turkish?
Excuse me if this is a very novice question, but there are pairs in Turkish like "yağma" /ja:ma/ (plunder) and "yama" /jama/ (patch), or "olan" /olan/ (one that's there) ...
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what does +cont mean in phonological rules
One of the solutions in my practice questions for a phonological rule was listed as:
C[+cont, α place] -> [+plosive] / N [α place] ___
to represent a situation where voiced consonants are realised ...
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Phonemes vs. Distinctive Feature Theories
I'm a high school student who will be going to college to study linguistics next fall. I'm already knowledgeable about some areas, but I'm currently trying to expand my knowledge in phonology. I have ...
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Is there any sound change that can result in /ɞ/?
I am making a conlang where one of the distinctive sounds is /ɞ/. It is a rare vowel sound, and I searched Index Diachronica but couldn't find a sound change that results in it. The sound also does ...
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How to analyze nasal vowels next to nasal consonants
Let's say a language uses two vowels /A/ and /B/ which differ only by one relevant phonological feature [+/- X] such that /A/ is [- X] and /B/ is [+ X]. Now let's say there's a consonant phoneme /C/ ...
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Phonological rules
If I were to write a rule dictating that /l/ becomes [r] before a front vowel would it be:
/l/ -> [r] / [V, +front],
/l/ -> [r] / [+front]
or
/l/ -> [r] / V [+nasal]
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Determining the number of phonemes from set of phones
For this exercise, I'm to determine the number of phonemes from a set of phones and then write their allophonic rules for each phoneme
phones: [b], [ɣ], [β], [l], [t], [d], [g]
However, I think I'm ...
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Half-letters in American English
I'm an American spending some time in Japan, and notice that even though most people know some English words, they have a hard time understanding and pronouncing a word like "left" because ...
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Closeness between written words and spoken words over different languages
In my understanding, the different languages exist in spoken form and (mostly) in written forms (what about sign languages?).
Some languages have developed a close relationship between the written ...
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Implicational Universals in Optimality Theory
I think I am understanding something incorrectly in Optimality Theory but I can't figure out how. So, constraints are universal but rankings are language-specific. So, I read an analysis where they ...
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Which part of the Oracc data is to be used for pronunciation of Akkadian words?
I shared this Oracc RINAP JSON example in my last post, but now I'm focusing on how to automatically generate an IPA version of each Akkadian "word", from some sort of input word/text.
It ...
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Why are mid-open/open vowels considered [- tense]?
I found the following chart (which was taken from Donegan (1976)) on a book and something reminded me of a simple question I always had, but I never came across a definitive answer: why are some open ...
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What does a tilde between angle brackets mean?
I was reading the Wikipedia page for vietnamese phonology and in the vowel chart, it says "/iə̯/ ⟨ia~iê⟩ /ɨə̯/ ⟨ưa~ươ⟩ /uə̯/ ⟨ua~uô⟩. What do the tildes mean?
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How can I get fast measuring of jitter and shimmer?
I want to be able to see fast computations of jitter and shimmer. Best would be on the fly but an online/software quick tool would be also good.
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Corpus Linguistics Major [closed]
I want to use corpus in my MA research, but I have a large problem; how can I analyze the data? Do I use software corpora or corpus such as BNC? I know it is according to my research question, but ...
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Distinction between allomorphy and homophony
My understanding of allomorphy, is that it is the case where a single
functional morpheme is realized with many different Vocabulary Items.
But homophony (that is accidental) is also found with Roots, ...
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Looking for a more general model/theory of pronunciation similar to the IPA chart for vowel sound
I have been introduced to the IPA diagram (the triangle/trapezoid) for vowel sounds and I find it interesting as a model of pronunciation as it represents the mouth position so it can be very ...
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Why does the IPA use four main vowel heights?
Because vowels exist at infinitely precise points on large acoustic and articulatory spectrums (vowel spaces), the study of phonetics uses generalized waypoints to describe them. The International ...
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What is the term for the phones or phonemes after a synchronic or diachronic sound change or allophony rule?
If you have a sound change or allophony rule such as:
X -> Y / _Z
Is there a common term for X and Y?
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Is there a phonological rule or process that dictates the choice between voiced and unvoiced "th" in the English word "with"?
There are two different pronunciations recorded for the "th" sound in the English word "with" in most dictionaries (Webster, OED). I was wondering if one or the other is preferred ...
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What written notation is used in IPA for the letter "A" in the English words "hand", "man", "and", et cetra?
In American English, the letter "A" is pronounced at least five different ways.
What written symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is used for the vowel, or vowel group, shown ...
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Where can I find books from the late 17th/early 18th century about English grammar, and books from the same period about English phonology?
I'm interested in finding books that explain English grammar (as much of it and in as much depth as possible), written by scholars from the late 17th/early 18th century. Which do you recommend? Could ...
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Did Turkic languages have a different 'r' sound that couldn't be pronounced unless conected to a vowel from behind?
I'm an speaker of a dialect of the Azerbaijani language, Tabriz's(A city in Iran) dialect, to be specific. I've read before that no native Turkic words start with an 'r'. What is interesting to me is ...
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Source of picture - Vocal apparatus
I hope it is not inadequate to ask this type of question but I would really like to know the source of the following image:
It is the ,,aparato fonador" and I do not search for similar images ...
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Can the Kiki/bouba effect be generalized?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
Has the Kiki/bouba effect been generalized in research, in which qualitative associations for phonemic units are explored comprehensively, ...
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Can dialects of English have phonetic aspirated consonants?
Although the traditional phonemic assignment of English <j> and <ch> are /dʒ/ and /tʃ/, respectively, I believe there's an argument to be made that these are realized in some American ...
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Does 'z' act as a coda or onset in the syllable structure for the word crazy?
I am working on drawing the syllable structure for the word crazy. So far within kreizi, ei and i are nucliet, kr is an onset, but I am stuck on the 'z'. There are many words that start with z in the ...
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Establishing criteria for sounds likely to facilitate phonological mergers around them
I know extremely little about the history of sound changes in languages other than English, so that will be the source of my examples. However, I’m asking this question for a more general, cross-...
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What does it mean when a phoneme represented by one IPA is "phonetically" a different IPA?
I have been studying Hungarian and its pronunciation for a long time, using references such as the Hungarian Phonology Wikipedia page and comparing that to the General American Phonology page.
The ...
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Phonetic reconstruction of "Haremhab"
This is a follow-up question to Hippopotamus - Egyptian ḫꜣb - a phonosemantic calque?.
In a lecture by Jacobus van Dijk the pronounciation of the Egyptian Haremhab is clarified to be something ...
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Bilabial speech sounds with lower lip inserted between teeth
I have noticed the existence of several phones that can be produced with a place of articulation that I haven't seen discussed before. Basically, the two lips contact each other (as in bilabial sounds)...
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Where can I find all of the consonant/vowel word formation formulas for a given language? And what is the name of this?
I'm new to linguistics. I've seen that there are CVC or VVC or similar structures presented in online resources (for example Wikipedia) to denote the possible combinations of sounds.
I want to find a ...
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Phonemes that rarely have voiceless/voiced distinctions cross-linguistically
There are some voiceless/voiced pairs of phonemes that seem to be far rarer than other pairs. For example, /p/ and /b/ are separate phonemes in a majority* of the world's languages (and especially ...
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Is there such a thing as aspiration harmony?
How would one describe the propensity of an aspirate to spread right to an identical consonant in the same word?
/tʰeto/ → [tʰetʰo] ~ [tʰeto] (identical consonant); but
/tʰepo/ → [tʰepo] *[tʰepʰo] (...
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Does Lakhota contrast voicing in stops?
WALS Online lists Lakhota as only having a voicing contrast in fricatives (referencing a study by Richard Carter in 1974). However, its Wikipedia article says that it has phonemic voiced bilabial and ...
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Origin of vowel-h digraphs that English speakers use to represent phonemes
The majority of English speakers are not proficient in the International Phonetic alphabet or any other phonetic transcription system outside their own orthography. However, we often feel the need to ...
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How to describe stress rules
Primary stress is on the first syllable in a word, secondary stress is on every other following syllable except if that syllable is final in the word. How to write the stress rules using features.
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Frequency of homophones in different languages
Does English have unusually many or few homophones?
Which languages tend to have the most homophones and which have the fewest?
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Which English phoneme varies the most among its dialects?
The phonology of English shows extensive variance among its multitude of dialects. Which phoneme(s) shows the most variance throughout the language?
I think the most immediately apparent choice would ...
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Is "str" a legit sound in Polish?
"str" is legit in generic Slavic ("*strel-", arrow), so I wonder if Polish has it, maybe in leanwords. A small dictionary computer search gave nothing. (Frankly, I just want to ...
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